Josh
Williams

The New York Times

Multimedia Editor · Remote and New York, N.Y. · January 2011 ­- present

Work alongside reporters, editors and other visual journalists on some of The Times's most ambitious visual stories, from breaking news to deeply reported enterprise stories.

Primarily a newsroom developer, I can be involved in all aspects of the story lifecycle, from planning and reporting to visual design and coding.

Highlights

• Measured and visualized the harm of air pollution, extreme heat and noise on the human body
• Built interactive maps, including one that lets readers explore gun violence in their communities
• Worked on interactive documentaries, like “Inside the Apocalyptic Worldview of ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight,’” which visualized the evolution of extremist ideas on the cable show
• Wrote custom software for battery powered Raspberry Pis to collect data for “Who Gets to Breathe Clean Air in New Delhi?”
• Spent more than a year writing and maintaining Covid-19 web scrapers to track the spread of the pandemic
• Led the development and help maintain a system of composable Svelte components — basic building blocks of multimedia storytelling — as a core piece of our internal content management system for interactive stories, accelerating the pace at which dozens of visual journalists turn ideas into reader-facing stories

UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

Adjunct Professor · Berkeley, Calif. · January 2015 - May 2015

Taught a digital news design and production class that ran concurrently with a visual narratives course. Students designed and built custom story forms for their visual stories.

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

Adjunct Professor · New York, N.Y. · January 2012 - December 2013

Co-taught capstone, six credit hour interactive news design classes.

UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism

Lecturer · Berkeley, Calif. · January 2009 - January 2011

Knight and Ford Foundation-sponsored full-time lecturer. I taught skills-based technology and Web publishing courses, and helped run three local news sites, which served as a real-world learning lab for multimedia storytelling.

Las Vegas Sun and Greenspun Interactive

New Media Projects Editor · Henderson, Nev. · September 2007 - January 2009

Managed the production-oriented new media journalists for Greenspun Media Group's digital initiatives, including newspaper, magazine and video products.

Responsibilities

• Managed the launch of lasvegassun.com, lasvegasweekly.com, the weekly "All In" sports show for a local broadcast station and the daily 702.tv, both the Web and television product
• Participated in the conception, design and execution of company-wide new media initiatives, both technically and editorially
• Oversaw video-related infrastructure build-out for Greenspun Media Group, including storage, asset management, studio space and IP video distribution
• Filled in where needed on deadline-driven projects, from Web developer to caption writer

Smithsonian Institution

Multimedia Specialist · Washington, D.C. · July 2004 - September 2007

Developed, scripted and produced multimedia exhibits.

Responsibilities

• Programmed three-tier multimedia exhibits
• Shot and edited digital video, photographs and audio
• Specified hardware for high-use indoor and outdoor multimedia installations
• Managed all multimedia-related content and contractors for the Smithsonian National Zoological Park's $53-million Asia Trail exhibit

NACCRRA

Web Developer · Washington, D.C. · October 2003 - July 2004

Built LAMP-stack applications for the organization's five websites.

American Forests

Web Developer · Washington, D.C. · July 2001 - October 2003

Maintained the non-profit's website. Built early e-commerce and conference registration systems with PHP and MySQL.

The Daily Tar Heel

Online Editor/Staff · Chapel Hill, N.C. · August 1999 - May 2001

Helped maintained online version of newspaper daily. As editor, led a staff of about 14 volunteers and spearheaded a redesign and shift from static pages to a database-driven site on our own domain.