Clay Lepard

About Clay Lepard

12x Emmy Award-winning, versatile communications media professional and content creator with a demonstrated ability to lead a newsroom to help achieve high-quality storytelling across multiple broadcast and social media platforms. Consistently produces relevant, creative and engaging stories and articles to captivate audiences, often on tight deadlines with limited oversight.

Experience

1. Reporter

   Wews-Tv

   Jan 2021 — Present

   Responsible for cultivating potential stories for coverage, conducting interviews, and writing articles for television and online on News5Cleveland.com• Disseminate concise information to the general public following news events (unscheduled and planned special coverage) in on-camera reports and social media posts on various platforms• In addition to turning 1-2 daily newsworthy stories, I was promoted to “Special Projects Reporter” in September 2022, which means also juggling multiple longer-term stories across several issues at the same time. This is achieved through creating detailed plans and schedules to ensure a thorough and accurate report is completed in a timely manner• Coordinate and maintain relationships with sources on potential stories• Serve as a newsroom expert on specific “beats,”including NASA Glenn, real estate, technology/AI, and education • Collaborate with executive producers, managers, photographers and graphic designers about how to best illustrate compelling (and oftentimes complicated) content for public understanding• Train new reporters on specialized topics such as time management, how to pitch and deliver succinct stories, and how to improve video shooting and editing • Serve on station’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee to ensure fair and thorough coverage across range of topics and geographic locations• 2024 Great Lakes Emmy Award (Environment/Science - News)• 2024 Great Lakes Emmy Award (Sports Story - News)• 2024 Great Lakes Emmy Award (Equity/Diversity/Inclusion - News) • 2024 Great Lakes Emmy Award (Daily News Single Report)• 2023 Great Lakes Emmy Award (Hard News Report)• 2023 Great Lakes Emmy Award (Serious Feature)• 2022 Great Lakes Emmy Award (Daily News Single Report)• 2022 Great Lakes Emmy Award (Daily News Reporter)• 2021 Great Lakes Emmy Award (Feature/Human Interest Reporter)• 2021 Great Lakes Emmy Award (Public Affairs Program)

Education

• Syracuse University

  BS, Broadcast Journalism

  2008 — 2011

Skills

• Dv Camera Operator
• Storytelling
• Digital Journalism
• Newsking
• News Judgment
• Ftp
• Premiere
• On-Camera
• Final Cut Pro
• Broadcast Journalism
• Television
• Field Producing
• Avid Media Composer
• Broadcast Television
• Avid
• Live Reporting
• Microsoft Office
• Avid Newscutter
• Xdcam
• Multimedia Journalism
• Enps
• Sports Writing
• Media Ethics
• Audacity