Bay City News Foundation supports the next generation of journalists with year-round internships and training. We work with San Francisco State, San Jose State, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, CUNY, Columbia University, Yale and others to train and mentor students so they have a professional path toward journalism jobs. We also partner with the Emma Bowen Foundation and Dow Jones News Fund to identify high-potential candidates. A generous seed donation from the Hogan-Newton Fund at the Miami Foundation is helping to “turbocharge” this program by giving substantive mentoring to these interns and we are also grateful to the Arjay and Frances Miller Trust and the Rebele Internship Program for support. Contact us if you are interested in applying for an internship. Donate here.
2023 Interns
Welcome the 2023 interns at Bay City News Foundation.
Catherine Allen
Catherine Allen is a data intern through the Dow Jones News Fund. She is a rising senior at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, with a major in journalism and minor in statistics. Catherine previously served as editor in chief of Mustang News, Cal Poly’s multimedia news organization. She is passionate about public policy’s impact on communities and individuals and often writes about housing and homelessness, public health and politics.
Benjamin Coleman
Benjamin Coleman is a recent graduate from UC Berkeley where he triple-majored in English, Political Science and Legal Studies with a Journalism minor. Benjamin spent four years as a sports reporter, podcast producer and sports editor for the Daily Californian. Benjamin joins Bay City News as a Dow Jones News Fund digital media intern. In his free time Benjamin is passionate about reading, watching movies and spending time outside.
Deidre Foley
Deidre Foley is an intern at Bay City News and an MA candidate at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she specializes in data journalism and health & science reporting. Previously she was managing editor for the San Francisco Foghorn and has bylines in the NYCity News Service, Byklner and the Nagazasshi. Deidre is interested in using data and visuals to tell social justice and human interest stories.
Helena Getahun-Hawkins
Helena Getahun-Hawkins is an intern at Bay City News through Stanford’s Rebele Fellowship. She’s a rising junior at Stanford majoring in International Relations and minoring in Spanish. She writes for The Stanford Daily under the campus life desk and was most recently managing editor of the Daily’s podcast section. She enjoys covering stories that center around education policy, immigration policy, and identity. Outside of journalism she enjoys drawing, yoga, listening to music, and watching TV.
Spencer Otte
Spencer Otte recently graduated from Cal Sate Fullerton, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. At Fullerton, he was the news editor and editor-in-chief of The Daily Titan and covered the 2022 midterm elections, the 2021 Orange County Oil Spill and President Biden’s visit to Irvine. This summer, Spencer was selected to be an editing intern through the Dow Jones News Fund.
Lydia Sidhom
Lydia Sidhom is a rising third-year at UC Berkeley studying Data Science and Political Science. She is a Dow Jones News Fund intern for Bay City News. Lydia was a lead beat reporter, deputy news editor and projects developer for The Daily Californian and will be a deputy projects editor there this fall. She enjoys telling stories through data. In her free time, Lydia loves to read, bake and travel.
Prachi Singh
Prachi is a Dow Jones News Fund intern at Bay City News. She is a journalism graduate from University of Southern California. She previously worked at Annenberg Media as a Multimedia Journalist and the Managing Editor. Prachi has covered social justice, climate and human interest stories. She is interested in written and visual storytelling.
Nibras Suliman
Nibras is an intern at Bay City News through the Emma Bowen Foundation. She is a rising senior at the University of California, Berkeley, studying Media and Data Science. She is passionate about the intersection of data and journalism and previously served as the deputy editor of the data department at the Daily Californian. She spends much of her time reading and writing and is always looking for ways to support local, community-based organizing efforts.
Charles Wellington Ayitey
Charles is a Knight Foundation intern at Bay City News and a Master of Journalist candidate at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He freelanced for Oakland Side and Oakland North on race, equity, and health outcomes in the Bay Area. Before his graduate studies, Charles worked as a Business reporter in Ghana, West Africa, covering financial markets and rising startups. At Bay City News, he is interested in reporting on public health and the intersections of race and equity in the Bay Area.
Past Interns (2018-2022)
Internships are an important way to give emerging journalists the practical experience they need to learn skills, try out the craft and build the basics of what could become a lifelong career. Bay City News is committed to providing internships to students at different ages and stages of their studies. We have provided a variety of breaking news and enterprise experience and also encouraged interns to take on a bigger project to set their portfolios apart. We have provided opportunities for 41 interns since the program began in 2018. They include:
Molly Burke
Molly Burke is an intern on the data team at Bay City News. She is studying investigative journalism at Northwestern University. She has previously covered breaking news for The Sacramento Bee and The Denver Post. Molly has also worked on investigative projects surrounding no-knock warrants and nursing home deaths through the Medill Investigative Lab and The Washington Post.
