The KALW Reporting Community Excels and Gets the Job Done

By Ben Trefny, News Director, KALW and Noor Bouzidi, KALW Summer Trainee

I was reading an industry publication and saw that Alyssa Jeong Perry — a woman we helped teach radio at KALW — was recently hired as a producer at NPR‘s Code Switch. Great show! Great person! It made me think about some of the other people we’ve trained and what they’re up to, now. Here’s a (partial) list:

Isabel Angell — Senior producer with NBC News‘ politics podcasts

Jen Chien — Senior radio editor with Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting

Liz Mak — Senior podcast producer with Condé Nast

Ted Muldoon — Sound designer, composer, audio producer with The Washington Post

Beatrice Thomas — Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellow

Todd Whitney — Podcast host with Microsoft

And there are a lot more interesting stories of KALW alums out there!

One that’s being written right now is by current trainee Noor Bouzidi. Her reporting interests are housing insecurity, immigration, economy and all issues around systemic poverty in California. In the past, Noor interned with KCRW, writing and producing for their morning and evening news shows. Her work has been featured in FEM Newsmagazine, where she wrote profiles on Middle Eastern/North African artists. She has a degree from UCLA in Linguistics & Anthropology.

Noor is about to take part in a fellowship with NPR’s Next Gen project, which provides an intensive, one-week crash course in story production. She’s gotten a head start in our summer program. Here’s what she has to say about it:

I graduated from UCLA in June. My fellow 2020 graduates and I have had the incredible luck of graduating into a state of the world that makes your typical post-grad anxiety seem quaint. No part of me right now is certain about my future.

Despite everything, my Tuesday mornings are always a little bit brighter than most days. I wake up knowing that, by the end of that day, I will have created something. Working remotely, it’s so easy to feel isolated. But as this remote structure has matured, and all of us with it, I’ve only felt the support grow. One phone call, Zoom chat, or one Slack message even, eases my feelings of frustration and reminds me of the community I’m a part of. Each story I create feels like a victory, and I actually just wouldn’t be able to get them done without this program. I’m amazed at how much I’ve learned from a team I’ve never physically met before but know that they’re there for me. I’ve looked forward to the seminars more than anything, because they’re a chance to clarify our questions, workshop our ideas, and just bond with one another other and with the seminar teachers. All in all, this program has grounded me amidst a summer of uncertainty.