MY STORIES:

• Disabilities services at University of Utah
• How accessible is Utah’s new Granger High School?
• Para Quad: Wheeling in the mobility of choice

MY BLOG:

What did you learn about yourself?

What I had believed to be unyielding confidence and security in myself quickly vanished when I did my first interview with Chris Burningham at the Center for Disability Services.

I realized that although I may be comfortable talking with people in general, when it comes to interviewing, I have had very little experience. I realized I’m used to talking, and a whole lot of talking at that. Interviewing requires a lot of listening, which is a quality I didn’t realize I lacked.

This class has opened my eyes toward making a change in how I communicate. Not just in speaking, but in making an effort to become a better listener.

How did your reporting increase your understanding of this community?

My enterprise story was the biggest realization I had towards Salt Lake and how citizens who use wheelchairs get around. Para Quad is just down the street from my parents’ business, where I have spent all of my life. Although I was aware of doing business with them, I had never visited the shop or knew what it really did. To see it make a real difference regarding wheelchair mobility is eye-opening and made me realize this city has a lot to offer the varied communities that live here.

What did you learn from your beat?

People with disabilities are very under-represented. Many places help to support them but when it comes to media representation, there is hardly any. I think getting into mainstream TV and movies would help younger kids who have disabilities feel less ostracized.

ABOUT ME:

I was exposed to the professional world at a very young age. As a child, I played at my father’s business, climbing on rolls of cushion foam or letting my imagination run wild while sitting in bus seats that waited to be installed.

As a teen, I was taught some of the many trades my dad used every day to fuel his business toward success. I learned to cut leather and vinyl behind the scenes and to smile and greet customers at the front. The world got smaller as my understanding of business grew and as an adult, the work I did started to make a bigger difference.
I developed skills gained from my education and technological generation to expand our humble New Image Vans. From written invoices and casual walk-in customers, I helped maintain an expansion toward professional clientele within the car dealership and trucking industry.

I grew up watching the very best man do the very best work in the van conversion business. It was the experience gained there and studying Communication at the University of Utah that taught me to harness clarity, honesty and confidence to guide my professional self-presentation.

My personal code of ethics is always to be as transparent as possible. Be honest and open professionally and never forget the success of a business relies on the hearts and minds of the people behind the scenes.

My goal is to use my strengths in communication and understanding to serve and make a difference while staying true to my ethics and opinions.

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MY STORIES:

• Utah becoming the new frontier for booming black-owned businesses
• Transracial adoptions on the rise in Utah families
• Utah baseball diamonds a microcosm of nation’s declining black player population

MY BLOG:

This past semester has been far more rigorous and daunting than I had ever anticipated. I thought that being the casual newspaper reader would prepare me to be able to write and report with the knowledge and skills of an actual journalist. I learned quickly that there is much more to reporting than finding something interesting and spewing out the facts.

Accuracy, good questions, accuracy, good note taking, accuracy, people skills, accuracy, objectivity, accuracy, writing skills and accuracy are just some of the tools I gained or sharpened during this semester. I also learned that editing is far more valuable and crucial than I had ever thought before. In high school, I would spew out my work, giving it one half-hearted glance for minor spelling or punctuational mistakes, and turn it in thinking it was worthy of being published. That bubble was quickly and unceremoniously popped. I now view my work for spelling and grammatical mistakes, improper word usage, word repetition and non-flowing paragraphs, just to name a few.

I have been at the U for almost three years now, and although I lived in Layton, I thought that I knew a lot about the culture of Salt Lake City. To a point, I did know a lot about the culture of Salt Lake City, the white culture. Until this semester, I had never ventured to explore the African-American culture that, while small, is growing in exposure. I learned that many of Salt Lake’s African-American residents come from a variety of backgrounds and are usually from outside of the state. Many of them come to Utah in search of a better job market, better housing situations, and better quality of living than where they come from. I also learned that there are some serious adjustments they have to make to thrive in the plain yogurt bowl known as Utah. The African-Americans who move here vary from the hard-working factory stiff, to the bright-eyed entrepreneur and everything in between. Without this class, I probably never would have met some of these great, hard-working people or been to some of their outstanding new businesses.

Covering this beat made me realize that even in a relatively homogenous place like Utah, there is a variety of vibrant and growing cultures and subcultures just begging to be explored by the willing writer. Sure, I could stick with what I know and continue to write stories on people just like me, but now I want to do more, I want to see new things and meet new people whose values and experiences differ from my own.

