Nine Daily Bruin staffers received DBAN scholarships for 2024-25, a record number of DBAN scholars this year! This year’s scholars are Falecie “Lex” Wang, a two-year scholar who is serving as this year’s editor-in-chief, Vivian Stein, Amelie Ionescu, Dylan Winward, Kayla Williams, Laila Wheeler, Tavian Williams, Kayla Hayempour and Samantha Garcia. Dylan Winward, this year’s DB news editor, was named the McNary scholar, in honor of legendary Variety reporter (and DB staffer and DBAN board member) Dave McNary ’74, who died unexpectedly in 2020. These scholarships help make working at the Bruin more affordable.
DBAN also sponsored the second year of a fellowship at the Orange County Register. This year’s fellow was Gabrielle Gillette, who covered a variety of stories at the Register and other newspapers that make up part of the Southern California news group. Gillette’s fellowship came from the DBAN scholarship fund. “During my time at the Orange County Register, I grew not only as a writer, but also as a reporter,” says Gillette. “I now pay closer attention to how I can write and assign stories that impact underrepresented communities.”
DBAN raises money for our scholarship fund every year through the generous donations of alums, friends and fans of the Daily Bruin. Since DBAN began in 2017, it has awarded more than $96,900 in scholarships to Daily Bruin staffers. Last October, our online crowdfunding Spark campaign raised $28,124, beating our goal of $20,000, thanks to a generous $5,000 matching donation from DBAN alum and former National Geographic CEO Gary Knell ’75.
Endowments Provide Steady Scholarship Funding
Adding to the scholarship funding is an endowment created by DBAN founder Lawrence Ma ’95, along with Zach Aron ’94 and Robina Riccitiello ’84. Their endowment, created with the help of a donation from former Chancellor Gene Block, now earns enough returns to pay for one to two DBAN scholarships in perpetuity. Learn more about the endowment here.
Ma, Aron and Riccitiello are considering using the proceeds to fund enterprise reporting grants for Daily Bruin students in future years. They are using as a model the Bridget O’Brien Scholarship, named for a DB reporter and photographer who died in a car accident at the age of 26. DB reporters used the O’Brien funding to create a series on undocumented student access to higher education, to cover the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, medical care in India, the 2013 typhoon in the Philippines, anti-gay laws in Malawi, educational protests in Chile in 2012 and many other issues. That scholarship was funded by her parents and donations.
Another alum stepped forward last year with a generous donation to establish a second endowment to benefit Daily Bruin staffers. Fern Seizer ’56, who worked at the Daily Bruin in the 1950s, created the Bob Seizer Daily Bruin Scholarship, which will fund one to two scholarships annually, in perpetuity. Fern and Bob Seizer ’54 (pictured above) worked together — and sometimes competed for stories — at the Daily Bruin. Everyone at DBAN is very grateful to Fern Seizer and her family for this fantastic gift.
An endowment in honor of Dave McNary has nearly reached its funding goal of $100,000. If you would like to help the McNary Memorial Scholarship reach endowment status, please contact his sister, Nancy Leach, at fiveboys@starpower.net or Sandra Gonzalez at sgonzalez@support.ucla.edu.
If you have any interest in helping found an endowment that can support Daily Bruin staffers, please reach out to DB scholarship chair Robina Riccitiello at robina@rjricci.com or Sandra Gonzalez at sgonzalez@support.ucla.edu.
Reunion Recap: The “Art” of Journalism: DBAN Honors Art Spander ’64 as 2024 Alumnus of the Year
More than 50 Daily Bruin alumni and current DB staffers met in October for the annual DBAN reunion, a day of conversation, networking and workshops in the newsroom. There was a presentation by our current DB leadership team, led by Editor-in-Chief Lex Wang, about the paper’s plans for the 2024-25 school year.
The festivities ended with a dinner in which we recognized nine student scholarship winners (see related story in this issue) and honored award-winning sports journalist Art Spander ’64 as DBAN’s 2024 Distinguished Alumnus. At the dinner, DBAN also recognized the 2024-25 DBAN scholars. “It’s gratifying to hear stories from former staffers about how their time at the Daily Bruin changed their lives,” said DBAN President Connie Guglielmo ’83. “It was also exciting to hear from students who were eager to ask how journalism has changed, how they can move forward in an industry that faces so many challenges and where alumni think the opportunities are for those interested in a career in media.”
No one had better stories that day than Spander, one of the greatest sports journalists in the country. In a career that’s spanned over 65 years — including his tenure as a news and sports editor at the Daily Bruin — Spander covered at least 57 Masters Tournaments, 180 golf majors, 40 Super Bowls and 37 Final Fours. The Olympics, Wimbledon and the World Series? Been there. The Triple Crown, Indianapolis 500 and U.S. Open tennis tournaments? Done that. But all that pales in comparison to the Los Angeles native’s mind-boggling attendance at 70 Rose Bowls, starting as a teen in 1954 when he sold programs to fans before going on to cover at least 60 of the games as a professional sports writer. His work led him to be inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame.
