Intern Highlight: Sarah Menendez

Sarah Menendez, now a production assistant at Marketplace, shares her experiences as a digital intern in the summer of 2016:When I graduated from UC Irvine in 2015, I left with two degrees and a strong sense that I wanted to work in public media. After studying journalism and political science for four years and spending a large portion of my time working at the college paper, I cultivated an understanding that our work as journalists should seek to educate our audiences in a way that is accessible and engaging. That’s why I gravitated to Marketplace. Before I even started working here, I was a fan. I loved the way complicated and important concepts were explained in a way that felt friendly and accessible to me. It made me feel smart.So, needless to say, I was very excited when I got the job as a Digital Intern for Marketplace.Working on the digital team enabled me to look at radio in a new light and understand the importance of creating a space for our program to thrive in the digital world. Throughout my months as an intern, I felt like I was constantly developing my skill set and actively putting it to work every day.I learned a LOT. I learned how to make a great radio feature shine on the web, I made graphics, produced videos and ventured into new social media and publish platforms for our content. During my internship, I worked on many projects including the Price of Profits series, our Puerto Rico coverage and helped shape our Medium page into a space for reporters to reflect on their work. I’m happy to have been a part of these projects — no matter how big or small of a role I played in them.I’m forever grateful for the amazing digital team here that always empowered me to share my ideas encouraged me to seek out my interests — even if those interests take the form of a Janet Yellen fashion blog. Thank you, Nishat, Donna, Tony, Janet and Rounak. Although we are a small team, we are mighty and I’m so happy I get to continue working here as a Production Assistant for the next couple months!more from the Inside APMG Blog

Fellowship Highlight: Lila Cherneff

submitted by Sarah EldredWith the release of the first few episodes of the podcast In The Dark last week, we want to be sure you meet the interns and fellows behind the scenes at APM Reports.Lila Cherneff is an APM Reports fellow. She joined APMG as a tape logger for American RadioWorks, which was new to her. “As a tape logger, I was instantly drawn into the fascinating raw tape coming through my headphones: from 23-year-old veterans describing their PTSD to aging physics professors' stories of trying to save school records from Hurricane Katrina. I was so impressed with the tone and breadth of the interviews; I knew I wanted to learn from the folks behind them."One of the components to radio production that Lila learned was research. “In my imagined notion of documentary radio, I thought you transition from interviews to writing to production in one seamless sort of magical creative sweep. It has been such a valuable learning experience for me to get to work with the APM Reports producers on all the tiny details and edits and revisions and re-revisions that go into producing an hour of damn good radio.”A few highlights from Cherneff's fellowship include tagging along on reporting trips to St. Paul Public Schools, the investigative workshop with Paul Myers from the BBC, and sitting in on tracking and mixing sessions. But where she feels she’s learned the most is, “getting to witness up close the day-in, day-out minutiae of a documentary radio program: how theory and data and deeply personal stories come together to create into a finished product.”Lila’s supervisor Ryan Katz, shared this about her,

Lila does not walk. She shuffles. She pads. She glides. And the way she glides is a function of her personality and the work she does. Lila seemingly effortlessly handles everything I throw at her…from the mundane to the more compelling parts of her job. One hour she’s filling out spreadsheets. The next she’s reporting at a local high school, conducting research or finding archival material vital to a documentary. Lila even made it into one of our documentaries this year talking as an expert on the lack of data on college education in prisons.

And she’s creative – Lila did a sketch for our documentary on remedial education which became the lead image for the website. (She also has an unhealthy obsession with Drake.)

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Intern Highlight: Daniel Shin

Hi, I’m Daniel Shin, the Marketplace Morning Report Intern for the last six months (though I recently transitioned to a Production Assistant role about 3 weeks ago). This was my first public radio internship. Prior to this, I had just recently graduated from a graduate program at CSU Northridge with a Masters in Mass Communication (May 2016). Before, I was a news reporter in South Korea for about 3 years.There’s no easy way to summarize my time working on the Marketplace Morning Report team but if I had to, I’d strongly use the term “gauntlet.” Building and producing a live broadcast multiple times in one morning is a process that requires precision, quick-thinking and real critical thinking. If you don’t have those skills developed when you start this internship, you develop them. And I’m happy to say that I’m coming away from this experience with real, translatable skills.Of course, none of that is possible without the team here at MMR. The supportive and professional team of David Brancaccio and producers Nicole Childers, Justin Ho, Katie Long, Beidi Zhang, Chris Olin, and Janet Nguyen really helped me thrive and grow as a producer.I’m also continuously surprised (and pleased) by the workplace flexibility of Marketplace I’ve experienced. Recently, Marketplace Tech did their own week-long series in celebration for the 50^th anniversary of ‘Star Trek,’ one of my favorite franchises. I wanted to contribute something and even though the pitch was a bit last minute, our digital team was very open to the idea. And frankly, I’m very proud of my piece on how the number 47 played an important role in Star Trek (we are a numbers show after all!) Check it out here:http://www.marketplace.org/2016/09/07/world/star-trek-and-47-conspiracymore from the Inside APMG Blog

Intern Highlight: Will Craft

submitted by Sarah EldredWhat's it like to have worked on In The Dark, APM Reports' new podcast that hit the #1 spot on iTunes before the first full episode was even launched? Will Craft knows.As a data reporting intern, Will is on his second internship with APMG. He was working in California at KPCC as a data intern when,

“On the last day of my internship in September 2015, an email was sent out looking for a data reporting intern to start work with APM Reports (though we didn’t have the name at the time). I wanted to be an investigative reporter, and especially love using tech and computers, so I applied and moved out to Minnesota when I was offered the job.”

