![]() ![]() There, she had the opportunity to work on complex data-driven stories about the United States’ criminal justice system and found her feet as a journalist. Next, her interest in crime reporting led her to the Marshall Project, where she worked as a graphics producer. It helped that the organization - one of the country’s leading think tanks - strove for objectivity and clear, concise communication, much like journalism. These hours have paid dividends since her graduation, and she has carved a niche as a web producer and data journalist.įor instance, her first job as digital producer at the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., was not a traditional journalism role, but she was able to build on her coding skills and become proficient in data visualization. While Martinez is grateful for having had hands-on experience with different media, she believes her most valuable learning experiences were the hours of downtime she spent writing and improving programming scripts. Left to right: Alexandra Garretón, Yoli Martinez, Beatrice Katcher, Lynne Shallcross, Guisel Contreras, Nancy DeVille So when she’s working on an interactive web story, she knows all of the obstacles and challenges of the different media forms in order to help create a narrative.” And I think the richness of having that multidisciplinary expertise of media shapes her understanding. Interestingly, though she spent most of her two years learning coding and nifty data visualization, Martinez found video to be the best medium for her master’s thesis project.Īccording to Rue, Martinez’s thesis adviser at the J-School, her willingness to take on different media distinguishes her as a multimedia journalist. In the Bay Area, only retired police officers would speak with them, so Martinez and her partner travelled to New York City to interview on-duty police detectives. Unsurprisingly, the most difficult task was getting police officers to speak on the record and react to footage of police-perpetrated violence. Though the project sounded straightforward, Martinez and her partner soon were laboring through hundreds of hours of police bodycam footage to put together a sort of database, and then tracking down the relevant people to comment on it, on camera. “So we thought, let’s create a multi-point-of-view project, wherein we speak to police officers, victims, their families and so on, to get a more well-rounded perspective.” “But everytime any police shooting footage was released, there was a lot of talk about how it doesn’t provide enough context and that it presents just one side of the story,” she said. Against the background of the murder of 14 year old Tamir Rice at the hands of a Cleveland police officer in 2014, Martinez recalls a push to mandate bodycams for all officers at the time. Particularly challenging was her master’s thesis, which dealt with police violence. “In the second year it gets really stressful, so we ended up working together, having meltdowns together,” she said. Back row, left to right: Juan Martinez, Kevin Hume Some of her fondest memories of the J-school are of doing exactly that in the B1 multimedia room, working on projects under Professors Jeremy Rue and Richard Koci Hernandez and the 10 other students in the multimedia cohort.įront row, left to right: Sarah McClure, Yoli Martinez, Beatrice Katcher, Lynne Shallcross. “I really wanted to learn coding and data science,” she said, “because I’m someone who really likes to sit and work on computers all day.” She did not see herself making a career writing or producing documentaries, but was keen on pursuing the multimedia track. When she first applied to the J-school, Martinez knew exactly what she wanted to do, and the skills that she hoped to pick up over the course of her graduate studies. This spring, she is co-teaching the Introduction to Coding course with Soo Oh. Martinez’s association with the J-School has now come full circle. Crucially, through the many shifts and moves - from the Bay Area to Washington, D.C., to New York and back to the Bay Area - she had a clear idea of the profile she wanted to build and the kind of journalism she wanted to do. In a span of just six years, Martinez has had a whirlwind career, working in different newsrooms and strengthening her skillset. “But I realized I needed to get a J-school degree in order to get a foot in the door for any of the journalism jobs.” “I was interested in criminal justice reporting from day one,” she said, thinking back to her pre-J-School years. It was then she realized that while she was a good web producer, the journalism jobs she coveted were more hands-on. ![]() And so, after completing her undergraduate degree in English, she took an internship and a subsequent job as a website producer for a PBS television station in Los Angeles. In the case of Yolanda “Yoli” Martinez (MJ ’15), she always knew she wanted to work in the media. People come to journalism from different academic and professional backgrounds.
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