NSPR news is growing! Join us in welcoming our newest reporter, Alec Stutson. Alec joins us from Colorado and has interned forNPR’s Invisibilia and reported for KBIA in Missouri. NSPR Senior Editor Adia White talked with Alec about what it’s like reporting in the North State.
Tell us a little bit more about where you're from and about yourself.
I grew up in Colorado and that's where I lived for most of my life. I went to school at the University of Missouri, in Columbia. I went to the journalism school there and got a degree in radio journalism. I also got a degree in literature with a minor in film studies. I interned for NPR's podcast Invisibilia, and I got my start anchoring a news magazine show for the student radio station in college.
And now I'm here! I have wanted to work as a NPR reporter, doing audio journalism and audio storytelling since I was a freshman in high school. This is kind of a dream job really, I love being able to work for a member station and be doing interesting and impactful, community journalism.
Do you have a specific moment where you fell in love with audio journalism?
My grandparents always had it on in the car. And so whenever I would go visit them growing up I would listen to whatever was on the local Colorado public radio station. When I got into high school, I discovered the world of podcasts. I fell in love with This American Life, and the world of long form audio storytelling. I'm really a huge podcast junkie, so that discovery was when I realized that there was an art form that I really liked and a type of storytelling that I really connected to.
What stories are you working on now?
I'm interested in covering the White Nose Syndrome epidemic that's ravaging the bat population of the US. It's kind of a big deal, especially because bats are a really big part of ecological systems, they are pest control. And so I want to look at what California parks are doing to prevent the spread of this disease, especially in the caves that we have around here.
And you recently finished your first story for NSPR. What was that story about?
That story was about the availability of homeless shelter beds here in Chico. It's coming up a lot in City Council, saying the city has x number of open beds and that unhoused people aren't pursuing them. So this piece was looking at some of the reasons why living in a shelter is not the right fit for everybody. And how there are some barriers to getting into their shelters that make it so that not everybody can stay even if some shelters have available beds.
Are there any other things you're interested in working on here at NSPR?
I'm just excited to learn what's important to our listeners. One thing I really love about member stations, in general, is the mix of nationwide programming that we syndicate, and the local news that is very much community-oriented journalism. So I'm just excited to see what stories are important to our listeners in the North State. And what parts of their world we can reflect or tell stories about.
Contact Alec Stutson at Alec.Stutson@mynspr.org and follow him on Twitter @AlecStutson