A Journalist, Activist and Researcher.
Writing
I’m convinced that words have tremendous potential when it comes to the business of changing the world. That’s why here at El Estoque, I have made it my personal goal as a writer to use my voice to uplift others and embody the changes I wish to see in the world. I do this by empowering historically marginalized groups — women, people of color, youth — to speak their truths and writing an article that is reflective of my sources’ beliefs.
Articles
In addition, I also maintain a list of pitches on the Notes application of my phone. As a Features editor last year, I had an entire document dedicated to large-scale Multimedia Package ideas, as I knew going into the year that generating pitches for larger projects had been an issue in the past. The current Features editors continue to use this document.
JUDGE PERSKY'S HIRE
After an insider source informed me of Stanford rapist Brock Turner's judge Aaron Persky's hire as the JV girls tennis coach at a nearby HS, I reached out to relevant sources, like the Varsity girls' tennis captain, petitioners, teachers, the Superintendent and the admin at Fremont Union High School District, to learn how the hiring took place, what the hiring protocols are for coaches, how the community is reacting (both in support of and against Persky). The resulting story is a long-form piece exploring the various facets of the event, and utilizes strong news-writing skills.
BEYOND THE BINARY
This 20-pages long, 10-part story took nearly seven months of investigation, interviewing, writing and editing, and explores what it means to be an intersex individual with a lack of medical autonomy. To do this piece justice, I interviewed intersex people from InterACT, an intersex rights organization, as well as India, and parents and surgeons from the East Coast. The story uses various Feature-writing components, including vivid imagery, strong and precise language and a lede that effectively connects this otherwise broad topic of intersex to the MVHS community. This story was widely shared by intersex rights organizations and translated into four languages.
ADMIN COMMENT CAUSES STIR AT MVHS
I approached this polarizing event with an open mind, first engaging in conversations with students, teachers, and counselors to piece together a general understanding of what had happened. I interviewed countless sources — including one alumni who had personally known the administrator, and the school principal — and inserted the administrator's written testimony to ensure that all sides of the issue were covered. This story won 2nd Place in JEANC for Breaking News Story (2019).
TAINTED HISTORIES
This column on the misportrayal of people of color in history textbooks uses my personal experience with falling out of my religion to show, rather than tell, the effects of the erasure of minority groups. The writing is purposefully anecdotal and imagery-based to grab the reader’s attention. Also, to ensure that the premise of my column resonates with a larger audience, I use statistics and facts to explain that this is truly a national, if not international, issue that transcends whatever I experienced. This story won Honorable Mention in JEANC for Column Writing (2019).
THE FACE OF ISLAM
This story attempts to shed light on the true nature of Islam, as communicated by the three main sources in the article, after the New Zealand mosque shooting. In this article, my co-reporter and I utilize a structure that relies more on transition paragraphs rather than the quotes, due to the sources repeating similar themes in their interviews. The resulting story is thus more concise and more powerful, grabbing the reader’s attention with an engaging, well-known hook and then maintaining that attention with the careful usage of the sources’ anecdotes. I now use this story as an example of a true on-the-ground reporting when giving lessons. This whole package won 5th place for NSPA "Multimedia Feature Story of the Year."
SILENCED
Since Monta Vista HS is based in the Bay Area, a largely liberal location, many of the stories El Estoque covers tend to be left-leaning. This story, which attempts to highlight the school’s minority conservative population who often feel ostracized by their peers or feel uncomfortable sharing their views, is an attempt to branch out of this bubble. Written almost entirely by me, the story contains three sources’ views and depends largely on anecdotal evidence, which is integrated into the transition paragraphs, to stay true to the individuals’ beliefs and to ensure that their views are correctly represented and not sensationalized.
RO KHANNA ON HIS VIEWS
Along with several other high school reporters in the Bay Area, I had the opportunity to interview Congressman Ro Khanna. The interview lasted nearly one and a half hours and lacked a concrete focus, giving me the idea to create a news brief that outlined his main policies on major issues. The resulting story is a synthesis of his viewpoints and relies heavily on quotes to ensure that Khanna’s words aren’t misinterpreted. Personally, this article is one of my favorites, because, coming from a feature-writing background, it taught me first-hand the importance of concision in news-based journalism.
NOTHING HIGHER THAN TRUTH
Despite living in a community with a high-Asian, and specifically high-Hindu, population, MVHS is not exempt from the factual inaccuracies and religious stereotypes often contained in history textbooks. Through this article, I seek to challenge this bias, which has pervaded the community for so long, and to highlight both the personal experiences of Hindu students as well as the work conducted by the Hindu American Foundation to create a curriculum that neither embellishes nor undermines the Hindu experience and promotes pluralism above all.
El Estoque stories
NOT SO EASY
In this column, I use my personal experiences to explain why overused platitudes of female empowerment oversimplify the feminist movement and what it means to be a true high-school-aged feminist. This story is extremely valuable to me because I put myself in a vulnerable position by vividly descriving in a letter-format the pushback I sometimes receive for being an out-and-loud feminist. I believe that this column is a good example of having a voice in writing, as I've been told from my readers that they could see my emotions and passion for the topic pouring through my words. This was published on Medium.
HUMAN FIRST, JOURNALIST SECOND
In this column, I recall the time I broke down crying in the middle of an interview about suicide, unable to separate my emotions and my humane side from my factual, straight-to-the-point journalistic self. Using the experience as a study case for journalism ethics, I ponder whether it is okay for journalists to sometimes display emotion and empathy towards their source, and even more broadly, what it means to be a student reporter. This story was published on Medium.
ONE FARMER'S STORY
On a trip to India two years ago, I met a farmer in my family village and proceeded to have a conversation with him about the irrigation system, the monsoons and the increased use of genetically modified organisms in the South Asian agricultural industry. Through our conversation, I came to learn that India has a significant problem with farmers committing suicide due to debt and other financial problems stemming from climate change and globalization issues. This story is a synthesis of his experiences and was published on Medium.
A DIRECT CONNECTION
Coming from a traditional Hindu family, like many other students in the Bay Area, I wrote this piece for the Hindu American Foundation exploring how different students maintain their connection with their faith and religion. The published story features three students, each with their own interpretations of their faith.