Alumni
Portland Magazine
June 9, 2020
By Roya Ghorbani-Elizeh '11
Photo by Nancy Copic
ON MARCH 11, ESPN NBA reporter Malika Andrews ’17 landed in New York after a long flight from Los Angeles. Although she’d been scheduled to cover a game in Milwaukee, ESPN was pulling reporters back home.
She did not yet know that the NBA would suspend its season due to concerns about COVID-19, or that she would be reporting on it that night.
In a cab from JFK Airport, Andrews’ phone started to explode with messages. After a quick call from a producer, she dropped her luggage off at her apartment and walked six blocks to a satellite studio. While fielding calls from coaches and players, Andrews went live with SportsCenter’s Scott Van Pelt to report the news. She didn’t leave the studio until 1 a.m.
The day after the NBA announcement, Andrews was able to share her experience in-person with six staff members from The Beacon, University of Portland’s award-winning student newspaper. They were in New York for a national conference of student journalists.
“It was a cool moment in history to be talking to The Beacon students,” Andrews says. “There aren’t that many events in the world where all sections of the news—from sports to news to science to cartoons—are all covering the same thing.”
Every year, The Beacon sends student journalists to the annual College Media Association conference in New York City. The six students, along with Nancy Copic, assistant director of student media, were preparing for full days of conference sessions, sightseeing, and meetings with Beacon alumni (Malika Andrews is a Beacon alum). Just as the students were packing their bags to head to New York, news of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States was starting.
“We knew we were going to have to take precautions and practice social distancing, but we didn’t know it was going to get as crazy as it did,” Carlos Fuentes ’22 says.
Armed with hand sanitizer and temperature thermometers, The Beacon team traveled to New York City for the conference. As they departed PDX, neither Oregon nor New York had declared stay-at-home orders; the message was still to go about “business as usual.”
“I was very aware of the developing situation, and before the trip, I was wondering whether we should go,” Copic says. “I was on a conference call with the chief medical officer for the Oregon Health Authority, who said that shutting down events would be a last resort. I talked to the students ahead of time, and we made the decision to go.”
After touching down in New York City, the students attended the conference sessions and met with other student journalists from around the country.
“The conference sessions were super informative and made me excited to get back in the newsroom,” Fuentes says. “I hope to pursue journalism after graduation, so attending the conference was a great way to make connections outside of the UP community.”
Although the concerns about COVID-19 were growing, the students were eager to meet with three Beacon alumnae, who all lived in New York City. Along with meeting Andrews, the students were also able to meet with CNN’s Clare Duffy ’17 and Grist’s Rachel Ramirez ’18.
“I was star-struck meeting with The Beacon alumni,” Gabi DiPaulo ’21 says. “I loved hearing them talk about their newsroom experiences and how the skills they learned at The Beacon have translated into the real world.”
Ramirez, an environmental justice reporter for the news outlet Grist, met with the students at the conference hotel. In another serendipitous moment for The Beacon students, they met with Ramirez the day her story, “How a Chinese immigrant neighborhood is struggling amid coronavirus-related xenophobia,” was published on Vox.
“The students wanted to know how I pitched that story to Vox and what my reporting process was like,” Ramirez says. “They also had a lot of questions about my current position at Grist and my beat of environmental justice and climate change.”
The Beacon alumni offer an invaluable network for students and graduating seniors. Copic, former news reporter and KGW-TV anchor, has been The Beacon advisor for 11 years, and she loves bringing together former and current Beacon staff members. “It’s so wonderful to have the students meet with The Beacon alumni because we are all really like a family,” Copic says. “It’s gratifying for me as The Beacon advisor to see these students who come in with no journalism background, to see them now flourishing in a difficult profession.”
Beacon alums also value the experience they gained as student journalists.
“I wouldn’t have a job without The Beacon. I knew I liked to write, talk, read, and hear what other people had to say. Before starting at The Beacon, I never thought those interests could be combined into a career,” Andrews says. “I like to say that I majored in The Beacon.”
Ramirez adds, “My time at The Beacon was the foundation for me becoming the journalist I am today. Without The Beacon, I wouldn’t have been able make the connections and have the mentors I have today.”
Even with the excitement of meeting the three alumnae, many of the conference sessions were being cancelled because of the rapidly changing understanding of COVID-19 and New York’s place as the epicenter of the crisis in the US.
The Beacon reporters saw these changes happening in real time during their four-day visit.
“Everything changed so much in New York while we were there. The experience of being in Times Square on our first day, where there was a ton of people, to seeing it empty during the last day was crazy. It felt like the start of a movie,” says DiPaulo.
As the coverage about the outbreak unfolded, the students would also realize the severity of the situation back home in Portland.
“We learned about UP moving to online education while we were listening to the keynote speaker,” Fuentes says. “It was a big source of stress for all of us and was something we weren’t expecting at all.”
Thankfully, The Beacon staff made it back home to The Bluff and were all healthy, after self-quarantining for two weeks. With the knowledge, tips, and inspiration from their trip, the students went back to work doing what they do best—they continued to report on campus news from upbeacon.com.
“From following the pandemic coverage, I got to see journalism work and adapt to what was currently going on,” DiPaulo says. “Back at The Beacon, we worked day and night to get the important stories out to the students.”
University of Portland
5000 N. Willamette Blvd.,
Portland, Oregon 97203-5798
503.943.8000
This website uses cookies to track information for analytics purposes. You can view the full University of Portland privacy policy for more information.
