Some Americans see press freedom as a right cemented in the First Amendment. I see it as a responsibility.

I’m Michael Ramsburg, an independent journalist from West Virginia. I produce news, investigations and feature stories for print, broadcast and online media outlets, using a whole stack of technical tools to tell these stories. My reportage — which includes writing, photojournalism, audio, video, graphics, maps, web interactives and more —  has been published locally and nationally.

I currently report on the people and places of the Kanawha Valley for NewsBreak, the nation's largest local news app. I also write and produce the free weekday Kanawha Valley Update newsletter and Weekend Update podcast.

In addition to creating unique journalism content, I also help small and medium-sized news organizations better convey their visual brand and achieve their online communication goals.

I am a current or past member of the Online News Association, the National Press Photographers Association and the Society of Professional Journalists.

You can connect with me and see more of my work on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

I am currently available for new projects and assignments.

Skills

Journalistic Capabilities: AP style, FOIA requests, data reporting, open-source intelligence (OSINT), map-making, newspaper design/pagination, online production, social media, media convergence

Multimedia: Adobe Suite (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Audition), Audacity, Blender, GIMP

Web Development: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Bootstrap, WordPress, CouchCMS

Data & Mapping: D3.js, R, Tableau, Flourish, QGIS, GeoJSON, Mapbox, Leaflet, Python

Reporting Interests

Local news, religion, working-class issues, rural issues, poverty, human interest