In the lead-up to the 2012 election, KOIN’s newsroom had no digital infrastructure for live vote tracking. There were no embeddable widgets, APIs, or CMS features capable of displaying results as they happened. The only source of official data came from an aging Windows machine tucked in a back corner of the newsroom, a relic with state-granted access to Oregon’s raw election feed, but no method of output.
No one had asked for a fix, but I saw an opportunity. With a major election approaching, I wanted our viewers to experience something the station had never offered before: real-time results directly on our website.
My goal was to modernize how KOIN handled election coverage from both a technical and editorial perspective.
I began by redesigning the newsroom’s CMS workflow, consolidating multiple manual input screens into a single results management page. Editors could now update race numbers once and have those figures populate anywhere they appeared across the site. A small but immediately impactful change that reduced error and duplication.
Then came the challenge: connecting the isolated newsroom terminal to our web servers. Working with one of our engineers, I developed a lightweight pipeline that bridged decades of technological gap. Using timed shell scripts, local file watchers, and a secure push routine, we extracted live vote data every 30–60 seconds, cleaned it, and automatically transferred it to our hosting environment.
On the frontend, I designed interactive results pages within the CMS that visualized the incoming data in real time. During close races, editors could still manually override local entries when confirmed updates came from the county offices. To prevent mismatches, I wrote logic that compared file timestamps and generated visual alerts for conflicting data.
The system went live the day before the election, and worked flawlessly. On election night, the newsroom, broadcast, and web teams were all pulling from the same live data feed for the first time in KOIN’s history.
The success of the launch was immediate. Viewers could see results refresh on their screens within moments of official updates. Even the broadcast producers began referencing the web feed on air, using it to drive their coverage and pacing.
The newsroom leadership recognized the innovation, and the project led to the creation of a dedicated Election Results team, expanding the work I’d started to support future local and national elections.
More importantly, it shifted internal perception. What began as one individual asking “why don’t we do this?” became a defining moment for how technology and journalism could intersect at the station.
This project taught me that innovation often begins with curiosity, not direction. No one had requested a live results feature, but by questioning assumptions and exploring technical limits, I was able to deliver something that redefined expectations.
It reinforced one of my core creative values: sometimes the most impactful work happens quietly, without permission, in the space between disciplines.
This wasn’t just about building a data pipeline, it was about bridging the gap between old systems and new possibilities.
• Creative Engineering
Developing a real-time data bridge from legacy systems
• CMS Design & Integration
Building dynamic dashboards for editors and viewers
• Cross-Department Collaboration
Coordinating between broadcast, engineering, and editorial teams
• Problem-Solving Under Pressure
Delivering a stable, working solution in less than a week
• Systems Thinking
Creating a process that scaled beyond its initial purpose
Legacy Systems
Legacy Windows OS (data source terminal)
Scripting + Automation
Shell scripting & file watchers
System Integrations
Secure FTP transfer automation
CMS Architecture
Custom CMS modules & template design
Frontend Visualization
Frontend visualization (HTML, JS, and dynamic feed integration)