Work samples: Beau Dure

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Updated 1-23-2005

WEB CONTENT, PAGE DESIGN AND PACKAGING

Athens 2004

My goals for this project were to provide lively real-time coverage that viewers can't get from the networks and to expand our tradition of in-depth coverage with the latest publishing tools. Here's how I achieved them:

  • A dynamic front with the most recent results, current weather and other items that updated frequently. (What you don't see: While the Games were in progress, the space occupied by the "More from Greece" block featured the latest entry from Athens Watch, below.)
  • The Athens Watch Weblog kept readers updated on the latest action in plain English, often featuring several events at once. The Weblog provided a strong supplement to our live, comprehensive results.
  • The subfronts for each sport (see swimming) or group of sports (see boat sports) showed off our popular photo galleries and provided background material on each sport.
  • The Team USA pages gave readers quick facts on every U.S. Olympian.
  • Leading into the Games, I interviewed several athletes for a series called 10.0 and compiled results of various World Championships into a tracking feature called the Virtual Medal Count.

Major projects

  • Salt Lake City Winter Olympics: I started planning months in advance and designed index pages for each sport to guide readers through an enormous pile of information that we supplemented with all sorts of multimedia work. I worked with our design and multimedia staffs to come up with ideas for graphics and other features. During the Games, I was in Utah, coordinating coverage with USA TODAY's newspaper staff and communicating with the Web staff back in Tysons Corner. I also wrote a daily preview and did interviews for XM Radio and Swedish television.
  • World Cup: Again, the challenge was to guide readers through a massive amount of material in all media. I also did research for several features such as the graphic on U.S. players, and I put together several photo galleries using a narrative approach (see below for a couple of examples).

Smaller projects

  • 2002 Tour de France: During the Tour, I was constantly trying to spin ahead to show readers what was to come. I found that this was the only way to understand what happened each day in this often confusing sport.
  • World Track & Field Championships: For this event, I steered away from a straight reverse-chronological approach and organized by topic. I also included a photo gallery and a schedule that allowed readers to browse for events and read the coverage.

Photo galleries (Flash required; will open in new window)

  • Ryder Cup: I used a chronological approach to let the story unfold.
  • PGA Championship: The weather and scenery provided a few shots that made this more than a typical collection of golf reaction photos.
  • World Cup final: As with other World Cup galleries, I mixed scene and action shots in a narrative approach.
  • USA vs. Germany: With the World Cup drawing national interest by this time, I was able to add a few scene shots that wouldn't appear in a typical collection of soccer shots.

In previous jobs, I've done research and packaging on a variety of subjects using a variety of tools.

  • World Cup preview: I used JavaScript pop-up windows to give more information without forcing the reader to leave the current page.
  • Previous work: This link will take you to an earlier version of my clip portfolio, preserved for posterity's sake to show some of the things I did in the wild and lawless early days of the Web. Links are absolutely not guaranteed.