Daily Bruin senior staff Kristie-Valerie Hoang ’20, Amy Dixon ’20, Axel Lopez ’20, Liz Ketcham, exp. ’21, and MacKenzie Coffman ’20 at last fall’s rivalry game against USC.
When Kristie-Valerie Hoang ’20 started at UCLA in 2016, she had every intention of becoming a doctor. She joined the Daily Bruin that fall as a photographer, expecting to take a few photos as a nice diversion from her medical studies. But like so many students before and since, Kristie became engrossed in the Bruin. By the end of her freshman year, deadlines came and went to apply to internships at local hospitals. Instead, she applied for and became the assistant photo editor. The next year, she took on the role of social media director and this year served as digital managing editor.
Kristie received one of the Daily Bruin Alumni Network’s inaugural scholarships last year, money she says helped ease the financial burden on her parents, who are sending two kids through college. Her medical aspirations have been fully replaced with a commitment to journalism. She landed a coveted internship at the Washington Post that she had expected to start in a few weeks, only to have the paper cancel the program in light of the COVID-19 crisis. Now, she’s exploring her options, and preparing to be one of the speakers at UCLA’s graduation. Her speech, she says, will focus on how much her classmates love UCLA. “School ended too early,” she said of having to finish the year remotely. “I among so many really miss UCLA.”
As our alma mater and the rest of the world grapple with this unprecedented global health crisis, we as the Daily Bruin Alumni Network plan to continue to support the current students in every way we can. Most critically, we are working to raise the next $10,000 for our scholarship fund so more students like Kristie can receive much-needed money. This year we’ve decided to award five $2,000 scholarships, instead of four $2,500 awards. We can’t do this without your help. Training future journalists is as crucial now as it’s ever been; local news outlets have been a lifeline to those in quarantine, informing us about the world outside our homes and when and how it’ll be safe to emerge back into society.
As we raise a virtual glass to this year’s graduating seniors, we hope all of you are staying safe and feel supported by the network. And please, help us hit our $10,000 scholarship goal by chipping in any amount you can, large or small.
Sara Randazzo ’08,
On behalf of the Daily Bruin Alumni Network Board
Give Back
Working at the Daily Bruin has never been about the money, but today’s students earn stipends that hardly make a dent in rising tuition and housing costs — and have been slashed further since the pandemic sent students home. Editors today are paid between $90 and $160 every two weeks. The $2,000 scholarships we plan to award make a difference. Donate now.
The Coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives, and we have a "new normal” for a good while longer. But as long as the student-staffers at the Daily Bruin are still reporting the news, the DBAN will carry on with our mission to support the Bruin, the staffers and alumni.
By all indications, social distancing and other public health directives will be in place for months. Thus, the board has regrettably cancelled this year’s reunion and scholarship dinner, scheduled for Oct. 17. We plan to return to Westwood in fall 2021, to honor our Daily Bruin scholars, thumb through the archives and visit with old friends. In the meantime, we are working on a few digital events to help us stay connected.
Other aspects of our network continue to flourish. With your help, fundraising is underway. As you run out of things to watch on Netflix and yearn to reconnect, why not become a mentor to our student-staffers? New DBAN board members Maryia Krivoruchko ’11 and Cuauhtemoc Ortega ’03 are developing ways for alumni to get involved from the comfort and safety of our homes. Alumni critiques of the paper will be back this fall. The DBAN is developing its own private group page on UCLA ONE, the UCLA Alumni Association’s proprietary one-on-one mentoring platform. Training sessions for students are being planned for the fall. Look for more soon from Maryia and C.O. or email them to volunteer.
Until we can meet again at Kerckhoff Hall, please visit our Facebook group and invite your classmates to come home. Take good care of yourself and your family, and Go Bruins!
Lawrence Ma
President, Daily Bruin Alumni Network Board
A Digital-Only Paper Under COVID-19
The COVID-19 outbreak has pushed the Bruin to cease print and move entirely online. With staffers scattered across continents and different time zones, the newsroom’s usual production schedule has shifted to accommodate the new limitations they face. Regular Zoom meetings and constant Slack updates are the norm now as staffers work hard to produce daily content for the Bruin’s website, social media platforms and newsletter. Read the impressive coverage still underway from the remote-working staff, and listen to a new Bruin podcast (including an episode featuring alumni!).
Our New Alumni Liaison
We are happy to announce third-year English and economics student Marilyn Chavez-Martinez, exp. '21, as our new alumni and outreach director for the Daily Bruin. Marilyn joined the Bruin her freshman year as a writer for the campus politics beat and rose to assistant news editor for the section. As our new alumni liaison, she hopes to take her love for journalism and create a stronger relationship between the student body, the paper and our alumni network.
Additionally, we can’t say enough to thank Jacqueline Alvarez ’20, who has been our connection to the Bruin since DBAN got its start in 2018. She has been a creative and energetic force from the early days of the network, including working tirelessly on these quarterly newsletters, helping with events and keeping us informed about the current state of the paper. We wish her all the best after graduation.
Class Notes
Congratulations to Robert Faturechi ’08 for winning the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He and a team from ProPublica spent a year and a half reporting on three deadly accidents in the Marines and Navy, uncovering culpability for the disasters stemming from the highest levels of the organizations. Read their “Disaster in the Pacific” series.
Robert got his start as an investigative reporter at the Bruin, where in 2007 he wrote about UCLA’s dental school saving admissions slots for donors’ relatives.
Further kudos to Courtney Kan Alcantara, a designer at the Washington Post who contributed to the paper’s Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting for a series on climate change and their recognition as a finalist for a series on the opioid epidemic.
We are mourning the loss of Adam Corey Gold ’82, who died March 16 in the Seattle area from the novel coronavirus. He was 60 years old.
As a senior at UCLA, Adam edited the Daily Bruin's Viewpoint pages while also tapping his creativity as editor of a new weekly section called Et Cetera, exploring topics that didn't fit neatly in the newspaper's traditional departments.
The West Los Angeles native took his degree in communication and media studies and rose quickly in the TV industry, becoming vice president for research at Lorimar, CBS and later Scripps Networks, where he worked with the Food Network and helped to launch the cooking show "Iron Chef America."
After moving to Seattle with his wife Alicia and three children and starting his own TV production company, Adam opened a restaurant in Woodinville, Wash., called Gobble. The restaurant featured "turkey in a gazillion different forms," he told one of several local reporters who wrote about the venture. It lasted nearly six years.
Adam's sense of humor — often self-deprecating — was on display in his LinkedIn bio when he described his time as a restaurateur: "Creator, owner, manager of the most creative and original quick serve restaurant in the country. Unfortunately, no one else thought this way."
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