Our Engagement Journalism students are changing newsrooms
While working through the COVID-19 pandemic, students are finding ways to serve communities in their newsroom internships
Engagement Journalism students spent the summer listening, learning and sharing their community engagement expertise in newsrooms across the country. Here’s what they’ve been up to.
Carla Canning – Retro Report
Carla Canning worked as Retro Report’s engagement intern this summer. She worked with Engagement Producer Isadora Varejão, ’19, to help engage the educational community. Her work included writing newsletters, creating social media posts, promoting events, and analyzing user and survey data to find out what their growing audience of teachers really need.
Natalia Gutiérrez – L.A. Times
Natalia Gutiérrez was one of the summer interns at the audience engagement team at the L.A. Times. She worked on a variety of tasks — from doing social sharelines and Twitter threads to helping craft engagement plans for the Times journalism and analyzing metrics. With the newsletter team, she helped launch new newsletter products, managed the content, worked with reporters and editors and tracked the performance of each edition. She also lead an experiment on promoting stories for the Olympics in a messaging app.
Abē Levine – School Colors, a podcast by Brooklyn Deep
Abē Levine spent the summer reporting on the educational experiences of new American families in Queens, primarily Latinos, for season two of the School Colors podcast. Season one focused on the struggle for community control of schools in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, and season two is looking at how families in the most diverse place on earth respond to a District 28 diversity plan, aimed at integrating segregated schools.
Mariel Lozada – Reasons to be Cheerful
Mariel Lozada spent the summer at Reasons to be Cheerful, a solutions journalism outlet. Here work included fact-checking pieces, monitoring the internet to find appropriate stories for the site, pitching ideas and doing work behind the scenes, like content management and uploading pieces. “Since I’m really interested in the project management side of journalism, this was a great experience for me!”
Jacqueline Neber – THE CITY
Jacqueline Neber spent the summer working at THE CITY. She and her co-intern used several methods to engage different NYC communities in the voting process, including an in-person Voterfest, newsletters, and virtual open newsrooms. Additionally, she reports on the special education and/or the intellectual and developmental disability community.
Ale Pedraza – CNN
Ale Pedraza spent the summer working with the Crime and Justice team for CNN, as well as doing some fact-checking . Pedraza’s work included hunting down false claims and reporting out evidence that shows these claims to be either false or misleading, specifically around the Capitol Riot court hearings and recent events. In general, Pedraza contributed to research/reporting on stories across a variety of topics, and came up with story ideas and pitches.
Kynala Phillips – Belt Magazine
Kynala Phillips spent the summer working for Belt Magazine, a regional publication that centers the stories of the Rust Belt and Greater Midwest. As an intern, she reported out longform stories about Wisconsin, while also learning how to become a better editor. In addition to editorial work, she also supported the engagement team to help brainstorm campaigns to better engage Belt’s audience.
Liz Richards – The Current
Liz Richards spent the summer at The Current, a new, woman-led newsroom out of Savannah, Georgia. There, Richards focused on education; pitching stories, reporting, and helping The Current establish an education reporting presence. She focused primarily on reporting in the Savannah-Chatham County School District and reporting on the area’s magnet schools, choice and charter schools, and the three tech colleges in the Savannah area.
Kayce Stevens – Mobile Loaves & Fishes
Kayce Stevens spent the summer working with Mobile Loaves & Fishes this summer at their Community First! Village which is a one-of-a-kind, 51 acre community of tiny homes that provides affordable, permanent housing and support services for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness. At the Village, Stevens interviewed residents and staff to create a story bank to be used by the communications department. Stevens is also working with the grant writer to help research and write grants, and alongside the fundraising team to help grow relationships with the community and donors.
Houreidja Tall – Refinery29
Houreidja Tall spent the summer as an editorial intern at Refinery29, which is part of Vice Media. There, Tall pitched and wrote articles and breaking news stories, and explored the different departments within the company. “I’m incredibly excited to be working there because it’s a site my friends and I often visit, and my reporting interests fit well under a number of their verticals.”
To learn more about the Engagement Journalism program at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, visit our website.