ABOUT ME:

Sports are my true passion in life. Playing, watching, analyzing and commentating are what I love to do. Late into puberty, when I realized I wasn’t going to fit the body type of the traditional professional athlete, I gave up on playing for a career, but I knew that sports would still be a part of my professional life. Watching SportsCenter on ESPN nearly four hours a day,  I grew to admire the work of sports analysts like Mike Wilbon, Tony Kornheiser, Hannah Storm, Stuart Scott and Scott Van Pelt. I knew that I wanted to talk and analyze sports for a living, but getting to ESPN is a tall order to fill. Many of these reporters worked their way up from newspapers, to magazines, to blogs, to radio, then up to television. So I decided to begin my climb up the media ladder by committing to the mass communication major here at the U.

I have always been fascinated with words. As a kid I would always ask my parents and teachers what the definitions of words were. Even today, I sometimes challenge myself to use sentences with uncommon or complicated words or vernacular. My love of wordplay and convoluted words naturally led me to writing. Writing is a cruel beast, but attempting to tame the written word is the underlying dream of every writer. My hands get sore, my posterior gets numb and my brain goes dead, but the rush of a good piece is so worth it.

“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.” — Vince Lombardi

I have the will and determination to climb the steep hill that is becoming a successful journalist. Much like a professional athlete, I don’t like to lose. I take that same mentality into all facets of my life, including my work. I want to be considered one of the best by my peers and by my readers. I want future generations of young sportswriters to look at one of my pieces or quotes and say, “That’s what I want to do. I want to sound like that guy.”

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MY STORIES:

• Salt Lake residents share perspectives on President Obama’s terms 
• Django Unchained— the ‘d’ is silent, but not the critics
• Is the LGBT equality movement the civil rights movement of the 21st century?

MY BLOG:

At the start of the semester I was excited to learn that my class would be beat writing for African Americans in Utah. Being a part of a fellow minority group, I was eager to cover stories about African Americans. It is my personal belief that some of the most interesting stories come from minority communities, and all they need is a reporter willing to cover them.

Once class got rolling, I realized what a challenge this beat would be! African Americans make up a very small percentage of the Utah population, 1.3 percent according to the U.S. Census Bureau, so naturally stories would be more difficult to come by.

Since finding stories about African Americans proved difficult, I found my stories by taking national issues and localizing them. I gathered the opinions of other Utahns to get a feel for popular sentiment.

I covered President Barack Obama’s inauguration, but focused on the reflections of African Americans. I  wanted to know they felt about his first four years and the four years ahead of him.

The other national issues I covered proved quite controversial. I covered the movie “Django Unchained,” which dealt with slavery in the South. Additionally, I wrote about the marriage equality movement and its similarities to the civil rights movement.

Covering this beat has shown me just how diverse Utah is. At first glance Utah may seem fully of cookie-cutter families and lacking diversity. Now I realize Utah has many small, different, ethnic communities. And because these communities are smaller, they need coverage to make their voices heard.

My experiences in this class helped me realize  even though you may not see a story right away, a true writer can find a story in any subject.

ABOUT ME:

I’ve been interested in writing my entire life. Growing up, I always said, “When I grow up I want to be a journalist.” There are a variety of factors that led to this. First, my passion for reading, and second my father.

Throughout elementary school, middle school and high school, I was always reading. Reading for school or reading for fun, I always had my nose in a book. I would finish entire series in a week or less and the bookstore was essentially my candy store.

So after reading and reading, I began to think, I could try this. I could try to write something. Eventually that desire went away, suppressed  by homework and other activities. But at the end of the day I still really wanted to write something.

The second factor that developed my interest in writing was my father. He was always submitting letters to the editor for our local paper, the Orange County Register. He was published quite often. Our home phone number was listed in the phonebook and readers would call our house, praising my dad’s letters and agreeing with his opinions.

As a kid I was amazed that my dad was published in a newspaper.

“How cool, I want to do that,” I thought to myself.

So finally when I was off at college, I realized writing was what I wanted to do. In 2011, I declared myself a communication major, with an emphasis in journalism.

In addition to that major, I also declared myself a political science major.

I’ve always had an interest in politics. Growing up, my family regularly engaged in debates over the dinner table, and I  often watched the news with my dad. Once I began college I became more and more interested in politics, and taking political science classes because I was genuinely fascinated. I’m expecting to graduate winter of 2013.

In the fall of 2012, I moved to Washington, D.C., to intern with News Generation. Living and interning there was one of the most exciting opportunities I’ve had throughout my college career. I gained independence and a better sense of what the professional world is really like.

In the meantime, I’ve been honing my writing skills at the Daily Utah Chronicle. There, I report on a variety of topics and campus events.

