SRL Across the Map: Interviews with Modern Love reporter Anna Martin, authors Bryan Stevenson and Jenny Han, and more from this fall’s event season
December 9, 2024
By: Anthony Payne
This fall, the SRL team was active all over the map speaking at conferences, covering events, and spreading the word about how to get involved with our programs! Here’s the run down on where we’ve been and what we’ve been up to lately.
Los Angeles: The Teen Vogue Summit
This fall we’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with Teen Vogue on election coverage, working with their election student correspondent program to develop segments for On Our Minds: Election 2024, and publishing SRL student work on their site. In November, four students and two teachers from Northview High School and Daniel Pearl Magnet school attended the 21st annual Teen Vogue Summit to cover the event in Los Angeles! There were panels and performances from artists, athletes, and influencers, including Demi Lovato, Jordan Chiles, and the cast of Amazon Prime’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, joined by creator and author Jenny Han.
Before her panel, students Jenny Marquez and Andre Arcilla met Han, the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before author, backstage for an interview. Highlights: Jenny Han loves to bake, admires Judy Bloom and Beyonce, and her advice to young writers is to focus on honing their voice. Also: her favorite snack while writing? Cheese.
The students spent the day jamming with Laufey, getting style tips from Model of the Year Alex Consani, conducting man-on-the-street interviews, and even getting makeovers. Stay tuned to watch the piece the students produced and the full interview with Jenny Han on our Instagram and TikTok.
Mexico City: Bloomberg’s CityLab Conference
In October, SRL headed down to CDMX to cover Bloomberg CityLab, a gathering of mayors and leading policymakers, innovators, and creatives. We wanted to talk with young leaders and climate activists about the future of cities, and brought two SRL alums with us to get the job done.
Student Correspondents John Barnes and Nairobi Williese Barnes covered the event, speaking with experts like climate activist Maddie Davidson. Our CityLab coverage also took us to the vibrant Utopias of Iztapalapa to Ecological Park.
Nairobi sat down with Anna Martin, host of The New York Times’ Modern Love podcast, who offered her philosophies on finding love, self, and ways to make the struggle of inner work feel worthwhile. Major takeaways: we’re all in the same boat, and ghosting is rarely conducive to anything good. Anna Martin also shared her tactics for structuring a dynamic interview and tips on breaking the ice to connect with a subject. Thanks to SRL alums John and Nairobi for joining us and facilitating some stellar interviews, it was awesome working together again, and we’re proud of how far you’ve come!
Philadelphia: The Journalism Education Association’s Fall Convention
The Journalism Education Association (JEA)’s mission is to support free, responsible scholastic journalism by offering resources and recognition to student reporters throughout the country. Naturally, we make it a point to lead a session and table at their national convention, which brings students, professionals, and educators together for keynote speeches, discussion groups, and workshops.
Student Reporting Labs led a session about and how student reporters can pitch their stories to SRL through StoryMaker. All ideas are welcome, but the best pitches have a strong narrative, clear characters, and passionate voices behind them. (Learn more and submit your pitch here) SRL alum Ethan Rodriguez, also a producer on Run, Hide, Fight: Growing Up Under the Gun, joined SRL’s session to speak about the impact of gun violence on his community, and how he’s worked with SRL to tell that story through both the documentary and an op-ed that was published in Chalkbeat and other publications.
Boston: The National Council of Teachers of English Conference
Each year the Boston Convention Center is flooded with guests attending NCTE’s annual conference. This year’s theme was Heart, Hope, Humanity.
Teachers, students, authors and more came together for a weekend of interactive sessions highlighting voices in education— so you know we had to make an appearance. Our session also featured our colleagues at News Hour Classroom and educator Kiera Lapsley, who shared her experiences helping her students pitch stories to SRL, including to the On Our Minds podcast. Then, two members of this year’s Student Advisory Team, Emily Yip and Kiran Bhatia, shared how they’re helping guide SRL’s editorial direction by sharing their insights on what matters to young people. We couldn’t do what we do without the Advisory Team’s input.
We hit as many presentations as we could, including one session led by Brian Stevenson, celebrated criminal justice lawyer and author of Just Mercy. He was kind enough to sit down with Emily and Kiran for an interview after his panel. They had an insightful discussion, diving into the power of books, the different teachers who impacted his life, and how literature can be used to challenge the criminal justice system. Catch that interview in Season 5 of On Our Minds, coming this spring!
It was our first time repping SRL at NCTE in Boston, and we hope to return in the future.
Fall was a fruitful season for SRL and we’re excited to broaden our reach even further in the year to come. We hope that you’ll find an opportunity to get involved with us in a city near— or far— from you soon!
Til’ then adios, au revoir, arrivederci, and catch you on the flip,
~ The SRL Team
P.S. If you have an idea for a journalism education event that SRL should attend next year, tell us! Send an email to Christine Zirneklis at christine@reportinglabs.org.