JENA JANOVY & ELIZABETH MERRILL
UNO has had plenty of its former students make news in the sporting world, but it’s hard to find any who do a better job reporting it than Jena Janovy and Elizabeth Merrill. And both do so for sports giant ESPN. Janovy, a 1988 grad, works at the network’s home office in Bristol, Conn. Merrill, who worked on the Gateway in the early 1990s, now lives in Omaha, but travels extensively for the network. Both received a wealth of reporting experience at the Omaha World-Herald before moving on to other news outlets and eventually to ESPN. Janovy (top) joined ESPN in 2006 and now is senior deputy editor for enterprise and digital innovation for digital and print media. She plans, assigns, edits and produces online stories and long-form, cross-platform features (3,000- to 10,000 words) in collaboration with network brands “Outside the Lines,” “E:60” and ESPN The Magazine. She’s won two Sports Emmys and been nominated for four additional Sports Emmys for her work as a coordinating producer.
Janovy helped bring Merrill to ESPN in 2007. The two had worked together at the World-Herald in the 1990s. Merrill had been working at the Kansas City Star covering the Chiefs when the ESPN offer came. A Star editor advised her that working for a website sounded risky. She’s glad she didn’t take the warning. “There are a few places left that are committed to find the best stories,” she says.
Event2Display
Required fields are marked with an asterisk (*)
Maximum of 0 attendees allowed.