Voices assignment
made her feel like
a real journalist

By Nancy Yang
Spring 2003 Scholar

Posted: Aug. 22, 2003

Scholars have the convention covered

Nancy Yang

It was a week of writing, reporting, fact-checking, triple-checking and feeling panicked.

But it also was a week of making new friendships.

I spent the second week of August as a reporter for Voices, the Asian American Journalists Association's convention newspaper in San Diego. Going in, I had an idea of what to expect. Shruti Mathur, a 2002 Scholar and Voices alum, told me: “They're gonna work you.”

She was right.

I spent most of the week in the newsroom, from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. each day. I juggled press conferences in the morning, meetings in the afternoon and story deadlines at 2 p.m.

I interviewed AAJA national officers who had no desire to talk to me about problems with fundraising for the convention. I talked with a Texas chapter member who cried when remembering her late friend. I spent an evening interviewing bodyboarders who just wanted to ride the waves of the Pacific.

I also rewrote leads, tightened my writing, wrote nut graphs, made calls to double-check a detail and worried about how my sources and readers would respond to my stories.

I also met a group of people on Voices I laughed, commiserated and bonded with.

I truly felt like a journalist that week. My editor pushed me to get answers. I pushed myself to dig deeper and deeper. I pushed my sources to speak.

Never before had I camped out waiting for my sources to finish their meetings, ready to pounce on them with questions.

But I did at the convention.

Never before had I written a column -- or even a story -- that generated lots of buzz.

But I did at the convention. Journalists approached me on my first day, just to talk about what I had written.

To know that my stories were being read and getting a response made being “worked” worth it in the end.

Did I get to participate in much of the convention? Not as much as last year. But I can say that I left San Diego a better journalist.

Nancy Yang, a senior at the University of Minnesota, was a Spring 2003 Scholar at The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Calif. Reach her at yang0594@umn.edu.

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It’s even better being an editor

By Kristen Go
Reporter
The Arizona Republic, Phoenix

Call me the student who has yet to graduate from the program. For the past four years, I have returned as an assignment editor for Voices, the Asian American Journalists Association’s student newspaper.

It’s a labor of love.

In 1996, I was lucky enough to be selected as a student to work on Voices. A few years later, the person who worked as my boss on the convention newspaper asked me to come back -- as an editor.

Assigning stories to student reporters is even more fulfilling than working on the project as a student.

Each year I return, I better understand why we push students, why we are demanding and how, in the end, the work pays off.

There’s nothing more rewarding than watching as recruiters ask Voices students to lunch to talk about internships and jobs. There's nothing more rewarding than watching as students write a good nut graph or figure out ways to trim their 50-word sentence to 20 words.

If I’m lucky, I’ll be back next year.

Kristen Go was a 1996 Scholar at The Tennessean in Nashville and 1997 Scholar at The Dallas Morning News. Reach her at Kristen.Go@ arizonarepublic.com.

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