Multimedia Journalist of the Year Portfolio
Shiori Chen – Scot Scoop
The clock read 3:00 am but I was still crouched in front of my laptop, piecing together interview transcripts and designing multimedia graphics to supplement my reporting. Over the course of my high school journalism career, I’ve been eager to cover a wide variety of topics, from wildfires to disparities in elementary music education. To me, writing an article isn’t just about presenting the facts; it’s about listening. Whether I’m speaking to students at schools adopting new phone policies or to pharmacists concerned by the divisive stance on vaccinations, I always strive to focus on the voices that matter most to the story. I seek out individuals who will enrich my article with their informed perspectives, but also people who challenge and deepen my own understanding.
My dedication has revealed one of my greatest challenges as a storyteller: restraint. Because I care so deeply about properly conveying the perspectives of my sources and amplifying their voices, I often write pieces well over 1000 words. My longest piece — an exposé on poultry mistreatment in commercial farming — sprang from my desire to convey the sense of rage and horror I experienced after speaking to activists and researchers.
Multimedia became my saving grace.
I’ve found that through infographics, charts, and audio summaries, I can cover my topics in a detailed manner, in ways that are now more engaging and clear for my audience. For example, in a story about California’s mandate for Native American history education, I created an interactive timeline to highlight the government’s long-standing policies toward Indigenous peoples that helped contextualize their skepticism and distrust. I also began embedding audio (particularly summaries with clips from my interviews) into my stories, allowing my long articles to be consumed in a more brief, engaging manner that enables greater intimacy and connection with my audience. Multimedia tools have allowed me to continue honoring my commitment to ethical, thorough reporting without overwhelming my reader.
Multimedia hasn’t just enhanced my storytelling; it has helped me grow into the kind of journalist I aspire to be.
At first, video journalism was terrifying. Talking to strangers in person was already hard for me; asking them to speak on camera felt impossible. But when I was assigned to cover the centennial Hometown Days celebration in my town, I realized that words alone couldn’t capture the amount of pride, joy, and community I felt there. So I picked up a camera and began broadcasting for the first time.
That weekend transformed everything I thought I knew about journalism. Sprinting up and down the street with a tripod in one hand and a camcorder in the other, I was truly chasing the story. Something changed within me, as if holding a camera allowed me to be bolder. I was surprised to discover myself approaching families and business owners without hesitation. Before I knew it, I was interviewing the mayor of my town. My camera became my sword, my tripod my shield. On that day, my confidence swelled as I found myself deploying the techniques of a well-rounded reporter.
Video journalism has pushed me far beyond my comfort zone, and it’s shown me what I’m capable of. I have finally found a medium that combines everything I love about journalism: the thrills, the storytelling, and the connection. When broadcasting, I find that I’m not just reporting but building relationships with my sources and leaning into the human element of journalism that has always mattered the most to me.
As a newly minted multimedia journalist, I now know that multimedia isn’t simply a tool, but my calling: a space in which my voice and the voices at the heart of every story can come to life.
VIDEO PRODUCTION
San Carlos celebrates 100 years of community with Hometown Days
The words “I never thought I’d enjoy this so much” rang in my mind as I explored video journalism for the first time through my broadcast coverage of the Hometown Days Celebration. To mark its centennial, the city of San Carlos expanded the annual festival into a three-day event filled with a local marketplace, family activities, live music, and community-centered fun. As I captured sweet moments—families dancing, business owners laughing, residents proudly sharing stories—I realized how different this medium was from the beat reporting I’d done before. Video journalism allowed me to encapsulate emotion in real time and offered a more intimate storytelling experience—one that truly conveyed the candid sense of connection and pride within my community.
Though I had never done broadcast journalism before, I sought to replicate the techniques I observed in professional outlets like BBC News and CBS News—prioritizing varied angles and shot distances to capture dynamic B-roll. I supplemented my footage with interviews from three individuals who personified the diverse roles within the celebration: the mayor of San Carlos, a parade announcer, and a visiting attendee. This experience awakened my hidden passion for visual storytelling, and broadcast journalism is a path I’m excited to continue pursuing.
DATA JOURNALISM
Questioning progress: Native American skepticism surrounding California’s new educational mandate
As part of my beat covering Native American skepticism toward Gov. Newsom’s legislation requiring California public schools to teach the historical mistreatment of Native Americans, I focused on using diverse visuals to break up a long article and integrated data-based graphics to reinforce crucial points without adding extra text.
For example, the first graphic I included was a bar graph following a quote from a student of Navajo ancestry describing her tribe’s living conditions on a reservation, characterized by poverty and limited access to education and healthcare. To emphasize the gravity of her point succinctly, I included impactful Census Bureau data showing that the vast majority of American Indian and Alaska Native individuals have not earned a college degree.
