Jake Cox
News product manager. I work on the things an audience actually touches — games, newsletters, feeds — and the measurement, email and personalization plumbing underneath them.
Currently a product manager with Michigan Public via The Magpie Project, working across audio and podcasts, personalization, analytics, newsletters and games. Previously on the newsletter desk at Block Club Chicago and Digital Managing Editor of The DePaulia. Four Peter Lisagor Awards for reporting along the way. Also, I graduated from DePaul University in June 2026; go Blue Demons!
Available for full-time & contract work →Featured Project
Block Club Chicago // 2025
WhatsApp Channel
Launched a WhatsApp channel to deliver immigration news to the Chicago communities most affected by federal enforcement, on the platform they were already using. 3,200 subscribers in six weeks. Recognized by the Knight Foundation, Newspack and Medill.
Read the Newspack write-up on the channel →Reporting
5I love news and I know news. A few of mine:
4th Place, Best News Story — ACP
Newsletters
3Editions I wrote and built at Block Club, where I sent to 130,000 people and watched what happened.
Experience
Product Manager
Michigan Public / The Magpie Project · Remote
- Manage product across five areas — audio, video and podcasts; personalization and recommendations; analytics; newsletters; and games
- Own the roadmap for an unannounced game product built with an outside dev partner: scoping, launch tracking, content pipeline, QA and the call on what ships at launch versus after
- Turn reporting and stakeholder meetings into scoped, owned work in Notion, and run the tracking that keeps launch dates honest
Newsletter Intern
Block Club Chicago · Chicago, Ill.
- Launched and scaled a WhatsApp broadcast channel to 3,200+ subscribers in six weeks, delivering verified immigration coverage to communities most affected by federal enforcement and earning recognition from Knight Foundation, AJP, Medill and Reuters
- Produce and publish daily newsletters to 130,000+ subscribers, making real-time story selection and placement calls against deadline
- Analyze open rates, CTR and CTOR across daily sends to A/B test subject lines and optimize story hierarchy for engagement lift
- Report breaking news and enterprise features across civic, arts, LGBTQ+ and weather beats for a nonprofit hyperlocal newsroom
- Partner with editors and reporters to shape newsletter editions around shifting coverage priorities throughout the news cycle
Producer & Lead Data Analyst
DePaul CJIE / NBC 5 Chicago · Chicago, Ill.
- Led data analysis, fact-checking and structural editing on two long-form investigations produced with NBC 5 Chicago's I-Team
- Built a Python web scraper to extract Illinois GA witness slips, surfacing opposition patterns that powered an investigative report
- Developed an interactive news app visualizing how Illinois' per-wager sports betting tax hits bettors in an accessible way
- Packaged investigative findings for multi-platform publication and produced vertical video for Facebook, Instagram and YouTube
- Both reports won Chicago Headline Club Peter Lisagor Awards
Digital Managing Editor
The DePaulia · Chicago, Ill.
- Drove a 53% increase in Instagram engagement and 250K+ organic views by rebuilding the social strategy around short-form video, platform-native formats and a repeatable content workflow that outlasted my tenure
- Directed live breaking news coverage including a student encampment live blog that earned the Peter Lisagor Award for deadline reporting
- Led a digital staff of 25 across web, social and newsletter, setting editorial priorities and coaching reporters on deadline
- Relaunched the paper's newsletter, social and search strategy; grew newsletter subscribers to nearly 1,000
Selected Projects
Sports Betting Tax News App · html + javascript
Illinois General Assembly Web Scraper · python + beautifulsoup
Michigan Public Wikidata Record · structured data
Audited and rebuilt the station's Wikidata item — FCC facility IDs, call signs, website qualifiers, Knowledge Graph mapping — so search and voice surfaces describe the org correctly. Q16974093
Recognition
Peter Lisagor Awards
- Deadline Writing (Small Newsroom)
- Best Education Reporting (Student)
- Best Politics & Government Reporting (Student)
- Best Sports Reporting (Student)
- Chicago Headline Club
Associated Collegiate Press
- 4th Place, Best News Story
- 6th Place, Best of Show Website
- HM Breaking News Story
- HM Best In-Depth News Story
- HM Social Media Reporting
Education
B.A. Journalism — DePaul University
Minor: English Literature · Certificate: Geographic Information Systems
Graduated June 2026
Coursework: Data journalism, GIS and spatial analysis, media law, investigative reporting
Graduated June 2026
Coursework: Data journalism, GIS and spatial analysis, media law, investigative reporting
DePaul FOIA Fellows Bootcamp
Public records skills, FOIA strategy, request tracking and follow-up reporting
Professional Memberships
Investigative Reporters and Editors · Chicago Headline Club, SPJ · Online News Association
Skills
Product Management
Roadmaps, scoping, launch tracking, backlog triage, Notion
Working With Vendors
Scoping with outside dev shops, QA, go-live, data access reviews
Analytics & Measurement
GA4 event design, Chartbeat, Triton, dashboard specs
Audience & Lifecycle
Newsletters, platform distribution, retention loops, A/B testing
Email & CRM
Mailchimp, ESP migration, deliverability, list health
Privacy & Consent
CCPA requirements, consent flows, first-party data handling
Programming & Web
HTML/CSS, Python, R, GitHub, Apple News Format JSON
Data Analysis
Cleaning, visualization, Datawrapper, Flourish
Editorial
Breaking news, enterprise, AP style, FOIA, live updates
GIS & Mapping
ArcGIS Pro, Leaflet.js, spatial analysis
WhatsApp Channel Launch
Immigration news distribution
The Opportunity
During intensified federal immigration enforcement, Chicago residents were turning to WhatsApp for news — and to rumors, when real reporting wasn't there. Block Club's coverage wasn't reaching the platform where the conversation was happening.
What I Did
Launched Block Club's WhatsApp Channel to put verified coverage in front of the community most affected, on the surface they were already using.
Results
3,200subscribers in six weeks
Recognition
Knight Foundation, American Journalism Project, Newspack, Medill Midwest Solutions Lab, Reuters.
Read the full case study on how the channel was built →
Newsletter Production
Newsletter desk · 25+ editions weekly · 130,000+ subscribers
What I Did
- Wrote and edited daily editions, packaging reporters' stories for people reading on a phone in line for coffee
- A/B tested subject lines against open rate, CTR and CTOR, and kept what worked instead of what sounded clever
- Made the hierarchy calls — what leads, what gets a callout, what context a reader needs before the link
- Built custom designs for large features and original service, arts and civic pieces
Sending to 130,000 people every day is the fastest feedback loop in the building. It's where I learned to read a number and change something the next morning.
DePaulia Instagram Growth
Social media strategy & content workflow
Results
+2,000new followers (53% increase)
250K+organic views
What I Did
- Created short-form videos and grid posts for breaking news, explainers and feature stories
- Adapted stories for platform-specific formats following quickly changing industry standards
- Built a repeatable content workflow for a student newsroom that outlasted my tenure
Examples