Currently, I live in Salt Lake City, and I’m your average “poor college student.” I hope that won’t be for long, though.

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MY STORIES:

• James Jackson III: building a stronger African-American community
• Mahider Ethiopian Restaurant and Market offers a taste from Africa 
•  KUDU: Gifts and decor from Africa helping others from Salt Lake City

MY BLOG:

This semester I gained different experiences focusing on the African-American community in Salt Lake City. One of the experiences that I had was being able to meet a great leader of the African-American community who helps small business owners to find the right sources so they can succeed in the future. His name is James Jackson III. He showed me that working hard and getting the right education you could succeed in life and try to help your community as much as you can.

My second experience gained was trying authentic Ethiopian food for the first time. I stepped in Mahider Ethiopian Restaurant looking to try something unique from Africa, and I found more than just food. I was able to learn one of the main Ethiopian ceremonies, which the main element is coffee and the meanings for the community.

My last and most wonderful experience was getting to know Susan Clissold. She is the owner of a small shop in Salt Lake City that focuses on selling handmade items from African artists and teaching the community about her culture with art. She taught me that having passion for something can help people in other parts of the world and have the satisfaction of doing good for someone.

Reporting increased my understanding in the community. Looking around, finding new places and people led me to find new stories and experiences that I will always have present in my life.

ABOUT ME:

Since I can remember I always had an interest in reading and writing. I enjoy reading novels, being outdoors during the summer and trying new dishes.

Currently I am attending the University of Utah, where I am working on completing my degree in communication with a focus on public relations. After graduating from Kearns High School in 2009, I continued my education at Salt Lake Community College. I completed five semesters and earned an associate of science degree in 2013. During my time at SLCC I gained experience with different communication classes that I took, which helped me decide on my current major. While attending college, I was exposed to different situations that taught me how to develop my education.

I want to focus on helping the Hispanic community. Since I have Hispanic heritage, I have the ability to help minorities and make the community stronger through communication.

I hope one day to become a noted reporter or broadcaster and help the community to be well informed.

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MY STORIES:

• A journey of faith: overcoming racial restrictions in the Mormon Church
• Growing up biracial in Utah
• The rewarding challenges of transracial adoption

MY BLOG:

Focusing on the African-American community in Utah this semester has shown me just how desperately this state is in need of more exposure to diversity and diversity education in schools. During our first in-class interview with James Jackson III, executive director of ACCEL, an interesting question came up. The question was whether or not Jackson felt Utah was a prejudiced place. He responded by saying that he didn’t feel people in Utah were necessarily prejudiced, but he did feel ignorance was an issue. Overall, he felt Utah is friendly, but the lack of diversity causes ignorance. As I worked through interviews and stories in the African-American beat I often found myself thinking the same thing. It’s something I had not considered until I started working this beat. I have personally never witnessed any racism in Utah, although I do hear about it in the news occasionally. Hearing first-hand accounts of racist or ignorant remarks was disheartening. In two out of the three stories I have written, I discovered that high school seems to be a big part of the problem. Since it is difficult to expose people to diversity in a state that serious lacks it, education on diversity is desperately needed. I recall a comment the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. made while we were live tweeting his speech from the University of Utah. He said, “We hate what we should love.” I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the more the semester went on the more that quote sunk in. The more I worked this beat I came to realize that it’s not necessarily hate that people feel, but fear. We fear what we don’t understand. The more we can expose people to differences, the more tolerant I believe we’ll become as a community.

ABOUT ME:

I am a University of Utah graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication with an emphasis on journalism and new media. The joke in my family over the years has been you either go into medicine or broadcast news. Medicine was definitely not in my blood, but I’ve been passionate about news as long as I can remember. I love meeting new people and hearing about their lives. I often find myself getting into deep discussions about life with complete strangers. I was recently watching Jane Fonda on Oprah’s “Next Chapter” and she talked about never feeling comfortable in sameness. I have never been able to articulate my feelings completely, but that was exactly what I have always felt. I had my first Oprah “aha” moment. I am the most at ease in difference. I like being exposed to new experiences, new cultures and new people. Journalism is the perfect fit for someone like me. Interviewing people is probably my favorite part of the process. While interning in the social media news division at KSL 5 TV, I found my place in news. I loved being able to interact with viewers and answer questions for them that a story didn’t. New media provides valuable interaction between media outlets and their audiences. I want to be a part of the process that is changing the way journalists report news.