He was introduced by longtime friend Larry Seigler ’59, a trustee of the UCLA Foundation and longtime member of The UCLA Chancellor’s Associates, who called out Spander’s enthusiasm for mentoring young journalists.
“Young journalists: My advice is never stop asking questions”, Spander said in accepting the award as his wife of 62 years, UCLA alumna Liz Newman, and his family looked on. “Kids who go into journalism have a different feeling than the normal, you might say, Chamber of Commerce viewpoint. They have a lot of doubt and they wonder why this is going on — not let’s join the parade, let’s find out why the parade is there.”
The DBAN Reunion is held on a Saturday in October each year, so stay tuned for details about our 2025 gathering. We’d love to have as many alumni — and current students — attend in person as possible. And we are looking for volunteers to help coordinate the event. If you’re interested in helping please contact Guglielmo at acmewriter@gmail.com. If you’d like a PDF version of the tribute we created for Spander, send her an email with the subject: “Send Art’s tribute my way.”
Network With Students
Many Daily Bruin staffers are interested in speaking with alumni who might have ideas and advice about their careers. If you’re interested in being part of an email group to connect with students, send your contact info and a short description of the topics you’re happy to talk about to Guglielmo (acmewriter@gmail.com) who is working on compiling a list that was already started at our DBAN Reunion. (Thank you Liz Bell ’67 for building the first draft).
Bruin-led Spark Features Team Has Three Documentary Oscar Noms
DBAN alumna Robina Riccitiello ’84 and her UCLA alum partner Josh Peters ’03 have launched a small production company, Spark Features, which had documentaries nominated for this year’s Academy Awards. Robina had a third documentary in the race.
Riccitiello and Peters were executive producers on “Porcelain War,” a documentary about artists turned soldiers in Ukraine. It recently won the Directors Guild of America documentary award. They also executive produced “Black Box Diaries,” a documentary by Shiori Ito, who conducted her own investigation into her sexual assault by an influential senior journalist. Both films were nominated for Best Documentary at this year’s Academy Awards. Riccitiello also executive produced a third Oscar-nominated documentary, “Sugarcane,” which delves into the traumatic history of an Indigenous boarding school in Canada. She got involved with that film before Spark Features began.
Spark Features aims to elevate stories from new voices. The company started in early 2023, and focuses on narrative films and first- and second-time filmmakers.
Riccitiello worked at the Daily Bruin in the 1980s as a reporter and city editor and worked as a journalist for many years. She also was Daily Bruin operations manager. Peters, who has worked in the film business since 2003, produced “The Lighthouse” and “Uncle Frank.”
Spark Features is known for creating strong bonds, often friendships, with filmmakers. A Spark trademark is building human pyramids at film fests.
Highlights From the Daily Bruin: News Feeds, Fire Coverage and More
Hello from Kerckhoff 118. My name is Kayla Williams and I am the 2024-25 external outreach director. Here are some updates regarding the Daily Bruin’s 2024-25 content so far:
Wildfire Coverage: The Daily Bruin is extremely proud of our extensive coverage of the Los Angeles County wildfires. Our staff has been working tirelessly to provide our community with the latest information. See the highlights below:
Breaking News Feed: Our News team has updated our community on the various Los Angeles Wildfires via a breaking news feed. The breaking news feed features news updates, photos and videos from our staff. It is updated as the News team receives information and has amassed 53,391 views over a few days.
Full Coverage: The Bruin also published articles focusing on the wildfires’ specific effects on the UCLA community as seen here. Due to limited campus operations, the Daily Bruin published our print editions digitally.
Multimedia: Our Explanatory journalism team, the Quad, and the Graphics team collaborated on a graphic, detailing how students should protect themselves from wildfire smoke. Our Video team produced a video featuring footage of the Palisades wildfires, which earned 13,000 views.
Editorial Board: Our Editorial Board published a column explaining how UCLA’s reluctance to move to remote learning during the wildfire crisis ultimately affected students. See the column here.
Notably, our social media engagement rose tremendously from Jan. 7 to Jan. 12, allowing our wildfire coverage to reach hundreds of thousands of readers and viewers across various platforms.
Feel free to send our staff words of appreciation and encouragement here.
Highlights from Fall 2024:
October 2024
Our 19 sections hired approximately 240 interns, making our staff population a little over 700. We will be welcoming another new class of Daily Bruin interns in early winter quarter.
Our Online, Social Media and Data sections created Westwords, our game that tests your knowledge of UCLA-related words. Play it here.
Our quarterly magazine, PRIME, released its Fall 2024 edition. See it here.
Please enjoy our content online at https://dailybruin.com/. Keep an eye out for our special editions this quarter. If you have any questions regarding the Daily Bruin, please feel free to send me an email at kwilliams@media.ucla.edu.
Lee Goldberg’s latest novel, “Ashes Never Lie,” and the paperback edition of his thriller “Calico” were released in the fall, as was his novella “If I Were a Rich Man” which was published in the anthology “Eight Very Bad Nights: A Collection of Hanukkah Noir.”
