About
Juliana Lumaj is a journalist with five years of experience. She’s currently an associate editor at Hour Media, where she writes for several publications, including Hour Detroit, Metro Detroit Weddings, and the Health Guide. Her responsibilities include monitoring the editorial calendar, coordinating with freelance writers, fact-checking, proofreading, and pitching and writing stories. Her primary focus is highlighting Detroit’s fashion and beauty community, which has led to interviewing Emmy award-winning stylists, fashion designers, and local beauty businesses. She also covers developments in downtown Detroit, leaders of nonprofit organizations and their impacts on the community, and publishes a monthly online roundup of the top news for the month.
She’s also a freelance news editor at House Digest, where she focuses on editing articles related to interior design, cleaning, gardening, home maintenance, and more. She ensures each article is factual, matches the website’s voice, and free of plagiarism. She also provides feedback to the writers, includes an SEO-friendly description for each article, schedules out stories for the weekend, and reviews the performance of writers and editors with the lead editor.
Resume
EXPERIENCE
Hour Media October 2023 – CURRENT, Associate Editor | Troy, MI
• Pitched and wrote stories about prominent Detroiters, developments, fashion designers, stylists, beauty businesses, and more for Hour Detroit, Metro Detroit Weddings, and the Health Guide, curating the stories to adhere to each publication’s style.
• Helped to finalize and monitor the editorial calendar, ensuring freelance writers met deadlines.
• Supported stylists at fashion photoshoots and helped the art department collect photos for features.
• Assisted freelancers with finding resources for their stories, including people to interview, and provided edit suggestions to the editor-in-chief.
• Fact-checked articles and identified AP style errors, maintaining consistency and accuracy across multiple publications.
• Implemented new fact-checking strategies for Hour Detroit and Metro Detroit Weddings magazines, improving efficiency and organization.
• Proofread stories for Hour Detroit magazine, Metro Detroit Weddings, and the Health Guide.
• Gathered and organized various types of data into charts using Excel for different features.
• Ran the internship program and guided students through the editorial process while helping them reach their semester goals.
• Attended events, including runway shows and fashion award ceremonies, to write stories for Hour Detroit magazine’s website.
Static Media May 2022 – CURRENT, Freelance News Editor; former News Writer| Troy, MI
• Edited and published articles for House Digest on topics related to cleaning, designing, gardening, and more.
• Provided feedback to writers as needed, ensuring quality and standards were upheld.
• Completed breaking real estate and interior design-related news quickly and efficiently for House Digest with minor to no edits.
• Collaborated with editors by suggesting changes to proposed articles that better-optimized content and headlines.
• Developed unique pitches that were accepted and oftentimes the most viewed article of the week.
• Created content during the early stages of Explore and built a foundational audience that content strategists gathered data from.
Hour Detroit magazine September 2021 – February 2023, Editorial Intern to Freelance Fact-Checker | Troy, MI
• Fact-checked articles and identified AP style errors, ensuring all information was valid for several print editions.
• Gathered events and photos for weekly “Things to do This Weekend” articles.
• Completed story showcasing the rise of the fashion industry in Detroit for the print edition.
• Completed story highlighting Detroit Fashion Designer debuting at Paris Fashion Week for online publication.
The Eastern Echo September 2021 – January 1, 2022, Editor-in-Chief | Ypsilanti, MI
• Implemented a COVID-19 recovery plan and recruited 10 new writers and one editor.
• Created a new and robust social media plan that increased our overall number of followers by a few hundred.
• Redesigned the website's front page, modernized the look, and improved its functionalities.
• Enforced new policies that successfully pushed new writers to meet deadlines.
• Provided feedback to writers, editors, and photographers, improving their overall performance.
• Enforced weekly editor meetings to discuss content expectations, ensuring articles were ready for the print editions.
MLive: The Ann Arbor News January 2021 – June 18, 2021, Intern Reporter | Ann Arbor, MI
• Scanned social media to find and write about interesting local news.
• Listened to the police scanner and regularly spoke to safety officials in order to quickly report on urgent news, such as structure fires, shootings, murder, larceny, and abnormal crimes.
• Built relationships with city officials who oftentimes provided information regarding new initiatives before making them public.
• Watched city council meetings and later spoke to members to publish impactful articles that directly addressed the community’s questions and concerns.
• Highlighted the achievements and progressive projects of prominent community members.
EDUCATION
Eastern Michigan University | BS in Journalism and Minor in Political Science Dec. 2021 ● GPA: 3.9
SKILLS/AWARDS
Skills: Team management, InDesign, Wordpress, Excel, AP style, fact-checking, proofreading, editing, social media planning, Canva, WordPress, SEO, and fluency in Albanian.
Awards: Dean's List - fall 2019, fall and winter 2020, fall and winter 2021
Finalist in Elevator Pitch Competition and OCEL.AI’s HackAThon Spring 2021