Astrid Casimire
Astrid Casimire was a summer 2020 intern for Bay City News covering equity issues, the coronavirus pandemic and breaking news in San Mateo County. She graduated from Stanford University’s journalism program in 2020 and has written for The Stanford Daily, Peninsula Press, and the Trinidad Express Newspaper. She currently lives in East Palo Alto and was hired as a full-time reporter for Bay City News Foundation in 2020.
Kasey Carlson
Kasey Carlson, a journalism graduate from the University of Missouri, worked at BCN in the summer of 2019. She did stories on crime, fires, civic affairs and court hearings about a local journalist whose home was illegally raided by police. She went on to take an assistant editor job at Feast Magazine in St. Louis, MO.
Isaac Ceja
Isaac Ceja is currently a 2nd year student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism with a concentration in photojournalism. He has experience shooting studio and field portraits, sporting teams like the Oakland Roots and is currently working on a photo project about 924 Gilman in Berkeley. Outside of journalism he enjoys trying new restaurants, playing guitar and watching movies.
Mark Allen Cu
Mark Allen Cu is a current first-year student at Stanford University studying Communication and International Relations. Growing up on the San Diego-Tijuana border, Mark specializes in telling underreported stories about culture, identity, and world politics. Along with being a BCN intern, he is also a staff writer at The Stanford Daily and a regular contributor to local publications in San Diego and the Bay Area. His interests outside of journalism include photography, listening to R&B, and supporting small businesses.
Christine Delianne
Christine Delianne was a rising junior at Stanford University when she joined Bay City News in the summer of 2021. She was The Stanford Daily’s equity reporter for the news section and an editor for The Grind, the personal narrative section. She’s also an avid runner and the most-cutthroat Family Feud host you’ll ever meet.
Ally Dickson
Ally Dickson is a rising junior journalism student at New York University. She is originally from Los Altos, CA. Ally is also majoring in International Relations. Last semester, Ally started writing for her school paper, Washington Square News at the News Desk. She covered stories including the Admissions tours being harassed and Climate Change Protests around New York City. In addition to the school paper, she is a part of the French club and enjoys working as a hostess.
Mengyuan Dong
Mengyuan Dong is a first-year grad student at UC Berkeley, where she’s pursuing her master’s degree in journalism. Originally from Beijing, China, Mengyuan has interned at Chinese news outlets covering COVID-19, environment and global issues and produced data-driven stories. She also gained reporting experience at UT Austin as a news reporter for The Daily Texan when she was an undergrad there. Mengyuan’s interests include environmental issues, public health and social justice. She is excited to learn more about breaking news coverage and using data to make stories more engaging.
Ugur Dursun
Ugur Dursun, as a student at Stanford University, worked for two summers at BCN, in 2019 and 2020 before joining the staff. They worked on covering breaking news and curating social media for Bay City News, Bay City News Foundation and LocalNewsMatters. Their special project was to help create the site’s COVID-19 Information Hub to keep Bay Area residents informed about the pandemic.
Joe Dworetzky
Joe Dworetzky was a second career intern at the Bay City News Foundation in the fall of 2020. He practiced law in Philadelphia for more than 35 years, representing private and governmental clients in commercial litigation and insolvency proceedings. Joe served as City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia under Mayor Ed Rendell and from 2009 to 2013 was one of five members of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission with responsibility for managing the city’s 250 public schools. He moved to San Francisco in 2011 and began writing fiction and pursuing a lifelong interest in editorial cartooning. Joe earned a Master’s in Journalism from Stanford University in 2020. He was hired by BCN Foundation in 2021 to cover legal affairs, write about local culture and work on a cartooning project.
Paige Ellis
Paige Ellis worked as an intern for Bay City News in the summers of 2021 and 2022 prior to entering her junior year at UCSB. She worked on social media platforms for Local News Matters and a geotagging mapping project to help identify areas that need more coverage in the region. In her studies at UCSB, she is a communications major with an emphasis in journalism. She has a strong interest in culture, arts, and social justice.
Diego Felix
Diego Felix was an intern in 2020 while also pursuing studies in journalism and criminal justice at San Francisco State University. Hailing from the East Bay, Diego hopes to become a sports reporter. He has always been fascinated by criminology. His work at BCN included breaking news reporting and writing.
Tilly Friedlander
Tilly Friedlander, a junior at UCLA, worked for a full summer at BCN in 2020. In addition to writing breaking news and stories about the North Bay, Tilly helped to build the COVID-19 Information Hub and wrote stories about equity issues in the community and inspiring efforts to help each other during the pandemic.
