This summer, I was incredibly fortunate enough to attend two intensive and insightful journalism summer workshops where I was able to meet professional journalists and create new stories using my new storytelling skills.
PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs (SRL) hosts a nine-day summer academy every year where its goal is for selected student journalists to learn and improve their video journalism and storytelling skills through experienced journalism mentors and hands-on experiences. This year’s academy brought together 24 student journalists from around the country and was hosted at WETA in Washington D.C.
Throughout my week at the academy, my fellows and I attended sessions to learn about interviewing, transcribing and scripting, audio and more to help us with our team projects. We also got to talk to PBS NewsHour foreign affairs and defense correspondent Nick Schifrin to talk about the importance of storytelling and PBS NewsHour anchors Geoff Bennett and Amna Nawaz to discuss the impact and future of journalism.
For my team’s story, we wanted to focus on the topic of immigrants and decided to produce a profile story on Yao Zhao, a Chinese immigrant entrepreneur and owner of 50 Hertz Tingly Foods who shared his story of how he started his business and his journey of self-discovery. At the end of the week, my team and the other teams were able to display our video stories at a screening where all got to watch each other’s stories.
Besides immersing myself in journalism, I was able to connect with my fellows in fun evening activities planned by our mentors to get us to socialize with each other. From going on a boat tour in Alexandria to exploring historical monuments in D.C., I was able to quickly form long-lasting friendships and bonds with this year’s fellows and mentors that made my experience at the academy even more enriching.
Around a month after my week at SRL’s Summer Academy, I attended JCamp, a six-day long training camp by the Asian American Journalism Association (AAJA). Its mission is to bring together students from all over the country to learn skills from professional journalists and hands-on experiences. This year, it took place in Austin, Texas, and consisted of a cohort of 29 student journalists.
I was placed in a group with ABC 7 Chicago Eyewitness anchor Terrell Brown, who helped my reporting partner and I brainstorm our story for the week. We ended up choosing to do a print story in a vignette style format focusing on the current viewership trend of the Olympics as our story topic. To gather information and form our story, my partner and I walked around the colorful streets of South Congress and interviewed citizens to find out about their experiences and opinions on the Olympics to get more insight on the viewership trend.
Throughout the week, my cohorts and I attended various sessions with accomplished journalists such as Texas Monthly’s taco editor José Ralat, NPR Student Podcast Challenge producer Janet Lee and CNN climate reporter Rachel Ramirez who gave us insight into their careers and tips. We also got to visit non-profit newsroom Texas Tribune and Austin’s NBC affiliate station KXAN, and tour around their buildings and talk with reporters about their careers and their current jobs.
On the final full-day of JCamp, my cohorts and I had the opportunity to go to AAJA’s National Convention and explore the convention. At the convention, I was able to connect with journalists such as Lananh Nguyen, the U.S finance editor at Reuters and Jeng-Tyng Hong, the senior director and bureau chief at NBC News and talk one-on-one with them about the highlights in their careers and the importance of journalism. This event was the culmination of my cohorts and my week together and celebrated the work we accomplished and the bonds that we made along the way.
During my time at both the SRL Summer Academy and JCamp, I was able to push myself out of my comfort zone and explore parts of journalism I would’ve never imagined myself doing while drastically improving my leadership and journalism skills that I’m excited to bring into the newsroom as this year’s Online Editor-in-Chief. I’m beyond grateful I was selected and after both of these once-in-a-lifetime experiences, I can confidently say journalism is something I want to pursue for the rest of my life.
