Feed on
Posts
Comments

This page has just kind of been floating out there for the last year plus, but really more the last two years. I could say it’s because I’ve been pretty busy (which is absolutely true – noted by the fact that I posted less than a handful of times since having my second baby, who is now 2), but it’s a little more complex.

I had started this site as a way to showcase the various columns and stories I was writing. You’ve got your stuff on sites all over the web when you’re a freelancer, and this site served kind of a central place to showcase my work and create an archive. But over time, between my consistent gigs at ESPN.com and Fox News Latino, I ended up having pretty significant archives between those two sites and didn’t really need to make my own.

This is what it looks like when you are camping in your apartment when your furniture doesn't arrive until two months after you moved.

And so this page kind of lingered. Then there was a bit of an upheaval – actually it was a full-blown upheaval where in the span of six months: my ESPN.com column was put on “indefinite hiatus” (The abrupt end left me a bit confused – and I’m not going to lie, sad. It made more sense when the entire Playbook section I wrote for was scrapped a very shortly thereafter); I took up an offer to found an #edtech startup; my husband got a fellowship at Stanford that led to us selling our house and leaving Boston for good to move cross country, where we moved into a new place sight unseen; we dealt with the move from hell, where our stuff arrived more than month after it was supposed to (two months after we left Boston); I co-founded a journalism startup; and then my kindergartner broke her leg. She bounced back from a hip-high cast to “you’d never guess” running in nine weeks. It took me another six or so months to rebound.

I’ve also been taking courses at Stanford (a perk to my husband’s John S. Knight Fellowship is that spouses get to take part in the program and take any classes they want at the university). Oh, and I’m writing a book that has a publisher, so not just like an “I’m saying I’m writing a book because it sounds cool” book. No, this is actually a book that needs to be into the publisher by a certain date so they can print it and run it book. More on that to inevitably come.

From time to time, I’ve ended up back on my site, thinking that I should really do something with it. So, I’m going to do the best that I can to try to “do something with” this page. It’s going to be a bit of a shift in direction – less “here’s what I wrote for X news outlet today” and more personal (but not like awkward oversharing personal – ideally more in a larger picture, these are my interests kind of way) looking at entrepreneurship, the new direction of media, diversity,  and inevitably mentions of my amazing children (like when my baby tried to mug me).

My mom, blogger extraordinaire AnnMaria De Mars, has done this whole 30-day blogging challenge a few times (where you blog every day for a month) and swears by it. My goal is to work up to that. For now, my plan is just to post more frequently — and it’s not hard to post more frequently than once a year. If it works, it works. If not, well, I’ll see you back here in another two years.

That little person in the black sweater holding out a tape recorder is me.

I am a journalist and tech entrepreneur.

On the journalism end, I’m digital journalist with more than a decade of experience. I embraced blogging journalistically in 2003, pushed for Web-versions of my newspaper stories to run before they ran in the paper in 2005 and can attribute my use of social media to landing me jobs in 2006 (Thank you MySpace!) and 2010 (Thank you Facebook!).

As an entrepreneur,  I’m co-founder of two startups: 7 Generation Games (ed tech) and evrybit (media innovation).

I wrote for ESPN.com in some capacity from 2006-2013, most recently I was the site’s first social media columnist. I also wrote a weekly column for Fox News Latino from 2010-2013, usually about the intersection of Latino issues and sports. I freelanced for a whole bunch of places. I began my career as an editorial assistant at Sports Illustrated, spent two years as a sports reporter at The (Fort Wayne, Indiana) News-Sentinel.

Before heading back west (I’m a California native, but spent 13 years living east of the Mississippi in places where it snowed), I was an adjunct professor in the Journalism Department at Emerson College and twice a guest lecturer at Tufts University.

I was the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Emerging Journalist of the Year in 2007, named of one Newspapers in Education’s “Faces of the Future: Hispanics Who Will Influence the World” in 2008 and selected for the Fulbright Commission’s Berlin Capital Program in 2009.

I’m currently living Silicon Valley, but constantly debating if it would be better to move to Santa Monica and live by the beach.

Happy New Year. I don’t really do resolutions, but one of the things I hope to do in 2013 is to update this blog more regularly.

The last few months were a bit crazy to say the least. I was teaching three college courses on top writing two weekly columns and one monthly column. This, of course, is in addition to having a pre-kindergartner and an infant. That alone would have kept me busy, but then my nanny got sick and ended up out for five weeks. I had a part-time fill-in, but it was a juggle to say the least. Surviving the semester involved lots of writing late at night and getting up at obscenely early hours to get everything done, fueled largely by coffee and the deadline adrenaline kick that allows journalists to get stories in on time when such a feat seems nearly impossible.

