From late 2009 through late 2015, I founded and was publisher, collaborative designer, reporter, editor, photographer and advertising/subscription sales and marketing head for my own rolling local news publication, the Riverside Signal, which included probably as many formats, shapes and sizes as can be imagined.
Beginning December 2010, following a year as an early start-up local news website, I changed formats to print newspaper. Here are several hyperlinked front cover images that will bring you to their associated editions.
From late January to mid-December 2010, the Riverside Signal was first established and published as a standalone website (no mobile or tablet compatibility, as those things were just starting to be figured out). After three years as a print product, in Spring 2014 it returned to a new, upgraded mobile- and tablet-friendly site.
Starting in early 2015, I developed a new emailed news service for each of the seven towns covered by the Riverside Signal, combining news, arts, heritage, events and more, through Constant Contact. Readership was approximately 2,000 per edition. Click any masthead (which I also custom designed to mirror some aspect of each community) below to view samples of each.
When Hurricane Sandy struck in late October 2012, the region was less prepared as a direct result of Hurricane Irene, a storm that fizzled out the year before. Here are some bulletins and aftermath photos captured once “ground zero,” the barrier island, was opened up to press access.
Beginning in January 2016, I was invited to helm a thrice-weekly digital news bulletin operation for Jersey Shore Hurricane News, South Seaside Park.
From concept to execution, working alongside JSHN founder Justin Auciello, we produced a neat little package that included intro and outro tagged photos from the four-county shore area, regular weather news, article and feature lead-ins, event postings, a regional news collection service called Shorepoints plus interchangeable culture and history sections as This Week in Shore History, Coastal Reader, Shore Navigator and Dancing in the Dark.
Starting in June 2011, I took on a part-time role providing articles, photography and overall design plus logo creation to Pine Beach Connections, a seasonal municipal newsletter.
Beginning in 2016, I was responsible for content creation in various formats for Jersey Shore Hurricane News, both its website and social media properties. Some samples of these can be found below (above photo from JSHN Contributor, Jennifer Khordi, a personal favorite):
The following is an example of the regional history features often created for Jersey Shore Hurricane’s website, JSHN.org, and shared across social media. Above is an archived photograph I recreated into a pseudo-1980s videogame graphic to evoke the era.
Welcome to JSHN’s Waves from the Past, a browse through shore history’s dustbin of dog-eared and digitized postcards, snapshots, video clips and more.
Today we peek into the history of an instantly popular subject, a famous-to-infamous “dark ride” of the Jersey Shore that spooked and excited many before its untimely demise at the hand of “Lucifer’s flames” in 1987: the Haunted Mansion of the Long Branch Pier.
The following was originally published for Jersey Shore Hurricane News on June 10th, 2016 and is an example of national politics affecting the local area, plus other vandalism.
A sign of the times?
We spotted political graffiti today on a house that sits on the Toms River in Pine Beach.
It says, “1# TRUMP OBAMA SUCKS,” and it was spraypainted on a summer home earlier this week. But that’s not all.
Erik Weber / Media Portfolio 