PDX Media Day

-Bella Lo

Transgender 101 (Bethany Grace Howe):

In this workshop, Bethany Grace Howe talked about her life as a transgender woman.  She answered any questions we had, and I thought it was interesting to hear that in her early life, she wasn’t unhappy being a man.  She enjoyed her life, which may be something contradictory to what one would expect.  Bethany has a 7 year old daughter, whom she had to teach about her transition.  Bethany also has a wife and a very supportive family who accept her for who she is. 

Breaking Cool Stories by Connecting the Dots Between People and Documents (Dan Tilkin):

Tilkin is an investigative reporter for Koin 6 News.  In his workshop, he walked us through how he wrote the breaking news story about Cylvia Hayes’ fourth husband and their illegal property in Washington that had marijuana growing on it.  Tilkin showed the types of public and private databases he used to research Hayes and others who were connected to her.  He taught how he contacted everyone who had relations with Hayes, and everyone who had relations with those people; this is a term he called “working the tree” because one person will branch off of another with many more stems and links.  

Storytelling as Strategy (Donna Davis):

Donna Davis led a panel discussion with three other women who did communications for different organizations.  A key theme during this panel was the idea of storytelling.  All three women, Brenda Buratti, Natalie Bennon and Lucila Cejas use storytelling in their job, Cejas explaining how her strategy for advertising is “storytelling.”  Bennon also explained how she believes “storytelling is a powerful way to connect with people.” 

Considering College? (Stephanie Heffner):

This informative workshop helped us learn the opportunities we have at the University of Oregon if we choose to major in journalism.  The four majors are Advertising, Journalism, Media Studies and Public Relations.  Heffner explained key focuses to have when studying at the Journalism School, which were getting involved, learning by doing (internships and studying abroad) and setting goals.  These will all help one be more successful in the JSchool. 

TV News: A Changing Business (Christine Pitawanich):

Pitawanich works for KGW News as a MMJ, or a Multimedia Journalist, which is a one-person job.  She does broadcast journalism, and as an MMJ, she does her own interviews.  Pitawanich explained how each morning, she will be assigned a news story to cover, and all day she has to conduct interviews and film them, and has to be ready to share the news everyday with different stories by the 4 pm, 5 pm and 6 pm broadcasts.  With the tight deadlines, she often feels stressed, so she recommended to us, as young journalists, that if we just want to be broadcast journalists because we want to be on television, it’s not worth it.  We have to love telling stories.