Winners All Around – KALW Summer Trainees Report the News and Graduates Enter at Sundance Institute and AIR New Voices

By Ben Trefny, News Director, KALW and Vivian Bossieux-Skinner, KALW Summer Trainee

It’s been a while, but I’ve got a series of posts to share with you from KALW‘s ever active news department. We’ve very proudly been working with 18 trainees this summer, thanks largely to support from ACE, and it’s been both invigorating and important to see the work they’ve been producing.

Here are some examples:

Berkeley Officials Implement New Policies for Police — Bee Soll

Meet the Entrepreneur Who’s Keeping Your Clothes Clean During Quarantine — Noor Bouzidi

Pet Care is Also Human Care During Shelter-In-Place — Babette Thomas

Commercial Fishing During a Pandemic — Vivian Bossieux-Skinner

More from Viv in a moment. But first I wanted to give you a quick update on significant goings on with some of our alums:

Manolo Morales, who was a summer intern with us last year, is an AIR New Voices Scholar! He’ll take part in a 5-month program from now through December. The New Voices retreat will bring together the invited cohort of underrepresented mediamakers to build, reflect, and engage digitally in critical dialogue on their journey as current mediamakers.

Jasmin Mara Lopez, who graduated with KALW’s first Audio Academy class, was selected by the Sundance Institute for its 2020 Film Music and Sound Design Lab, which means she will work with top-notch people in the film industry who will help her with her personal film documentary Silent Beauty!

Congratulations! And now let’s hear directly from one of our current trainees, Vivian Bossieux-Skinner:

My experience so far has been so informative! I was apprehensive going in, because I tend to learn best by watching someone else do something and then doing it myself. So it’s been an adjustment for sure, but it’s also been really great. Since everything is being taught online, I have eternal access to pretty much any document I’ll need, and everyone who might be able to help me is also available on slack. So in a way, it’s really increased the availability of help and consolidated the resources onto a few platforms. I’m also really grateful for the format of the program.

I’m not sure if this is intentional, but I’ve gotten to work with different editors on assignments, collaborate with various people from the Audio Academy and other summer interns. I really feel like my first few weeks was a rotation of working with people and getting to know everyone, and really learn from each person’s individual way of doing things. And to contextualize things a bit for COVID, I think it’s felt really important to be learning about journalism during a time when journalism is needed so much, and when it’s hard for people to know how to contribute to societal change while also staying safe from the virus. It’s made me feel like I can do something about everything going on around me.