Meet The Eight: KALW Audio Academy 2018 Students Announced; Summer Journalist Volunteers Chosen Too
By Ben Trefny, News Director, KALW Public Radio
KALW staffers get busy in the phone room during the recent membership drive.
It’s my pleasure to introduce you to the next Audio Academy class at KALW! Here are some quick sketches of the incoming students:
Atemu Aton – Oakland-based professional jazz musician and music educator for over two decades with deep experience in audio engineering and recording
Marisol Medina Cadena – Documentary filmmaker with roots in LA and the Bay and a self-described research and archive nerd with an interest in recognizing and interacting across difference
Asal Ehsanapour – Graduate of USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism with a Bachelor of Arts in public relations who has worked in marketing for the past several years
Amber Miles – Multimedia consultant for City College and a former KPFA news intern with a background in documentary film, ready to make immersive and collaborative radio stories
Zeina Nair – Musician with experience in performance, songwriting, recording, and audio production who earned her MFA from Mills College
Christine Nguyen – Pediatric gastroenterologist at both Stanford and Santa Clara Valley Medical Health Center who is interested in reporting stories about San Jose
Lilia Vega – DJ and the former news director at KALX who’s interested in reporting stories pertaining to LGBTQ and Latinx communities
Bo Walsh – Beatmaker from the southeast side of San Francisco, right near KALW, with a passion for sound design and local storytelling and a background working with teenagers
These eight people made it through an extremely competitive application process. As our program has matured and word-of-mouth has spread, the Audio Academy has become an important and in-demand training ground. We’re really looking forward to working with the next class and helping to bring their voices to the public! They’ll get started around the end of August.
At the same time that we selected those fellows, we also processed applications for our summer journalism program. It doesn’t include the same level of hands-on training as the Academy, but it does provide 12 people with the chance to work in our newsroom, contribute to our public interest work, and build skills as reporters and producers with our award-winning and attentive staff.
Meet our summer journalism volunteers:
Anjali Bhat – A UC Davis student, former Capital Public Radio community engagement Intern and NPR Next Generation radio fellow interested in stories about the Latinx community
Andy Bosselman – Recently transitioned from working in advertising to freelance journalism, reporting for the SF Chronicle, the SF Examiner, and Streetsblog, among others
Racquel Gonzalez – San Francisco-based USF Media Studies senior who co-founded the Trump101 podcast about student life under Trump and is photo editor of the University’s newspaper, SF Foghorn
Gabriel Grechler – San Francisco-based USF Politics major who co founded the Trump 101 podcast about student life under Trump and is opinion editor at the University’s newspaper, SF Foghorn
Sonja Hutson – Former KQED intern with spot news experience and a UC Berkeley student, coming from a semester abroad in Germany, interested in in-depth feature reporting
Zoe Lew – A Salinas native and former KUSP and KQED intern excited to make longer form stories in the immigration beat
Max Miller – Former San Francisco resident who’s been living in New York working as an urban planner and working on creative projects including reality TV production
Marina Poole – Duke University graduate from Redwood City with a background in documentary production and an interest in storytelling from diverse communities
Ariel Plotnick – Graduate student from the UC Berkeley School of Journalism with a focus on radio and a history reporting on Richmond
Jesse Rhodes – Teacher at the Chinatown after school program and producer of Man-ish: a podcast that explores the meaning of masculinity
Corrine Smith – General assignment reporter with KPFA and a Bay Area local who got way out of town to attend college at the University of Miami
Laura Wenus – Currently the Managing Editor at Mission Local and a former Your Call intern. She’s also a licensed pilot!
Those impressive folks will be coming in for a two-day orientation beginning at the end of May, and they’ll work with the current Audio Academy class to get their feet under them.
This is an exciting time at the station as we welcome new and passionate people. Looking forward to telling you many more stories about their work!
Note from ACE: We welcome the Audio Academy students and the summer journalism volunteers. We look forward to hearing your work, and getting to know you better. Good radio journalism, like that practiced and taught at KALW, is important.