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MY STORIES:

• Bringing diversity to Utah classrooms through the Teacher Recruitment Scholarship Program
• Thelina Smith, Miss Black Utah USA, strives for science education
• The Veteran Support Center provides help  for Black veterans in Utah

MY BLOG:

My most revealing experience of my beat was in an interview with Stanley Ellington for my Black Veterans in Utah story. In our interview, we were discussing inter-racial relations within the military. I brought up the topic of a veteran support group for minorities and asked why he felt it was important. He compared language barriers to culture barriers, and how important it is to be fluent in someone’s culture to truly be able to communicate and understand each other. This, Ellington reasoned, is why minority support groups are important.

Something else I learned about myself this year is I’m not a great multi-tasker or procrastinator. I feel this is something every student at one point in their life is forced to learn the hard way. With a part-time job, school, work and an internship, I feel I spread myself too thin – and unfortunately I feel my school work took the brunt of my shortcomings. However, there are some very valuable lessons I learned this semester.

First and foremost, I enjoy print writing more than I thought I did, and enjoy television journalism a lot less than I thought I would. This has really helped me define my career path. Though both careers are somewhat time consuming, through taking my T.V. journalism class, I’ve learned that I am not someone who can have their career be so time consuming. Although I greatly admire my T.V journalism professor and his work ethic, I know this is outside of my range of possibilities. I find reporting just as fulfilling, yet somehow less frustrating.

ABOUT ME:

I am a junior at the University of Utah majoring in broadcast journalism. While attending the U, I have had opportunities to participate in Newsbreak, a student TV news network on campus, as well as intern for the x96 radio station. I am a writer for The Cultural Hall, a blog about LDS culture and issues.

I’m also a volunteer for the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System. I have been involved with the A Million Thanks Organization, which gathers letters of thanks from citizens to deliver to veterans currently serving, in hospitals, or retired.

In the future, I hope to become more involved with the Honor Flight Network, an organization that provides a free trip to WWII veterans who have yet to see their monument in Washington, D.C. Though I do not come from a military family, I am very passionate about veterans and their service.

I was on the first flight out of the United States after 9/11. Though this was a scary time for America, I felt the country pull together during a time of tragedy. This planted the seed of patriotism in me forever, and I will never forget the images of those brave men and women rescuing those who were trapped under the rubble of the Twin Towers.

In my spare time, I love to sing, play my violin, read, take long walks, visit with my grandma, and dote on my dog.

My grandmother and I after Miss South Jordan 2010

I have three sisters and one brother, who is serving an LDS mission in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

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MY STORIES:

• Utah’s Black Chamber of Commerce and ACCEL helping African American businesses and the Utah economy

• Interracial marriage acceptance is on the rise

• Salt Lake City’s CHOICE Humanitarian, helping African communities

Taken at Alexa Wells home January 1, 2013. Photo by Jill Wells.

MY BLOG:

Over the course of my Spring 2013 Intermediate reporting class, I learned a lot about the African American community. I found it interesting to learn about all of the different organizations that help spread diversity in Utah. With Utah being 1.3 percent African American, I think it is important to have these organizations to give resources for those individuals. This beat reporting has helped my professional development by making me more aware of my style of writing. I have learned how to be more accurate and why it is important to include links in my stories to back up the facts. I have also learned how much a photo can help your story by making it more interesting by having a visual with the words. During this class I have learned why it is so important to remain objective in my writing. It is easy to come off as biased, so I have learned how to word my stories so that I am not including my own opinion. It was difficult to remain objective at first, especially when I am writing about a nonprofit organization, because I find myself wanting to tell my readers how great it is. Instead, I have learned to show my audience how great the organization is by explaining the different things that they are doing to make it great instead of just telling  them. In the end, showing compared to telling my audience how they should feel about my beat makes for a much stronger piece.

ABOUT ME:

My name is Alexa Wells and I am 20 years old. I was born and raised in Salt Lake City. I am a junior at the University of Utah and I am studying mass communication with an emphasis in journalism. For the past three years I have worked at Wells Fargo bank as a teller. My goal is to graduate and get a job working for a local news station and work in broadcast journalism. In my spare time I like to snowboard, hike and read books. Spring semester of 2013 I have been a student journalist for Voices of Utah for my intermediate reporting class. I hope to get an internship for a news station next fall and continue to improve my writing skills.

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MY STORIES: 

• James Jackson III and ACCEL help black-owned businesses in Salt Lake City
• Ogden resident Stanley Ellington enjoys helping the community
• Black Student Union at the University of Utah helps students connect

MY BLOG:

Intermediate reporting was not what I was expecting; students are expected to work in a real-world environment. This class pushed me to work more on my writing skills because I thought I knew how to write. But it taught me how to be more conscious on articles I wrote. Writing is an art like the title of the book says for this class and like most arts people have to practice at it. At the beginning of the semester I was a little nervous because it had been a while since I wrote an article. I learned that I can handle pressure and deadlines and this class showed me that I can really pull this off.

