When Jeremy Norman graduated from NIU, his accomplishments at the Northern Star earned him a dream list of job offers: the New York Times, CNN, Reuters and many other news organizations.

He chose the Washington Post, where he’s a senior Web designer in Features and Products, and a key player in the site’s forthcoming redesign. And, he and fellow Star alumnus Cory Ohlendorf, ’04, have launched Valet, a men’s lifestyle Web site that’s enjoying big success in its first year.

All this after Jeremy almost single-handedly took an average college newspaper Web site and transformed it into the best in the nation – validated twice by Editor & Publisher and by three Online Pacemaker Awards in the first three years the award was given.

His talent wasn’t lost on his Star contemporaries.

“Let’s face it: Jeremy was probably the only person who worked at the Star who actually knew what he was doing,” said Kevin Wendt, now editor of the Huntsville (Ala.) Times.

Jeremy came to NIU in fall 1998, already thinking about online journalism. “There was a calling,” he said. “Only a week or so into school, I saw a posting for a Northern Star Web designer. I thought, ‘I could get plugged into this.'”

Jeremy applied and got the job as the Web assistant. Then, a few weeks into the semester, he got a 3 a.m. phone call. The online editor had been, uh, removed from the job. “Are you interested?” he remembers editor Wendt asking him. “It’s either you or nobody, so we hope you’ll do it.”

Jeremy recognized the opportunity. “It was a laboratory,” he said. “If you saw it that way, you could create something special. … I excelled when I was able to create in a space that wasn’t defined. It was so new; no one was really watching you.”

Not that anyone needed to.

“While we all had our late nights at the Star, Jeremy was always there later than everyone else,” said Melissa Westphal, now a reporter for the Rockford Register Star. “and he was always the first one there in the morning. I’d come in the next day after being at the Star until 1 or 2 a.m., and there was Jeremy — grinning, eating his breakfast, watching CNN and working on the Web site. I was always jealous of his ability to operate on very little sleep.”

Jeremy’s work habits haven’t changed much. Today, he works 10 or 12 hours a day at the Post, and then evenings and weekend are filled with Valet and other side projects. Those have included helping the Northern Star redesign and maintain its Web site.

“I grew up in a household that was very entrepreneurial,” Jeremy said. “My father and mother both owned their own businesses. So at the Northern Star I was comfortable getting my hands dirty and taking charge of something and owning it. If you invest more, you tend to get more out of it.”

“He was a self-starter, someone who just got things done,” Wendt said. “I think we all wish we had engaged him more and pushed ourselves to learn more about what he was working on, because our skill sets would all be improved.”