Skills

Editing – This has been my primary responsibility for the majority of my career now. I work with reporters and other newsroom staff to take stories from inspiration to production. That can involve identifying and pitching stories, helping reporters find sources and talking them through how to focus a narrative. It always requires a careful read and/or listen for accuracy, grammar and clarity. My philosophy is to suggest more than dictate, so that the final product resonates with the reporter’s voice, not mine. I’ve featured some of my work on the Stories page.

Newsroom leadership – I ran the largest regional radio newsroom in the country for four-and-a-half years. During that time we covered a couple of huge stories, one unanticipated — the collapse of the I-35W bridge — and one we had ample time to plan for — the 2008 Republican convention in St. Paul. During this time I also oversaw a move to new facilities, and in the process advanced technological changes that made MPR News far more mobile and flexible. Even before becoming news director, I was a staff leader in our transition to the web, and our online presence was considered well ahead of other public media organizations.

Data analysis – Working with data has become a specialty of mine. I’m comfortable working with large data sets in spreadsheets, databases and text editors. I have ingested, scrubbed and analyzed data sets containing hundreds of thousands of entries. I can chart and map. Proficient in Excel and Google spreadsheets, SQL databases, regular expressions, Google Fusion tables/maps, ArcGIS.

Web development – I’ve built and hosted a handful of sites, including:

  • CrucialL.ist – A content management system for creating and publishing annotated music lists. It provides automatic search functions for finding Spotify songs/albums, then embedding players and artwork. (See example here.) Currently dormant, but looking to update code.
  • mprsoftball.org – Built from scratch using Django for the backend and the Zurb Foundation framework for the front end. The site allows the team manager to schedule players and keep stats, and tracks the team’s 40+ year history in text and photos. Also currently dormant, may get revived.
  • mprsoftball.org (archive) – Before I built the Django site, I put together this WordPress site for the team.
  • MPR News Chartbuilder – I customized an open source chart-making tool and rebuilt the site using Foundation to make it more user-friendly.
  • bill.wareh.am – A visual portfolio, built on WordPress.
  • billwareham.info – This site, built on WordPress.
  • bilware.net – A personal blog built on WordPress. Like so many, it has basically gone dormant as I’ve shifted content to other sites.
  • The Ernies(mn) – An afternoon vanity project to feature music and photos from a band in which I used to play. My first experience with responsive design using Foundation.
  • Essential Music – This was the first site I ever created, and it’s very rudimentary, but it was a labor of love. It was built using Communicator, the site building tool that was part of the Netscape browser.

Programming – I’ve learned to use Python for web development (see mprsoftball.org) and scripting.  I’ve built web scrapers, as well as scripts to monitor sites and alert reporters when specific information turns up. My first real programming project was an Apple XCode app to randomly mix iTunes playlists into new playlists of desired sizes. It was designed for people whose music libraries exceeded the capacities of their iPods. When Apple added smart playlists to iTunes, my app, Playlist Blender, became unnecessary. But for about a year it was the easiest way to handle such a task, and was downloaded by thousands of people.