My beat was the African-American community and I learned a lot from the people I interviewed and in some cases I related to them. Stanley Ellington was one of our guest speakers for the class and while he was introducing himself he said something I related to. He said whenever he talked on the phone people would think he was from California, that he was from the ghetto, when in reality he’s from Alabama.

When people ask me where I’m from I answer I’m from Los Angeles and people assume that I come from the worst part of the city. I learned just to be patient and just explain to those people where I come from and not get mad or upset. Also what I learned from my beat is that it doesn’t matter if one is or belongs to a minority group you can still succeed in life regardless of your ethnicity.

ABOUT ME:

My name is Gustabo Rodriguez. I’m from Los Angeles and I moved to Salt Lake when I was 15 years old. I graduated from Granger High School in West Valley City. I lived there throughout my sophomore and junior years, but moved to Kearns in my senior year. In high school I knew what I wanted to study in college and that was communication.

When I enrolled at Salt Lake Community College that was my choice and here I am today. So right after high school in 2008 I attended SLCC (the Taylorsville campus) and graduated in the spring of 2011. I transferred to the University of Utah that fall.

I like watching and playing sports — basketball, soccer, baseball and football. Being from Los Angeles, I’m a big Lakers fan. My baseball team is the Angels. I don’t really follow the MLS but I follow the Mexican soccer league where my team is at and they are called Monarcas Morelia. Football I would have to go with the San Diego Chargers because Los Angeles doesn’t have a team.

I like any kind of music as long as it’s catchy I don’t have any favorite type of song, genre, or artist. That is one of the ways I could relax after a long day or even a long week. Action and comedy movies for me are the best and I always enjoy them.

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MY STORIES:

• University of Utah students focus on diversity in innovation
• Shades of grey: complexity of African-American voices on gun control
• Redefining success for African-American college students

MY BLOG:

As my time with the Voices of Utah comes to a close, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what it has meant to me.

First of all, when I came into Voices of Utah, I was told that I would be covering the African-American beat. To be honest this made me a bit uncomfortable. Not that I had anything against African-Americans personally. Some would say I was mildly racist but really it was more uncomfortably ignorant. That kind of thing happens when you grow up living in a town of 50,000 people with only three African-Americans. I could always be outwardly genial but I was quietly uncomfortable when I spoke with them. I just didn’t know what to do. I think it was just growing up being constantly told not to be racist toward people of different ethnicities instead of being told how to be their friend. I knew what I was not supposed to do. And there were a lot of things I was very good at not saying, but that didn’t help me with my interviews because now I actually had to do something.

I had to interview them.

I had to talk.

And it turned out to not be so hard.

In fact, that’s how I met Ennis. Ennis is a 50-year-old man who is going to the same university as I, who happened to live in a neighboring apartment complex. I spoke with him at times as he would pass me on the playground that sits between our two complexes. It was usually brief, but through that I found that we had a common background of having served in the military. I also found that he was quite pleasant, very smart, and fun to talk with.

But the most revealing thing for me was when I got the chance to interview him for a piece written for Voices of Utah about University of Utah student innovators. During the course of the interview he mentioned something that floored me. He said I was the only person who had come to visit him in the entire time that he had been there. This deeply upset me. By this time I had known him for several months and knew there was not a reason to not like him and to not be neighborly. In addition, there were many other of my white friends whom I considered very extroverted. Were they just like me, only being friendly to those who they most easily identified with?

I don’t know.

But it made me wonder if in a world obsessed with political correctness defined by copious checklists of things not to do, maybe we focus on our to-do list more.

And the first thing on mine?

Be good to my neighbors.

ABOUT ME:

I am currently a student at the University of Utah studying Chinese and employed as a member of the Utah Army National Guard.

I earned a Bachelor’s of Science from Brigham Young University-Idaho in University Studies with an emphasis in Military Science.

My experience in the Army National Guard has allowed me opportunities to build small-group leadership experience. It allowed me to organize and conduct small and large group training sessions; practice accountability for personnel and equipment; support, follow and implement the policies of officers; suggest and implement forward-thinking and pro-active policies; and to practice maturity, leadership and professionalism.

My experience as a student journalist has helped hone these skills and expand my vision.

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MY STORIES:

• My headline here

MY BLOG:

ABOUT ME:

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