Pitching

Tune in to your interests.

The first step in reporting is finding an idea. Unless it's breaking news, finding a good idea usually takes some poking around and observing what's going on around me — checking social media, looking at community bulletin boards, talking to people about what's going on in their lives.

But there are some things that give me the "flash," as one of my favorite book characters, Emily of New Moon, says it — things that inspire and thrill me. These are my go-to areas of interest when it's time to find a story.

Case Study: The Russian House Story

Headline: "Holding your ground:
A history of the Русский Дом"

Publication: The Daily of the UW

Date Published: May 24, 2023

Story Type: Historical feature

Words: 992

Sniffing out a story. I found out about the Russian House while I was poking around the UW Slavic department website. Apparently, the university had had a designated building for students learning Russian to live together and speak the language 24/7. How fascinating! As a Korean language learner myself, I dreamed of living in an immersive language setting to make more rapid gains in my proficiency. I wanted to know more about what happened to this house.

I didn't have much to go off of, at first — I reached out to UW Housing and Food Services and the Slavic department to see if they had any leads. The Slavic department administrative assistant offered to send a mass email to alumni to see if anyone had memories of the Russian House and would be willing to speak with me. One email came into my inbox, then two. Suddenly I found my inbox flooded with messages from alumni, all with fond memories of the house where they learned to speak Russian. Meanwhile, the University Archivist guided me to records of the Russian House stored in the UW Libraries' Special Collections, and I spent hours in the basement of Allen Library leafing through old meeting notes and typewritten letters. Slowly, the pieces of the story came together.

The Russian House story spoke to my interests in culture, migration, and language — subjects that I'm consistently drawn to in my reporting. Here's a few more:

Photo: Bailey Anderson

Literature

I entered college as a wide-eyed freshman who wanted to take almost everything on MyPlan ... in the humanities. Humanities First was my introduction to college humanities scholarship as we traced the theme of "journeys" through various texts. Transported into the faraway lands of mythical Greece, medieval Scandinavia and modern China, I never felt like I was studying. I went on to major in English and take world literature classes whenever I got the chance.

Intercultural Communication

What are the consequences of misunderstanding another people's language, customs or worldview? I got an idea of the stakes in JSIS 201, an international studies survey course focused on the Cold War, where I read and wrote about the U.S.'s track record in failed interventions in the Global South. In semantics course Honors 212 B: Ways of Meaning, I did my own research on individual Korean words and why it's so hard to translate them.

Heritage and Families

Observing the bonds in my family that crossed divisions of culture, language and age, I wondered what held us together. Soon, I became interested in how that works in other multicultural/immigrant families, too. So I took Honors 230 A, a writing seminar where we learned to write book/film reviews of immigrant stories, and wrote/edited for Voyage UW, a student-run travel magazine.

Journalism & Society

Journalists aren't formally treating the sick, founding nonprofits or defending the unjustly accused, but they play a vital role in democracy. In introductory journalism course COM 360, I traced a single story through different media platforms for a class presentation. In a study abroad course, I followed my curiosity about the representation of investigative journalists in Korean entertainment media. I joined the Society of Professional Journalists and helped the UW chapter organize panels with guest speakers who spoke about what it's like in the field.

Translation

For most of my life, a world of secrets lay behind a hidden door ... my grandparents' first language. How much did meaning change from one language to another? I wondered. What does being bilingual do to your psyche? Intrigued, I took Honors 212 D and analyzed how writers Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodsky switched (successfully or unsuccessfully) between their native Russian and English in their prose and poetry.

Dreams

I always loved coming-of-age novels growing up, and all around me at the university were people who were entering a time of great potential. College is where many find their wings to fly, and so I started documenting a few of my peers' journeys in a biweekly arts column for The Daily, the UW newspaper I started working for in my first year at UW. It was called "Ever Since I Was," to symbolize the things people chase after, the passions they form in their childhoods and that often come to fruition with the help of the resources of a big public university.