About a year ago, I was about to grab sushi at Union Station when I got a strange call. Apparently, someone had given my number to a guy named Marc Sampson and he wanted some advice about what journalists were looking for in a personal site for some vague sounding startup. I talked to him for about 20 minutes, and promptly forgot about the conversation until I received an email earlier this week about the beta launch of the project.

Pressfolios is a startlingly simple concept: It’s an online portfolio for press clips. The interface is clear, easy and quick. Intuitively designed, it does wonders for time-strapped journalists — you essentially click what you want to change, be it a picture, a tag or key details. The standout feature is the easy updating for new stories and columns. Instead of having to code them, you simply enter the link and it appears as an elegant and inviting little box.

Earlier in the week, I spent about three hours on my personal website updating a vast backlog of stories — I ultimately scanned, sorted, and uploaded seven stories and made quite a few needed updates. I also spent a lot of time visually formatting the posts, even though I am still not quite happy with the results. On Pressfolios, I spent three hours again, but I uploaded 30 stories in the same time frame. The application also makes the uploading process a lot easier for bloggers. When I wrote for Jezebel.com, we were required to crank out four to eight posts a day. I did that for eight months. While I was proud of my work at the site, I generally had to settle for only featuring one or two of my pieces; who has the time to go back and code all those links? Pressfolios’ easy uploading allowed me to give my old work new life.

Last fall, I found myself in a blizzard-like storm in New York, fighting my way through a thick wall of snow. I had just left my position at the Wall Street Journal in Asia to be with my husband and to pursue full-time reporting. This weather was a reminder of the fact that I was no longer in the comforting tropical climate of Hong Kong and no longer in a comfortable job at a multinational news organization.

I was on my way to the Pageturner Literary Festival to see Junot Diaz speak. He is an author who bedazzled me with his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Coming back to the U.S. had been a bit of an adjustment, and so I was hoping for some advice and counsel — perhaps a shove in the right direction, an uplifting tale of struggle and eventual success from Mr. Diaz.

And he delivered.

Tablet technology has captivated the journalism world with its seemingly endless possibilities for expanding the form, yet most tablet-based publications are still cribbing from the traditional magazine format. Enter Symbolia, a visual cure for the common news story. In their own words:

Symbolia is a tablet magazine of illustrated journalism that pairs incendiary reporting with thoughtful illustration and comics. Our goal is to provide an immersive, engaging experience for a new generation of newshounds.

The brainchild of Erin Polgreen, Symbolia is poised to redefine how we understand journalism, particularly from a visual perspective. ONA caught up with Polgreen over email to get the scoop on Symbolia’s origin story.

Countdown begins! MJ Bear Fellowship applications close soon
The deadline to apply for the MJ Bear Fellowship, which supports digital journalists under 30 with mentors, networking and high-end professional development, is coming up in 10 days. Promising, innvoative journalists should submit their applications before May 31 to qualify. The fellowship also provides free ONA membership, attendance and presentation at ONA12 and more. Find out how to qualify and apply and get inspired by the current fellows, their blogs and their videos.

Be a 2012 Online Journalism Awards early bird
Get a head start on awards season and submit your projects and websites for the 2012 OJAs. We’ve redefined our categories and metrics this year to better focus overall on excellent journalism. Eight awards come with a total of $33,000 in prize money, courtesy of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Gannett Foundation, including two $2,500 awards for innovative investigative work. Deadline: June 21, 2012.

Since last September, I’ve been working on a little side project called “Beyond the Blotter: The Homicide Watch Handbook.”

It’s a simple WordPress site, and I’ve been spending spare moments populating it with my notes, sources, resources, methodology, tips, tricks and advice for online crime beat reporting.

Although it’s primarily a how-to guide book for reporters on the Homicide Watch platform, it’s also been an opportunity for me to reflect on how and why our website works. And, because I’m frequently asked if the concept could work for other beats, it’s given me some time to think about what specifically works universally.

Undoubtably the deep beat reporting model could work on many other beats — education, public policy, public health, economy, to name just a few. If I were to begin brainstorming what those beats would look like, I’d start with why Homicide Watch works.