2019 – Present
Being a digital content producer at KSHB 41 has been an incredible learning experience. I am not even close to the same journalist I was when I started, and that’s a good thing.
Along with writing and editing countless web stories each day, below are some of my favorite projects.
Kylr Yust murder trial
My favorite project has been over a year in the making. Kylr Yust is accused of killing two women from the Belton area, and I had the chance to make sure our station is seen as the online expert as the trial approaches.
I built out a website landing page that goes into great detail on the case, the people involved, the locations and the timeline of events.
Within the timeline, I dug up all of our past coverage. It goes back to 2006, when the first girl went missing.
TIMELINE: Kylr Yust faces murder charges for the deaths of Kara Kopetsky and Jessica Runions
My favorite piece of the project is a six episode podcast mini series on the topic. It walks through the case, has reporters explain how they covered the story and brings in experts to discuss the upcoming trial. It launches at the end of March.
Chiefs Super Bowl coverage
I never thought of myself as a sports person, but when the home team heads to the Super Bowl two years in a row, you learn to write sports stories. I wrote endless web stories about the team and about how the community was celebrating. We also were the main station for the broadcast of the Super Bowl parade, which came with lots of fun new things.
Some of my favorite projects were not stories, but other items I got to create to further evolve our coverage.
The biggest project the team undertook was one we didn’t foresee being such a hit. We had the idea to take photos from fans that were sending them in to the station and put them on a map. I got to work building the map, but soon we had more submissions than I could handle alone.
Yep, that’s Antarctica.
Severe weather coverage
My first day on the job happened to be the day a tornado tore a path across the area. So, my first project was some storm visualization. These days, any time there is a weather event, I start a story on the website and keep it updated in a blog style. Combine that with social media, push alerts and whatever livestream I can get – there’s the full deal.
Katelyn Brown 