Aidian Holder

PNW · (509) 902-9373 · aidianholder@gmail.com

Multi-media journalist. Data nerd. Open records jihadist.

Experience

Sep 2015 - Present

Digital Media ManagerYakima Herald-Republic

Played key role in digital transformation of print-based news organization. Responsible for editorial, technical, and business aspects of online and social media channels.

Duties include:

  • Producing, curating and creating news, feature, interactive and multimedia content; producing and maintaining sites, managing social channels
  • Designing and executing content strategies for maximizing impact, reach and engagment. Grew audience even in the face of the Facebook-pocalypse.
  • Maximizing yield from programatic advertising. Delivered higher CPMs and revenue totals.
  • Analyzing analytics data to produce actionable business intelligence.
  • Providing data and computer-assisted reporting support to newsroom for both daily and project reporting. Created newsroom data library.

Jan 2011 - Jul 2011

Multimedia ProducerKXTV-TV

Managed and produced content for online and social media platforms. Responsible for both editorial and technical aspects of daily and special coverage. Line produced newscasts on both a regular and as-needed basis.

Aug 2006-Jan 2011

ProducerKCRA-TV

Producer for NBC affiliate in Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto market (DMA 20). Produced fast-paced, live-intensive, daily newscasts with an emphasis on winning breaking news and the big stories in a competitive environment. Field produced special and investigative projects.

Aug 2005-Aug 2006

ProducerWBAY-TV

Newscast producer for ABC affiliate in Green Bay-Appleton, WI market (DMA 69). Responsible for all editorial and technical elements of assigned newscasts and supervising news crews and production staff.

Apr 2004-Aug 2005

ProducerKOMU-TV

Newscast producer for NBC affiliate in Columbia - Jefferson City, MO market (DMA 138). Produced special projects, features, and investigative stories. Produced re-purposed, original, and value-added online content

Aug 2003-May 2005

News EditorMissouri News

Newsroom manager, assignment editor and reporter for statehouse-based radio wire service providing state government news to commercial and public radio stations.

Education

University of Missouri - Columbia

Bachelor of Journalism - Broadcast News
Minor in Political Science. Graduated Cum Laude. Specialized courses included computer assisted reporting, investigative reporting, audience research, and web producing.

College of the Redwoods

Associate of Social Science
General education and lower division coursework. Graduated from honors program.

Technical Skills
A summary of some of my specialized skillsets

Languages
  • Python
  • SQL
  • JavaScript
  • Bash
  • HTML
  • CSS
Etc.
  • GIS
  • Linux Admin
  • Web Analytics
  • AdOps
  • Video Production

Recent Projects
Interactive, data-driven, etc.

Lately most of my projects have involved things like CPMs, subscription funnels and content verticals. Critically important work, and often interesting, but not nearly as much fun as doing the news. Below are a few examples of news work I've done recently. Everything here was done while also handling my duties as online producer. For a couple of more examples, including some more investigative work, check out the video stories in the next section.

public salary interactive

Public payroll

I built this because no one else had, and this is the sort of basic transparency that every community needs. The data is just remote json files; with two thousand records per year, there's no reason to use a database, and this way the search and paging is lighting fast.

Public Payroll
speeding ticket hotspots

Ticket hotspots

A cool example of spatial data which shows where drivers are most likely to get a speeding ticket. The map is running on my home-rolled custom built vector tile stack.

Ticket Hotspots
crime rates interactive

Crime rates

I built this little interactive largely to get up to speed on the latest version of D3.js. It's usually seen embedded in a story to help provide a little context.

Crime rates
calls for service mapped

Yakima PD incidents mapped

Call data is scraped twice daily and dumped into a PostgreSQL database, then served via a Django-powered REST API. An onscreen slider configures an ajax call to retrieve selected data, which is then displayed on a Leaflet-powered slippy map.

Calls for Service
health inspections

Health inspections

Updates are emailed monthly, then uploaded to PostgreSQL and served from a Django-powered backend. There are problems with data quality, editorial considerations limit how much I can clean it, and the whole app needs to be rewritten from scratch. Despite those issues it was yakimaherald.com's most popular page in 2018.

Health Inspections

Video

Newscasts
I've produced a couple of thousand newscasts during my career. Here are a few samples.

Stories
A few examples of stories I've produced.