2018 Gwen Ifill Legacy Fellows make an impact at local stations

This year’s Gwen Ifill Legacy Fellows spent their summers at local stations in Cincinnati, Austin and Houston. They became extended members of the stations’ teams and lent their journalism and video production skills to important work produced this summer. We reached out to Mary Williams, Khue Tran and Angeline Abrera to hear about their experiences, reflections and summer highlights.

Mary Williams joined Student Reporting Labs in 2015 as a 10th grader at Hughes STEM High School in Cincinnati Public Schools. Throughout the summer, Mary has been working closely with CET producers and station leadership to receive hands-on media production training at their studio and in the field in Cincinnati.  

She is helping to produce two digital-first pieces, one on “middle-skills jobs” and the second on “alternative pathways to careers,” for American Graduate. Jason Dennison, Mary’s mentor and supervisor at CET says that she has been instrumental in the research for those topics and working with their production team to create a look and feel for the PBS Digital Studios-type shorts, which include recording Mary in front of a green screen.

She is also working on another digital-first piece on first-generation college students, their experiences and challenges. This story was pitched by Mary in early CET meetings this summer. CET is hoping that she’ll have time to finish the piece before her internship ends. Her internship ends on August 24, 2018.

Angeline spent the summer at Houston Public Media, working with reporter Tomeka Weatherspoon. She pitched, produced and edited a piece about how her local school district was dealing with school safety following the shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas. At the end of her internship, Angeline recorded this testimonial about her experience.

Khue Tran interned this summer with the Deibel team at KLRU, which focuses on Austin-based community issues. Khue said, “they made me feel a part of the team and that I was making a worthwhile contribution about the monthly topics they were covering, such as women in the workplace and immigration.” KLRU videographers and producers taught Khue about editing, camera troubleshooting and how to create a Facebook Live video.  Additionally, station mentors taught her the important elements of narrative storytelling through a journalistic perspective. Khue produced a piece about a nonprofit organization helping immigrant families called Grassroots Leadership.

 

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