History Channel Editorial
Role: Photo Editor & Visual Content Strategist
Tools: Photoshop, Wordpress, Airtable, Parse.ly
HISTORY® is the leading destination for historical storytelling that combines entertainment and education. The stories of the past help us make sense of the present. As a brand dedicated to bringing the past to life, History.com delivers premium content exploring movements, wars, figures and discoveries that have shaped our world.
My main focus was curating stunning editorial visuals to engage HISTORY® viewers looking to deep dive beyond the network’s programming. I collaborated with editorial, design, and marketing teams to create an online experience that would draw in avid history buffs and visual browsers alike with eye-catching photographs and historically accurate illustrations. Blending visual journalism with narrative storytelling, I researched and wrote compelling articles to accompany these features, adding rich context to the imagery.
My most read article for History.com, “9/11 Lost and Found: The Items Left Behind”.
Photo composites for an editorial feature, “Every Event Has an Echo from the Past”.
In an age where social media gives us instant access to history-in-the-making through images and video, connecting audiences to the past requires that same powerful visual language. Bringing stories to life beyond written text offers a window into the past that forges a deeply human connection to historical events. Viewers are compelled to confront both the heavy weight of tragedies and the resilience of the human spirit.
As Photo Editor & Researcher, I developed the creative strategy for photo-driven storytelling while maintaining visual consistency across a wide range of editorial tones.
I collaborated daily with writers and producers curating all editorial imagery, proactively pitching story ideas and visual-first photo essays. Leveraging analytics, I implemented data-informed strategies to integrate immersive photo galleries across our top-performing evergreen pages, increasing pageviews and enriching content highly used by educators.
World War II photo essay, “These Photos Depict the Miracle of Dunkirk That Saved 338,000 Lives”.
Show-Supporting Content
By applying a premium editorial treatment to show-supporting content, I created a cohesive visual experience ensuring promotional pieces blended seamlessly into the site’s ecosystem. These features showcased thorough research to ensure historical accuracy and expertise in curating brand-consistent visuals for a major network.
“The Cars That Made America” feature apart of the editorial package created alongside Car Week programming.
Infographic animal species guide for HISTORY® series Kings of Pain.
Interactive war battle maps for HISTORY® presidential miniseries Grant and Washington.
Interactive guides for HISTORY® presidential miniseries Theodore Roosevelt & FDR.
Social Media Creative Content Management
When the social team came to me looking for an Instagram rebrand, our objective was to better own the history space on the platform. While @HISTORY was tied to a legacy network, it faced competition from pop-culture and educational accounts.
On History.com, “This Day in History” is the premier editorial destination dedicated to historical anniversaries and milestones so it felt like a natural fit to build a media-rich social strategy around. It’s success online and dedicated newsletter support was built off great editorial, but lacked visual insight that helped to transport viewers to the past.
Visually striking assets driven by strong editorial would help us draw in a new modern audience and become recognized as a dynamic, social-first publisher without losing the brands foundational academic credibility. Newsletters subscribers were converted into Instagram followers by providing an additional visual component to the franchise.
This approach also created space for individual photos to stand alone. Not every important or captivating historical image warrants a full photo essay on the site, but these single, impactful photos thrived on Instagram.
Our new strategy allowed us to link back to the site, driving social follower growth and website pageviews simultaneously. Additionally our editorial strategy to connect our content with our network programs allowed for seamless show promotion through our socials. Within just one year, @HISTORY followers grew from 1.9 million to over 3 million (a 58% increase). The account grew to over 5 million in my time at A+E Networks.