This go-round I’ve got my nanny back and am only teaching one course, but I’m not banking on tons more free time just yet. I’ve taken on some additional work and was recently appointed to the UNITY: Journalists for Diversity national board of directors. And my baby is now walking so I’m constantly chasing after her as well. But when — or maybe that’s if — I get some free time, I’ll do my best to update here.

Of course, you can always follow me on Twitter or check my archives on the right of this page to see what’s keeping me busy.

In honor of the Triple Crown, I ended up writing a trio of horse racing stories. I hadn’t really planned that as part of my coverage plan, but few people expected I’ll Have Another with jockey Mario Gutierrez abroad to make a run for one of sport’s most elusive honors.

A little over a month ago, I got an email from a PR guy asking if I’d be interested in doing a story on a jockey who would be riding in the Kentucky Derby. The jockey was from Mexico. I thought it would be a good fit for a Fox News Latino piece, and it was.

See: Kentucky Derby: From Mexico to the Biggest Stage

Of course, it became a much bigger story after I’ll Have Another/Mario Gutierrez won the Kentucky Derby. And it became exponentially bigger after the pairing won the Preakness, leading me to write a follow up column.

See: Triple Crown? Preakness Winner I’ll Have Another is Great for Horse Racing

With an end to the Triple Crown drought looking almost likely, I was tasked with doing another column ahead of the Belmont Stakes. It was going to be about how difficult it is to pull off the trifecta and how I’ll Have Another was well-poised to do just that. Then I’ll Have Another was scratched a day before the race. My column required a bit of 11th hour reworking, but I managed to pull it off.

See: I’ll Have Another & The Belmont: Hopes Dashed Again for The Triple Crown

The Stanley Cup final is underway, meaning Stanley Cup stories by yours truly.

I don’t cover a lot of hockey, but I pride myself in being able to tackle almost any story/subject out there.

For Fox News Latino, I examined the challenges the NHL faces in attracting Latino fans and what the league is doing to reach minorities.

See: With Stanley Cup Finals Underway, NHL Still Trying To Attract Latinos

For ESPN.com social media column, I did a social media tale of the tape comparing the L.A. Kings and New Jersey Devils’ social media efforts.

See: Social media: Comparing Kings and Devils

“I’m so sorry [I didn’t get back to you sooner/I’ve been out of touch/I’ve been slow in replying to my email/etc.], I just had a baby.”

I have used this phrase a lot lately. It’s not an excuse, it’s an explanation.

My updates to this site have been a bit irregular in the last year and non-existent the last few months. But I have a good reason:

I am now out of the sleep deprivation fog (don’t confuse that for sleeping through the night) and back at work.

I had hit on how leagues and sports personalities utilize social media in my past columns, but hadn’t looked at how teams are using the space. The Jets have been especially progressive in their use of social media, and as I examined in this piece, those efforts have made the team a digital leader among its NFL counterparts.

See: The New York Jets’ social media takeoff

The University of Maryland pulled off an upset beating Miami in the two teams’ season opener, but that’s not what had people talking after the game. It was the unique uniforms the Terrapins unveiled that had fans – and the Twitterverse – abuzz.

See: Maryland unis start social media buzz

As I’ve mentioned before, my goal in covering social media is to go beyond simply “this is what so-and-so said on Twitter.” The aim is to put it in some kind of additional context. For this piece, I wanted to look at trying to quantify the value of a social media bump.

Another day, another athlete social media faux pas. At least, that’s how it seems in this fast-paced digital age. Having covered social media, I’ve also noticed that most sports personalities are making similar missteps. So I decided to compile a list of social media do’s and don’ts for athletes that was both tongue-in-cheek and useful.

See: @Page2 guides athletes on social media

The piece was really well-received. I think it’s the balance of dry humor, real word examples and legitimate pointers that made it appeal to my audience.

Following the column, I was asked to appear on the Bryan Hayes Show on TSN 1050 (Toronto’s ESPN affiliate) to discuss the piece as well as my general thoughts on sports and social media.

After 135 days, the NFL lockout officially came to an end. I wrote up a quick blog for ESPN.com on players’ joyous reactions to the news that the 2011 season will be played.

See: NFL players celebrate lockout’s end on Twitter

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »