From UW to NPR in less than a year: How Katelin Chow got her dream job

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From UW to NPR in less than a year: How Katelin Chow got her dream job

Katelin Chow (Photo: Lucas Anderson)

Less than a year after University of Washington grad Katelin Chow earned her degree in journalism, she managed to land what she calls her dream job.

“I feel really lucky,” Chow said. “Every morning I wake up I think to myself, ‘Oh wow, this feels so surreal.”

Chow currently works as a digital journalist for NPR, covering race, ethnicity, and culture for NPR’s brand new Code Switch team. Chow sparks online conversations and tells stories through social media and blogs.

Chow’s attraction to journalism began in high school, but her love of writing began earlier, following the death of her mother when Chow was only 13.

“That had a really big impact on me,” Chow said. “It made me really interested in writing and telling stories, because I used writing as a mechanism to cope with grief. After writing a lot about myself and writing awful, awful, awful poetry, I started getting really interested in just telling other people’s stories. I was so fascinated by that.”

After graduating high school in Connecticut, Chow decided that she wanted to move far away from the east coast. She came to the University of Washington in Seattle, where she immediately became heavily involved with the Daily, the university’s daily newspaper. She also single-handedly produced weekly videos for the university.

Chow also made good use of her four years by keeping herself overwhelmingly busy with jobs and internships.

“[In college] I just wanted to be very very well-rounded, and to be able to understand every single part of journalism,” Chow said.

“A lot of that came from being a very indecisive person, but then also, not wanting to just sit around and do nothing. So I completely overloaded my schedule every single quarter. I was an out-of-state student paying for college all by myself so I [also] worked part time jobs.”

Chow’s list of internships is impressive, to say the least. She was involved in the 2010 winter Olympics coverage in Canada, interned at KOMO TV and the Seattle Times, and was also a winner of the UW Foreign Intrigue Scholarship, which allowed her to travel to Cambodia and work for an English-language newspaper there.

In total, Chow said she completed over ten internships and jobs during her time at the UW.

While the wide range of experience undoubtedly helped her, Chow admitted that the stressful schedule was hard to uphold.

“For a while I was doing two internships at once in addition to working part time. And I remember just being so exhausted all the time and wondering ‘Is this worth it?’” Chow said.

“I just remember being so miserable because I just had no time to enjoy senior year, but then I got into this rhythm and I started thinking ‘Okay, I can do this.’ But it was very, very intense.”

Chow decided to extend her graduation a couple months in order to work as an intern at an English newspaper in Cambodia, which she said was an incredible experience, being both a lover of journalism and of other cultures.

After returning home, Chow quickly got a job at a public television station in Boston, but she wouldn’t be there long. About three months in, her current boss at NPR contacted her for an interview.

“ I had applied for this dream job in August, when I was still in Cambodia, and I never thought that I would have a shot,” Chow said. “I remember reading the job description and laughing because I didn’t think I had a shot at it.”

After a strenuous interview process (which even included a four-hour blogging test), Chow was offered one of the four positions at Code Switch that roughly 1,300 other people had applied for.

Chow modestly attributes a part of her success to luck, although it is clear she worked incredibly hard to where get where she is.

“I don’t know why I got it, I still wonder that every single day,” Chow said.

To aspiring journalists, Chow has a few words of advice:

“Be incredibly savvy. As a journalist I think in general that is a very important trait to have, but also know how to use technology and social media as a reporting tool…learn how to make valuable online content,” Chow said.

“Also having really solid reporting skills and knowing what makes a good story. Those things go hand in hand: you can’t be a good reporter if you’re not savvy and technically proficient, and you can’t be a good reporter if you don’t have good news judgment and you don’t know how to tell a good story” Chow said.

As for the future, Chow said she is more than happy where she is now, and hopes she can stay with NPR for a long time.

What is the future of print newspapers? Perspective from former staffers at the shuttered Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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What is the future of print newspapers? Perspective from former staffers at the shuttered Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Four years ago the Seattle Post-Intelligencer shocked its readers with the announcement that it would be going all-digital after 146 years of print. After years of losing money, Hearst Corporation put the newspaper up for sale in March of 2009. There were no buyers. More than 100 people lost their jobs as the paper was forced to shut down. The struggles the P-I faced were not unique to that paper, so what can other print newspapers do to avoid a similar situation?

I reached out to several former P-I employees to see how they were able to bounce back, and how they think current newspapers can stay in print.

Christina Okeson, who worked as a P-I copy editor for nearly three years, was laid off 15 and a half months after the paper closed.

Having earned a master’s degree in journalism earlier in her career, Okeson went back to school hoping to get a certification in Web design. With one quarter left to go, Okeson was able to land a job at The Daily Herald in Everett.

“The hardest part was not being able to find another job for such a long time,” Okeson wrote. “All of my experience is in print, print, print newspapers.”

As for print journalism, Okeson offered a somewhat bleak forecast.

“I don’t think there’s anything that can be done, to be honest,” Okeson wrote. ”In reality, I don’t think there are enough of us die-hard romantics left.”

She pointed to the recent Boston Marathon tragedy as a case in point: news needed immediately was shared instantly over the Internet.

“The print product the next day…well, they make for great keepsakes if you’re into that sort of thing,” Okeson wrote.

Lee Rozen, who held various positions at the P-I., was 60 when he was let go from the P.I., now works as managing editor at the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Moscow, Idaho (not to be confused with the capital of Russia).

“It was the first time – at 60 – that I had ever been unemployed. For one whose self worth was so deeply wrapped up in being a newspaper journalist that was extremely difficult,” Rozen wrote in an email. “But it forced me to look at what I wanted to do and why. I wanted to be in newspapers.”

According to Rozen, “the business model is the most important thing. The technology and the software platforms are changing and evolving rapidly. Newspapers need people who are as conversant with that technology – and how to use it effectively to reach and retain customers – as their print specialists have been.”

Janet Grimley worked at the P-I as assisting managing editor. She went on to earn a Web design certificate at Seattle Central Community College where she has worked as interim director of communications since summer 2012.

The shift was a difficult one, as she had been working in print for her entire 35-year professional career.

“It was a loss of my identity,” Grimley wrote. “It felt strange to introduce myself as a former P-I editor and then as a web design student. Second hardest thing was not having a room full of experts close by! I miss my co-workers.”

According to Grimley, no easy solution exists. “If I had the answer on how print newspapers can survive in this environment, I would become a newspaper owner!”

The current model simply doesn’t work, Grimley wrote.

“Loss of classified advertising, consolidation of companies that used to buy print ads, the bad economy, the rise of the internet…and so on.”

Dan Raley had expected to retire from the P-I after working there for 29 years. He now works at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which he claims “has the blueprint for newspaper survival.”

According the Raley, newspapers must write “specifically to the audience that buys the paper, surveying those people over and over as to what they want and expect. Only certain topics can go on the front page.”

In short, newspapers must become experts of their audience, “looking to create unique content that will hold up for morning delivery and not become irrelevant in a digital world.”

The future of print journalism remains uncertain, yet undoubtedly challenged by new technology. Be it through online pay walls, such as the one recently put in place by The Seattle Times, or by other means, it will be up to savvy newspaper staffers to navigate today’s journalism climate.

The Seattle Globalist: A glimpse into entrepreneurial journalism

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The Seattle Globalist: A glimpse into entrepreneurial journalism

Sarah Stuteville

Nearly a year after the birth of the Seattle Globalist, a daily online news source that focuses on international stories grounded in Seattle’s local community, co-founder Sarah Stuteville sat down with me to discuss her journey and what it takes to succeed as an entrepreneurial journalist.

As a Seattle Times columnist, professor of entrepreneurial journalism and co-founder of nonprofit news site Seattle Globalist, Sarah Stuteville is a busy woman.

Stuteville, along with fellow Hunter College graduates Alex Stonehill and Jessica Partnow, co-founded the Common Language Project, now known as the Seattle Globalist, in 2006.

Now Stuteville balances grading papers and writing articles with doing what a new crop of  journalists are doing more and more — running and growing their own news organization.

“We were interested in doing multimedia international journalism, particularly at a time where there was a lot of new stuff happening in multimedia storytelling, but also there was a decrease of international coverage because of the journalism crisis,” Stuteville said.

At the Common Language Project, Stuteville and her colleagues told global stories, covering issues from the water crisis in East Africa to refugee issues in the Middle East.

“That was really our focus, learning to do innovative multimedia journalism, and then also telling underreported international stories,” Stuteville said.

When Stuteville, Stonehill, and Partnow returned to their native Seattle in 2009, they realized that they had something to offer an area whose international communities and ties had grown to become a significant part of Seattle culture.

“I think all three of us realized that there was a real need here in the Pacific Northwest for more international coverage,” Stuteville said. “Coverage that was really grounded in the communities here…and tells the stories of all of those [cultural] intersections.”

With the recognition of this need, the group moved their efforts from the CLP to the Globalist, now housed in a small office in the communications building at University of Washington, where Stuteville teaches.

Since then, the Globalist has developed into a strong online news source. It publishes stories on a daily basis, maintains partnerships with KUOW and The Seattle Times and counts more than 100 writers among its contributors.

“We’ve seen it grow really fast, and it shows what excitement there is around building that identity,” Stuteville said.

Part of the Globalist’s success has been its reshaping of what it means to be a good news source. Their willingness to think outside of the box of what is considered “normal” journalism also extends to the writers they publish, who range from professionals to untrained journalists.

“It’s not just about having professional journalists report and write and produce stories, but also providing a platform for people who maybe don’t have formal journalism training to be able to tell their stories,” Stuteville said.

The story of the Globalist offers an insight into the world of successful entrepreneurial journalism. Despite these tough times, Stuteville believes it is the most exciting time to enter the field, even as she recognizes that the profession is shifting.

“There’s an understanding that these old models are not going to carry us into whatever comes next, so there’s a real zeitgeist to encourage people to think outside the box,” Stuteville said. “What else can journalism be?”

While Stuteville is clearly passionate about her work, she has to pay the bills. Entrepreneurial journalism is difficult financially, like any profession that requires a person to constantly create. She doesn’t sugarcoat that.

To others thinking of pursuing entrepreneurial journalism, Stuteville offered three pieces of advice:

1. Be willing to fail: “You are just going to have to fail a lot, and part of building anything on your own…means you’re going to screw up a lot. And it’s not like you’re going to screw up a lot when you just get started…I think you just have to see that as something that makes the job interesting, is that the challenges are always new, and part of it is failing,” Stuteville said.
2. Be curious: “You have to be curious, you have to see the opportunity instead of the collapse,” she said.
3. Work hard: “You have to be willing to work hard, but I don’t know in what profession that isn’t true about anymore. It’s not a nine-to-five…there’s no moment where you walk away from this job,” she said.

If Stuteville takes on a lot for one journalist, she never gave the impression that bothered her. As the field continues to shift, her story and that of the Globalist shows that innovation, relentless hard work, and above all passion are always key.

UW graduate students buy portable planetarium

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Students in the Seattle area will soon be able to gaze at the night sky from inside their schools with the help of the UW. 

A group from the UW astronomy department purchased a portable planetarium that will be used in K-12 schools across Seattle.

The planetarium’s dome, created by the company Go-Dome, is an inflatable room resembling an igloo. At approximately 10 feet high and 20 feet across, the dome can fit approximately 25 people. It is a fully functional planetarium that offers many of the same images as the high-tech planetarium located at the UW.

“We’re hoping to increase science enthusiasm in [students],” said Phil Rosenfield, the principal investigator of this project. “Part of it is to allow students to get an idea of what science is about. We want to make sure that we have people in college coming down and talking to these students. It’s a nice opportunity.” 

The UW astronomy department already offers an outreach program in its full-sized planetarium Fridays, allowing students from K-12 schools to watch shows put on by graduate students. However, Rosenfield said there is a surprisingly low number of students coming from the Seattle area. 

“We made a map of where people come from to see our shows, and we found that none of the places are Seattle public high schools, which are very close,” Rosenfield said. “So we figured maybe we could write a grant to build something for us to be able to bring it to them.”

The project goes beyond presenting the planetarium to students: The group plans to give high-school students a chance to use the dome themselves. The astronomy department launched a seminar several days ago to train approximately a dozen people to go to high schools and teach the students how to use the software. 

“What we’re thinking is to do something much more interactive, where the students at the high school will actually get to use the dome to present their projects,” said Oliver Fraser, UW astronomy lecturer. “We’re kind of excited about that. The end goal is to make sure that some of the people that are thinking, ‘Maybe I like science, maybe I don’t.’ We give them an opportunity to really try it out.” 

Generally, the domes are purchased with the projector, hardware, and software together. However, Rosenfield said the team was able to lower the cost by assembling the planetarium on its own in a cost-effective way that did not compromise quality. 

“We did it for probably about half the cost that’s been done before, and we’re also doing it with different components,” Rosenfield said. “What we’re doing is using a laptop, and projector, a couple of mirrors and that’s it. So we did it for about $18,000.”

The team has also made an effort to incorporate UW undergraduate students into the project. Rosenfield said the team plans to train undergraduates to go out to high schools and teach astronomy.

Gary Young, president of Go-Dome, said the planetarium experience is unique in its engagement of the audience. 

“It’s not just a cool thing that you inflate and it’s fun to go inside, but it’s an immersive environment,” Young said. “When you go inside, you become totally immersed in whatever it is that you’re watching.” 

The planetarium has already been used for a handful of presentations, and the response has been positive. 

“People really like it; they’ve got great questions. … You get some gasps because people have never really seen the night sky like that before,” Rosenfield said. 

Wind Riders

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Vast quantities of microbial species are hitching rides on the trans-Pacific winds from Asia to North America.

A new study led by David J. Smith, who recently completed a Ph.D. in biology and astrobiology at the UW and is now working for NASA, is one of the first of its kind and shows that living microbial species are able to travel to the Northwest from across the Pacific Ocean.

The research took place in the winter and spring of 2011 and was based on air samples taken by Smith’s team from atop Mt. Bachelor — located in the Cascade Mountains of central Oregon — from two large dust plumes that originated in Asia. The air samples were then processed and analyzed to look for microorganisms. The study was published in December 2012 in the journal of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Scientists have been tracking pollution carried across the globe by the jet streams for years, and have also studied microbes in the air. However, Smith’s work is the first to have looked for life traveling long distances at such a high altitude.

“There have been other studies that have been closer to the [earth’s] surface and more regional, trying to figure out what’s floating around in the air, and those studies found a pretty high diversity [of life] as well,” Smith said, “so we went up to the top of a mountain … and said ‘Well, let’s just look and see what makes it up at this height.’”

Smith added, “We wanted to see: Could cells actually leap the biggest oceanic gap on the planet? There was no reason to believe that they couldn’t.”

The team was able to identify the DNA of more than 2,000 species of microbes, both dead and living. Smith said they had expected to find microbes, but did not expect to find so many different species.

“It was surprising and not surprising,” Smith said. “Not surprising in the sense that we expected to find them, but it was surprising to find such incredible diversity of types [of microbes].”

Dan Jaffe, co-author of the report and professor at UW Bothell, said while these findings are not necessarily dangerous, they are significant to the more general study of life in harsh environments.

“I think the implications have to do with how life can survive in harsh environments and what the factors are, why some species can survive and others can’t, and the fact that maybe microorganisms could survive long distances,” Jaffe said. “NASA is very interested in whether this means microorganisms could survive in space and could survive from one planet to another.”

Peter Ward, professor at the UW and co-author of the published study, believes the findings also have historical, health, and geopolitical implications.

“This gives us a mechanism [to see] how life can spread across a planet that does not have oceans, or when the oceans are frozen,” Ward said.

This could help scientists trying to understand how life was maintained and distributed during Earth’s two ice ages.

Ward also said the studies suggest toxic viruses from one end of the planet could potentially be easily spread across the oceans through the atmosphere.

Ward said these findings should act as a wake-up call to the U.S. coal industry which exports coal — a major producer of greenhouse gases — to China.

“This shows that we have a global atmosphere and shows how quickly Chinese atmosphere makes it way to the United States,” Ward said.

Smith also believes these findings are important in the struggle against global warming. As human activity leads to increased desertification, the atmosphere contains more dust, which gives microbes something to latch onto. This will likely lead to a higher concentration of microbes in the atmosphere that could potentially threaten human health.

“Even though this is a harmless phenomenon that is occurring, humans are changing the surface of our planet and we’re also creating more pollution into the atmosphere,” Smith said. “So even though it is harmless now, it may not be harmless in the years ahead.”

Although the report was published recently, it is already attracting interest from a very diverse scientific community, including microbiologists and atmospheric scientists.

Smith hopes to continue similar research beyond his work at Mt. Bachelor by expanding his focus. He plans to move beyond studying the exchange between Asia and North America, and look into the transfer of microbes within similar global circulations that exist all over the planet.

Burke Museum works to combat 'Twilight' myths

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The Quileute tribe of the Olympic Peninsula, pushed into the spotlight by the popular “Twilight” films, does not turn into wolves. Quileute women are not passive and subservient. Shirtless, well-muscled Quileute boys do not hang around street corners. Quileute men are not prone to violence.

These are just a few of the myths combated by Truth Versus Twilight, a website launched by the Burke Museum of Natural History and the Quileute tribe in light of the “Twilight” phenomenon. The website promotes a truthful portrayal of the Quileute Native people by debunking myths portrayed by the “Twilight” movies, creating a space in which genuine Quileute culture and traditions are promoted and shared.

The site also explores the representation of unequal gender roles, misappropriation of cultural symbols, and the misrepresentation of Native people in the media. Although the website was created about one year ago, Dr. Deana Dartt-Newton, who previously worked as the curator of Native American ethnology at the Burke and played a central role in the creation of this website, hopes to see increased traffic on the website with the launch of the final movie in the “Twilight” saga.

Dartt-Newton said, overall, the response to the website has been positive. However, some fans argue that its creation was an overreaction.

“Within this pop-culture phenomenon, we … are able to educate people about, No. 1, who the real Quileute people are and, No. 2, how hurtful these stereotypes are and how alive and well many of these stereotypes are about Native Americans, and, thirdly, to provide an alternative to those false representations of Native people,” Dartt-Newton said.

“I hope that the Quileute Nation and … this alternative narrative will be heard during this time of renewed excitement about the [Twilight] story,” Dartt-Newton said.

Tasia Endo, a former UW graduate student who helped develop the website, said it is important for “Twilight” viewers to understand how harmful the false portrayal of the Quileute People has been and continues to be for the tribe, and hopes that the website will continue to combat these stereotypes.

“I think it’s a really great resource for ‘Twilight’ fans because ‘Twilight’ … really exists in a fantasy, yet it happens in a very real place with real people,” Endo said. “The Quileute people have this vibrant culture, and they’re being exploited.”

Charlotte Cote, associate professor of American Indian studies at the UW, said while the book itself is problematic on many levels, Native people in general have faced misrepresentation for decades.

“The issues go way further back than the Stephenie Meyer’s books,” Cote said. “The problem is, when you look at Native images in Hollywood … a lot of this came about because of the old classic Westerns in the 1960s, where you have this ability to develop an image that becomes a huge market.”

Viewers of the website will find an accurate, historical account of the Quileute tribe, along with a description of modern Quileute life.

The website also focuses on Quileute art “beyond wolves,” which includes basketry and carving and gives the true story of the significance of wolves to the Quileute people, which is distorted in the books and movies.

Killer Cells Revealed

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A study published last Wednesday by UW researchers offers new insight into multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease whose exact cause and cure remain mysteries.

In the study, published in Nature Immunology, Joan Goverman, professor and chair of the department of immunology, along with scientists Qingyong Ji and Luca Castelli, have brought the medical research community one step closer to finding a cure for this disease. The research focused on understanding the pathogenic process of MS.

According to the National MS Society, MS is a chronic disease that attacks the body’s central nervous system (CNS), which is comprised of the brain, spinal cord, and the optic nerves. Within the CNS, nerve cells called neurons constantly send and receive electrical signals that are necessary for normal human functioning. Typically, the signal travels along a “path” called the axon, which is protected by insulation called the myelin sheath. This insulation is essential in ensuring that the signals reach their target.

In a patient with MS, the attack on the CNS causes the myelin protection to erode, forming lesions. This leads to nerve fiber damage, and the “path” along which signals are transmitted is no longer able to function properly. The exact cause of MS remains unknown.

“One of the things that makes MS a very difficult disease to understand is that if you look at 10 patients, each patient will manifest their disease a little bit differently,” Goverman said. “They’ll exhibit a variety of different symptoms that they don’t all share with each other, and that’s largely because these lesions caused by the disease

occur in different parts of the CNS, and nobody understands why they occur.”

Because MS is an autoimmune disease, research focuses on the human immune response, which consists of T cells and B cells. B cells make antibodies, while T cells function either as “helper” CD4 T cells that orchestrate the immune response, or as “killer” CD8 T cells that are responsible for destroying harmful foreign antigens.

“For a century, people have been studying MS with a CD4-based model,” Goverman said. “For a long time, nobody had a model where you could study CD8 T cells, and one of the things that my lab did a number of years ago was to generate a new model that was dependent on the activity of the CD8 T cells.”

This gave the researchers the tool necessary to study the role of the CD8 T cell in MS. CD8 T cells that recognized myelin peptide

were cloned. Then researchers genetically modified mice to express that specific T cell receptor.

“We generated a mouse full of CD8 T cells that recognize myelin peptide, and we also had mice generated the other way, with CD4 T cells,” Goverman said.

Goverman and her team focused not only on the role of the CD8, but closely studied the cell that presents the myelin to the T cell, and found that it can incorrectly instruct the T cell to damage the myelin.

“No one had the tools to look at the cells that are presenting myelin to the CD8 T cells. We’d only just recently developed a model where we could see the CD8 T cells at all, let alone the cell that was presenting myelin to it,” Goverman said.

The study shifted the focus away from solely studying the CD4 T cell, as it has been done for decades, and toward the role of the CD8 T cell in myelin sheath damage. It also shifted focus from only studying CD4 and CD8 T cells to specifically studying the cell that presents the myelin to the T cell.

Although this research is basic rather than clinical, meaning it is not specifically geared toward creating new therapies for MS patients, it is necessary in order to find new treatments.

Edward Clark, professor of immunology and microbiology at the UW, said findings that shed more light on the disease itself — such as those in the new MS study — play a vital role in a possible future cure.

“The more we know about the factors that are contributing to the pathogens, the more leads we have for therapies,” Clark said. “I think that’s exciting.”

However, many hurdles remain in the fight against MS. Annette Wundes, a neurologist and the co-director of the UW MS Center, said recovery from existing damage can be problematic.

“We still have very little to offer in terms of reversing the damage which is caused by MS, so repair is one of the main issues we would like to [tackle],” Wundes said.

Despite this, there have been, and continue to be, important discoveries that have led to improvements, including better strategies to control the disease, and a more interdisciplinary approach to patient care.

“It’s important to realize that we have made huge progress,” Wundes said. “In terms of MS care, we have, over the last few years, [had] a more comprehensive approach, including neurologists, mutation specialists, and psychologists for cognitive disabilities.”