In the same vein, in a section about the shift from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I included a map showing which states officially recognize the holiday, helping readers visualize where these changes are happening.
I also created an interactive timeline highlighting various events in the history of California Native Americans, since that was the focus of my article. The timeline helps demonstrate the relevance of my data and clarifies where the deep-rooted Indigenous distrust of the government may stem from.
More significantly, this project transformed my approach as a journalist. When I first learned about the Native American education bill, I was hopeful based on how media reports and immediately pitched an article as a sign of progress amidst ongoing discussions of reparations for Indigenous peoples’ historic lack of recognition.
As I reached out to the people who could provide me with the most accurate insight—Indigenous peoples themselves—I eagerly expected to hear stories that echoed my optimism, hoping to write an article about how this education bill could positively impact their communities. Instead, one after another, my sources expressed a recurring sentiment of distrust in the state government. Many were skeptical over the true extent of change this law would bring, if any. I was shocked.
Their perspectives came together to form a far more complex story than I had anticipated. The published piece explores historical disparities in how Indigenous history has been taught, the deep skepticism Native Americans hold toward the California government, and an alternative approach proposed by many stakeholders: partnering directly with local school districts to implement changes.
Ultimately, after my piece was published—though it was vastly different from my original pitch—I felt a profound sense of accomplishment. My article had evolved to reflect the perspectives that mattered most, as accurately as possible. In the process, my own outlook had been transformed. This experience taught me the importance of being willing to dig deeper for the truth and avoid preconceived notions when reporting a story.
AUDIO
Delaying progress: federal research funding on the chopping block
For as long as I can remember, I avoided science. It was my older brother’s interest, so I embraced the humanities and never looked back.
However, after the Trump administration cut Harvard’s federal research funding over its refusal to comply with White House demands, science began creeping back into my territory: journalism, where free speech and accountability reign.
I started writing a story focused on university researchers and rising undergraduates at UC Berkeley, a nearby institution known as one of the nation’s leading research universities. As I spoke with more scientists, I felt almost ashamed of how little I had appreciated the impact of research on our lives, and angry about the consequences of the policy changes.
During my reporting, I met Colette Delawalla, founder of Stand Up for Science, a leading organization protesting the funding cuts. I was so struck by her passion and dedication that I wanted others to hear directly from her.
For this article, I created an audio summary to provide a concise format where readers can listen to her voice and message firsthand.
MULTIMEDIA FEATURE
Behind the screen
As a high schooler, I see three struggles nearly every day: drugs, social media addiction, and alcohol. Combining these intertwined topics into one feature, I spoke with over six teens affected in different ways and a licensed mental health therapist to explore how various social media apps might be worsening these already serious issues. I narrowed my focus to three of the most popular social media apps among teens my age—Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat—and examined how each exacerbates a different problem.
Because I wanted to focus on the human side of the story—showing, for example, how normalized these struggles felt to the people I spoke with or how deeply violating it was to have their intimate pictures shared—data, which social media discussions often depend on, needed to be presented through multimedia.
After combing through an extensive amount of data, I put together a multitude of graphs, ranging from standard line and stacked bar graphs to interactive ones with built-in controls, capable of effectively illustrating the differences between apps over time.
Furthermore, I wanted to cover some narratives more deeply, like Jason Lee’s who uses a pseudonym for legal anonymity, without sacrificing the other perspectives I gathered such as those related to alcohol use. To balance this, I decided to use the infobox feature to include two separate, additional narratives.
Thus, my final piece carefully integrates personal narratives with informative data, forming a vivid depiction of the silent battles teens face today.
Long before I wanted to be a journalist, my dream job as a child was to be an elephant conservatory owner. Though plans of animal preservation are temporarily on hold, my interest was immediately peaked after I heard about the criticism regarding the San Francisco Zoo after a report raised concerns about the conditions of their animal enclosures, especially amidst their plans to introduce pandas from China next year.
The insight I gathered from former zoo employees and city officials about the conditions of zoos and how animals were generally faring across the nation nearly had me back on my crusade to save animals once again. Instead, I was inspired by their stories to pick up a camera and document what was really happening—especially since the zoo refused to comment.
As I toured the exhibits, nothing seemed wrong at first glance, but I was glad to document the conditions of some enclosures and the animals’ behavior. Since the San Francisco Zoo is considered one of the better zoos in the country, this inspired me to broaden my coverage to examine the existence of zoos in their current form as part of my article.
In order to reflect both public sentiment and the current landscape of the debate over zoos, I also included an infographic with key statistics to help readers understand the scale of animal captivity while emphasizing the diverse views people hold about zoos today.
