Transforming a museum into a digital storytelling authority
The Historic New Orleans Collection had thousands of stories to tell, but most of them lived in the heads of curators and historians. I led the launch of First Draft to give those stories a digital home.
As founding editor, I recruited contributors, developed content strategy and managed the flor of content alongside a world-class team of editors. We built an editorial voice that balanced historical depth with real reader engagement, or as I liked to call it, "thoughtful clickbait."
The blog became the institution’s most powerful digital channel, earning 20,000+ monthly users, 5000 new email subscribers and citations from national outlets including the New York Times. More than a platform, First Draft became a publishing engine that still produces important stories to this day.