Editors’ note: This week, we’re welcoming SPLC’s fall interns, Samantha Sunne and Samantha Vicent (that’s not confusing at all, right?). The two will be covering news affecting student media through December, and we’re so excited to have the chance to work with them. Below, meet Sunne:
I am hugely excited to join the SPLC in fight for greater transparency, information access and press freedom this fall. As a student reporter at The Columbia Missourian, I often ran up against misused FERPA regulations, tight-lipped university officials and other obstacles while investigating stories on the crime beat. The SPLC helped me with several projects in the past, so I feel honored to give back by helping other students overcome the same obstacles I faced.
I’m also delighted to return to Washington, D.C., after a summer internship with the Investigative Reporting Workshop. I recently graduated with a degree in multimedia and investigative journalism from the University of Missouri, where I won a couple awards at the student newspaper The Maneater. Columbia, Missouri, (surprisingly) attracts a large number of innovative journalism projects, and I was excited to work with a few, like DocumentCloud and IRE/NICAR.
I was also an enthusiastic member of Hacks/Hackers-IRE. I remain an organizer for the Hacks/Hackers chapter in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I spent a semester interning for a Latin American press freedom group. This is a catalystic time for journalism and technology in the Spanish-speaking world, and it was a blast to participate in the explosive growth of data analysis, app development and other exciting innovations.
In my free time I tend to read a lot, explore whichever city I might be in at the moment, and bake more desserts than me and my roommates know what to do with. I also travel a lot, or try to, so I’m always plotting out some trip or other. Please feel free to get in touch via ssunne@splc.org, @SamanthaSunne, or my blog, www.SamanthaSunne.com.