Daniel Petty

About Daniel Petty
I’m a multiplatform journalist and currently the social media editor at The Denver Post, where I manage the newspaper’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, create conversation around the news, lead and plan social media coverage during major events, and train reporters and editors in harnessing social media tools to interact with our audiences, break and report stories, and create more compelling content for our readers. I’ve worked and led our online team to grow The Post’s audience from 200 fans on our main Facebook page in June 2009 to more than 130,000 fans today, sixth among U.S. newspapers, behind only The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.

Previously, I was a multimedia and online producer for The Post, where, in addition to focusing on social media, I redesigned and oversaw the paper’s blogs — which I continue to do today — and shot, edited and produced video, wrote breaking news and photographed for stories. I continue to photograph concerts and shows for Reverb, The Post’s music blog, in addition to sports and other assignments — both for The Post and other clients. I’m an occasional contributor to Running Times Magazine and have contributed photos and articles to the Denver Catholic Register.

I joined The Post in June 2009 as a summer Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Multimedia intern. I was hired in January 2010 and put in charge of leading a task force of editorial, advertising, marketing and circulation staff to develop a social media strategy for the newspaper — part of an effort to grow our audience and engagement online, and, ultimately, generate additional revenue through increased traffic and advertising opportunities.

You can follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Background
I was born in New Orleans and lived there until I was five, before moving to Pennington, N.J., in 1992. I graduated from the University of Richmond in Richmond, Va., in December 2009. There, I served as the online editor of The Collegian — the student newspaper — during the 2008-09 academic year, which involved designing, developing and implementing the newspaper’s Web site redesign the summer before my senior year, the final product of which won best overall college newspaper Web site from the Student Society for News Design.

I worked as The Collegian’s news editor from 2007-08, blogged for The New York Times during the 2008 presidential and vice presidential debates and interned as a staff writer for The Associated Press in Richmond, The Pennington (N.J.) Post, and Stateline.org, a daily news Web site dedicated to tracking, analyzing and explaining trends in state government and politics.

At Richmond, I competed in varsity cross country and track and field and played in the university’s wind ensemble. I graduated with a bachelor of science in biology and journalism and a minor in French.