The New York Times wrote about egg donation and included The Cost of Life in this Oct. 21, 2016, piece.
“Justine Griffin submitted an application to donate her eggs to a fertility clinic in Florida, detailing everything about herself from her appearance to her SAT scores. An infertile couple liked what they saw on paper and Ms. Griffin was notified that they wanted to buy her eggs.”
Poynter featured the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s project, Unravel, which is a millennial news site for young professionals in the Sarasota area. I was one of the founding editors behind the project.
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The idea for a site devoted to Sarasota’s millennials didn’t come from that generation. It came from a design-thinking challenge led by Bill Church, the newly appointed senior vice president for news at parent company GateHouse Media.
The challenge? Figure out a way to reach an audience they weren’t serving.
A small team at the Herald-Tribune started with focus groups and get-togethers. That team, led by Justine Griffin, decided not to treat a generation as if it were all the same. Young professionals, they figured, were already invested and active in the community. Now, they needed to be informed.
But they didn’t want to be fooled.
“They said the biggest thing they didn’t want was to be duped into going back to Herald-Tribune,” said Griffin, 28, who’s now a business reporter at the Poynter-owned Tampa Bay Times.
Read more here.
Justine Griffin won first place in the Florida Society of News Editors 2015 Journalism Contest in the multimedia category for The Cost of Life. She also placed third in the beat reporting – consumer issues category and third in the online package category of the 2015 Society of Professional Journalists Sunshine State Awards.
By Justine Griffin
MANATEE COUNTY – Like nearly all other industries, the restaurant business has metamorphosed through the years.
Some national and regional chains are feeling the push to compete with small businesses, as millennials and Generation X consumers flock to support hole-in-the-wall eateries within their communities that reach a younger customer through robust social media presence and online apps.
First Watch Restaurants, the Manatee County-based chain of breakfast, brunch and lunch cafes, also has evolved through the years to meet the demands of these new customers.
This year, First Watch introduced a new urban layout in restaurants across the country, including two sites in Florida: Largo and Estero.
The “urban farm” design is bright, colorful and modern. The build-out looks like something you’d see on a busy street in a bigger metro area than Sarasota.
“The new concept is more in line with the customer First Watch is targeting,” said Darren Tristano, executive vice president of Technomic, a food research firm based in Chicago. “It’s not fancier, but it plays on freshness and the importance of being local.”
Read more here.
Sidebar:
First Watch evolves to attract younger customers: Like nearly all other industries, the restaurant business has metamorphosed through the years. Some national and regional chains are feeling the push to compete with small businesses, as millennials and Generation X consumers flock to support hole-in-the-wall eateries within their communities that reach a younger customer through robust social media presence and online apps. Read more here.
By Justine Griffin for the Herald-Tribune
Southwest Florida was not immune to the mass appeal and the insanity that followed the release of the “Lilly for Target” collection at Target stores nationwide and online on Sunday.
Lilly Pulitzer — the Palm Beach-based boutique brand known for its vibrant patterns on dresses, shirts, home-decor items and purses — released a line of 250 limited-edition items to be sold one time only. The Minneapolis-based retailer has been doing similar collaborations with designers occasionally over the years, and they have proven to be successful.
The appeal of Lilly resort-wear-like designs being sold at a fraction of the cost the merchandise sells for in stores like the one on St. Armands Circle and in the Mall at University Town Center brought loyal fans and newcomers to Target stores early Sunday — something eerily reminiscent of Black Friday madness.
Read more here.