Heels Down Happy Hour: A New Equestrian Podcast from the Horse Radio Network

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Heels Down Magazine presents the Heels Down Happy Hour podcast. There’s a whole lot of stuff happening in the horse world, and someone’s got to keep you up to date. Who’s winning what? What weird rules are you probably going to violate at your next horse show? What does your favorite rider really think about white breeches? Don’t worry, that’s what we’re here for. Grab a drink. Welcome to Happy Hour.

For more about the podcast, visit HeelsDownMag.com/podcast

Tune in for new episodes the 2nd and last Friday of each month on the Horse Radio Network. Download new episodes on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher.

More about our hosts:

Jessica Payne is a 32-year-old international event rider who is rarely seen without her long-haired chihuahua under her arm. She was born in London, Ontario but grew up in Franklin, Tenn. and graduated from Auburn University with a degree in Animal Science. She once lost the tip of her pinky finger clipping her 4* horse, and husband Doug says she can “talk to anyone including a wall….and they will like it!”

Caroline Culbertson is a 27-year-old equestrian journalist who broke her foot “surfing” a mattress down the stairs at age 7. Yes, her parents told her not to. She grew up in the south y’all and graduated from Duke University in North Carolina. She also picked up powerlifting a few months after breaking both bones in her arm, so her judgement is questionable. Hence, she’s an event rider.

Justine Griffin is an award winning 29-year-old journalist who has written about everything from horses to high profile CEOs to her ovaries. (She donated her eggs once.) Two things she loves the most? Whippet puppies and cheese. Justine is a firm believer in unicorns and feminism. So take everything she says with a grain of salt.

Poynter: How millennial journalists are unraveling local news for their peers

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