What's it take to be an investigative reporter? Will explains: “...it means learning how to ask the right questions, how to do research, and how to strategize and think through an investigation.” Also moving deeper into the context of the data behind the stories, “I’ve loved learning how sound can give a human voice to the data, and the data can give a breadth of context and support to the stories we’ve been working on.”APM Reports is one of the younger members of the American Family Media Group family. Born in 2015, Editor-In-Chief Chris Worthington describes the purpose of its formation:

"The leaders at American Public Media decided to invest in investigative journalism and combine it with our documentary reporting for a number of reasons. Most important, immersive, fact-driven journalism is a critical public service. When Americans are more fully informed and insist on meaningful change, our democracy can work more reliably…But no matter the focus, at the heart of every important story we pursue will be a critical larger question – about systems or accountability within institutions – that Americans deserve to have answered with depth and commitment."

Dave Peters, Senior Editor of APM Reports and Craft’s supervisor, says “he’s gone toe-to-toe with the FBI and Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension over rural crime rates and delved into the surprisingly little known set of data about child kidnappings.” Peters adds, “Will has become our reporters’ go-to guy anytime we need to make sense of piles of information.”Along with contributing to In the Dark, Craft worked hard on the investigation of Mesabi Academy. His findings were released to the public and can be viewed here.Peters explains:“For the reporting on Mesabi Academy in northern Minnesota, he built an interactive look-up table for maltreatment allegations at Minnesota’s juvenile justice institutions, making that data easily accessible to the public for the first time.”Will has certainly found his calling here at APMG. He is a valuable addition to the APM Reports team.“There have been so many great experiences in the past year, but the best experience is getting to sit back and absorb the knowledge of everyone I work with. Every so often, when I am in a meeting or listening to people work around me, I just think, ‘Wow, this is my job. I get paid to do this,’ which is pretty amazing.” We would say he is well on his way to becoming a phenomenal investigative reporter!more from the Inside APMG Blog

Intern Highlight: Emily Haavik

Intern Highlights are (you guessed it!) a series of posts about the experiences of APMG's interns.submitted by Sarah Eldred(Summer 2016) Emily Haavik graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2012 with a degree in journalism. And like so many of us decided to check out a completely different field, advertising. After that flirtation was over, she worked at a television station in Duluth as a news producer and reporter for a couple years. Haavik wanted to switch to public radio so she applied for the American Radio Works internship to learn more about investigative work and long-form journalism. Her UMD journalism prof (and APM Reports Editor) Catherine Winter endorsed her as a 'gem'.Haavik has observed this of reporters and producers here at APMG, “They demonstrate how to treat sources with respect, tell their stories in honest and compelling ways, and become educated on new topics quickly and thoroughly.Emily says she's “getting much better at finding buried information” and “practicing not taking no for an answer.”She has worked closely with Sasha Aslanian on this story.

Regarding Sasha, Emily says: Sasha has consistently given me opportunities to take ownership and push myself with new challenges. One that stands out is being sent to Illinois to conduct a prison interview. The fact that she and our bosses trusted me with an interview we’d only have one shot at -- not to mention lugging their expensive gear around Chicago -- meant a lot to me.

Emily’s reporting on trafficking will also be featured on an upcoming episode of Reveal.more from the Inside APMG Blog

Intern Highlight: Greta Hallberg

Summer's winding down... and so is the work of some our talented summer interns. But before they're off on their next adventures, we'd like to share a few of their experiences.

In her own words, here's Marketplace intern Greta Hallberg:

“I just graduated from Miami University (Ohio) with a degree in Journalism and Economics. Marketplace is kind of the perfect mashup of my majors, and I love politics so I knew I wanted to be in DC. I’ve always been a huge public radio fan—I grew up in Wayzata, a suburb of Minneapolis, where the public radio culture is top notch. I’ve always been attracted to telling stories in sound and interning here has been a great opportunity to do so.”

“So here’s kind of a cool picture from when I was out in the field gathering some audio for the Marketplace poll stories. We went into a suburban barber shop to interview some people about how they feel about the economy. The owner had a kid and his buddy helping out in the shop and they ended up playing with some of the audio equipment. Hands down one of my favorite days on the job!”

And from her colleague Kimberly Adams:

“Greta fits right in with us political nerds in the DC Bureau. She keeps us on top of the campaign schedules in this crazy political season, and brings lots of fresh angles to our coverage. We never worry about sending her out into the field to gather tape for a story, and she regularly helps us find great sources on tight deadlines. I’m excited to see what Greta does next!”

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