Ed O'Keefe Named Senior Producer, Special Projects and Innovation for ABCNews.com
— -- Ed O'Keefe serves as Senior Producer, Innovation and Special Projects for ABC News Digital.
As leader of the Special Projects team, he works to integrate web & television, innovating creative products and technologies to build the prominence and reach of ABCNews.com.
Ed worked most recently as Senior Political Editor during ABCNews.com's record-breaking coverage of the 2008 presidential primaries and election.
Responsible for political news quality and strategic planning for ABCNews.com over the course of 54 primaries, 30 debates, two national conventions and election night, he served as Senior Political Editor during the site's highest months of traffic in history.
O'Keefe also led development of ABCNews.com's successful election products, such as the Match-o-Matic, "50 States, 50 Days", "Meet the Candidates", and election night features including an interactive election night map, 50 state pages with Senate, House & Gubernatorial results, fast facts and past presidential election results, and the first-ever searchable exit polls.
All of ABCNews.com's election night features were displayed on a redesigned home page, and the site's feed of live election results powered three iconic screens in Times Square.
In his new role as Senior Producer, Innovation & Special Projects, O'Keefe helped develop the site's coverage of the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, marking the first time ABC News simulcast its special events coverage on the web in a specially designed 16:9 widescreen format.
Continuing to innovate, he worked to make ABCNews.com the first national news organization to host a "Twitterview" – an interview conducted entirely via Twitter between Sen. John McCain. R-Ariz. and "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Outside of politics, he has helped launch the web-only video series "Quick Fix" and, in April 2009, ABCNews.com unveiled a redesigned"Good Morning America" Recipes index, featuring nearly 1,500 recipes in a specially designed presentation, an advanced, embeddable search widget, and a revamped newsletter.
Ed O'Keefe, ABCNews.com
O'Keefe began his career with ABC News Radio in 2000 as a desk assistant, before working as a production assistant for "World News with Peter Jennings" in Washington.
By a quirk of chance, his first day as an off-air reporter and field producer covering the United States Senate was 9/11. ABC News was bestowed the George Foster Peabody Award for their coverage of that tragic day, an honor in which he was proud to share a part.
Working with Linda Douglass, he covered the anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill, Enron's collapse, and is credited as the reporter that broke the story that eventually led to the resignation of then-Majority Leader Trent Lott. The evolution of the Lott story and O'Keefe's involvement in it became the basis for a Harvard University study entitled 'Big Media' Meets the 'Bloggers'.
O'Keefe spent 16 months covering the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry from September 2003-2004, writing for The Note, and reporting the news of Kerry's concession to President George W. Bush in a live special report anchored by Charles Gibson.
Returning to Washington after the campaign, O'Keefe covered the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the subsequent confirmation hearings of John Roberts & Samuel Alito.
He later joined "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" as a producer in Washington, interviewing George Clooney on Darfur, Stephen Colbert on political satire, Lance Armstrong on cancer research, among many others for the show's "Voices" segment. In addition, he wrote original stories for ABCNews.com, developed "The Green Room" – an extended edition of the Sunday talk show's popular Roundtable – and spearheaded several other digital initiatives.
O'Keefe, a native of Grand Forks, North Dakota, is a cum laude graduate of Georgetown University, member of the Writer's Guild of America, Online News Association, and former board member of the Senate Radio-Television Correspondents Association, 2003-2005. He lives in New York with his wife, Allison Davis O'Keefe, a photographer, and their adorable Bernese Mountain Dog.