My name is Brian Norton and I'm a sports online editor at The Omaha World-Herald. In addition to my work as a journalist, I have a passion for web design and development, traveling, reading, photography and more. The photo on the left is from a recent trip to Rocky Mountain National Park.
I'm a sports online editor with copy editing, design (print and web) and web development experience.
Aug. 2003 to May 2007
Omaha
Completed in 2015
Online
Took the Skillcrush.com web development blueprint to improve HTML and CSS skills as well as learn Git, Github, Javascript, jQuery and Ruby.
Started in 2015
Online
Taking the Coder Manual bootcamp to improve HTML, CSS and Javascript skills as well as learn Rails, SaaS and more.
2005 to Present
Omaha
Duties include posting all of the sports content to Omaha.com five days per week, designing special web pages for some stories, creating additional online content, editing stories, writing web-friendly headlines and managing multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts.
During my time on the online staff, I have helped oversee the design and launch of four speciality sites (Big Red Today, Bluejays Today, Nebraska Prep Zone and Mavericks Today), the growth of our Husker recruiting coverage — including extensive coverage on National Signing Day — the implementation of TeamPlayer, our robust high school results and statistics database, and multiple site and speciality site redesigns.
Since 2011, the Omaha.com sports section has been honored with a Top 10 designation, the highest honor, in the Associated Press Sports Editor contest three times.
Duties included being in charge of the sports section for the three morning editions multiple nights per week, line editing, editing copy, writing headlines, working on and slotting special sections and designing pages. Beginning in 2009, I worked a split schedule between online and print.
Duties included editing copy, writing briefs, taking high school sports scores and other phone calls and covering local sports events. This included a summer internship in 2006.
2004-2007 and 2008-2010
Omaha
For the 2009-2010 school year, I taught JMC 477 Advanced News Production and served as the professional adviser to The Creightonian, the Creighton University student newspaper. A major emphasis was to provide direction on the design on pages for each edition.
For the 2008-2009 school year, I taught JMC 379 Print Design, which included instruction in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
Served as Editor in Chief for the Fall 2006 semester. Duties included supervising a staff of 45 for the weekly paper, budgeting the pages, designing page 1, working with section editors on story coverage and design ideas and reporters on stories. The Creightonian was an Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker finalist for the 2006-07 school year.
Other positions held include Online Editor and Presentation Editor (Spring 2007), Sports Editor (Fall 2005 to Spring 2006), Assistant Sports Editor (Spring 2005) and Sports Reporter (Fall 2004).
A collection of my recent web design and development projects with a short explanation about each project.
What better way to learn new tools than to try out new things on your own personal site? Through the development of this site I've learned the Bootstrap framework and enhanced my HTML and CSS skills. I plan to add new features using different languages and frameworks in the future.
HTML, CSS and Bootstrap
This summer, The World-Herald updated our Nebraska 100 list. As part of that project, I developed a template for a series of feature stories on new members of the Nebraska 100. The goal was a clean design that provided a consistent user experience over the course of the series despite being implemented by multiple staff members and having stories of various lengths.
HTML and CSS
It was an honor to design this story about Ty Hansen, a track athlete who lost his twin brother to a car accident. There were a lot of elements for this story, including photos and video shot on deadline. The goal was a clean design that was easy for the reader to navigate while still making use of all the elements at my disposal.
HTML and CSS
I took a look behind the numbers of Nebraska's NFL draft history. This started as just a list of the Huskers that had been drafted, but, as I worked through the list, I discovered many interesting stories along the way. I was responsible for writing, researching and designing this project.
HTML, CSS and Google Charts
A collection of photos taken on my travels. Shots are from New Zealand (Doubtful Sound, Milford Sound, Auckland, Queenstown and Abel Tasman NP), Washington, Colorado and Las Vegas. For photos of my dog Tucker and other shots, follow me on Instagram.