Alexandra Jade Garcia
Alexandra Jade Garcia is a current sophomore at UC Berkeley studying Society & Environment. Her experience growing up in the South Bay Area has been formative to her passion for social and environmental justice. She is interested in climate change portrayal in the media; especially on how it builds community resilience. Through her internship with Bay City News, she is very excited to explore the world of reporting.
Olivia Green
Olivia Green is a senior multimedia communications student concentrating in journalism at Howard University. She’s worked as a feature reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and Howard’s The Hilltop, and has managed social media accounts for other campus organizations. Most recently, Green worked with the American Urban Radio Network as a White House correspondent intern. Olivia’s experience in print, radio broadcast, and social media has only encouraged her passion for storytelling. She looks forward to expanding her skills with Bay City News
Jackson Guilfoil
Jackson Guilfoil was a Bay City News intern in 2021, writing about news and features for the newswire and Local News Matters. He earned his degree at UC Santa Barbara, where he wrote for the Daily Nexus, covering a variety of beats from labor issues to student resources. Jackson also wrote for OC Weekly, a hell-raising Orange County alt-weekly famous for stories which exposed unethical behaviors from elected officials during its runtime from 1995 to 2019. He also wrote for UC Berkeley’s student newspaper the Daily Californian and the Tenderloin Tribune, his own project.
Victoria Hsieh
Victoria Hsieh was a sophomore at Stanford University while working as an intern at BCN. She has been studying computer science. She has a strong interest in health equity and mental health advocacy and currently writes for her school paper The Stanford Daily.
Thomas Hughes
Thomas grew up in San Diego in the late 20th century and later earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Global Studies from CSUMB. He spent 5 years as a local broadcast journalist on California’s Central Coast, covering local news and hosting talk shows focusing on global press freedom. He is currently earning a Master’s in Journalism from Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY in New York City. Thomas enjoys basketball, comedy, and turtles.
Rya Jetha
Rya Sara Jetha is a summer 2022 business reporting intern at BCN through the Dow Jones News Fund. She is a rising senior at Pomona College studying history and politics. She interned at The Indian Express in Mumbai and writes for The Student Life, the newspaper of the Claremont Colleges.
Jana Kadah
Jana Kadah was a San Jose-based intern covering the South Bay in the summer of 2020. Before coming to Bay City News, she reported on the refugee crisis in Greece and Italy in Arabic and worked as the managing editor for San Jose State’s daily newspaper, Spartan Daily. From that year, she won first place in best newspaper at the California College Media Awards and received first place for Enterprise News Story from the California News Publishers Association in 2019. She is passionate about racial justice, inequity and local politics. She was hired as a full-time reporter for Bay City News Foundation and later joined San Jose Spotlight.
Dania Kalaji
Dania Kalaji is a rising senior at the University of Georgia in Athens studying journalism and minoring in film studies. An award-winning journalist, she will be a Dow Jones News Fund copy editing and multimedia intern with BCNF and Local News Matters, where she will coordinate social media, create news packages and report. Kalaji is the digital managing editor of The Red & Black, UGA’s independent student newspaper. She was previously the assistant news desk editor and reporter, and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion chair. Kalaji previously worked for the Pensacola News Journal with Gannett, the USA Today Network and was Freedom Forum Chips Quinn Diversity in Journalism Scholar. Currently, she is an ambassador of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Stephanie Lam
Stephanie Lam was a 2021 summer intern for Bay City News while working toward a journalism degree at San Jose State University, where she was the assistant news editor for the student run newspaper, Spartan Daily. She is interested in reporting on local issues and learning more about how communities are adjusting to life in the pandemic. She helped with the wire service at Bay City News and wrote feature stories for Local News Matters.
Samantha Laurey
Samantha Laurey, a student at San Francisco State University, worked during 2020 to help document Martinez and parts of Contra Costa County with photographs that were published on Bay City News and LocalNewsMatters. She also did feature assignments like the SF Chinese New Year’s parade. Samantha continued her college studies, becoming Visuals Editor for the Golden Gate Xpress and a photo intern for the SF Examiner.
Camille Legendre
Camille Legendre joined the Bay City News team in 2020 as an intern on the overnight shift, writing and editing breaking news. She also curated stories from Local News Matters and news partners such as EdSource and San Jose Spotlight. She is a true Bay Area native, having lived in Emeryville, Oakland and San Francisco. She recently graduated from New York University Shanghai and is entering law school. She has a passion for traveling and in
Nuria Marquez Martinez
Nuria Marquez Martinez, a graduate of the UCB graduate journalism program, worked at BCN in 2018 and 2019. She did a variety of breaking news shifts and also worked on a package about non-citizens voting in the 2018 San Francisco school board election. She went on to become an editorial fellow at Mother Jones, an intern at NPR in Washington, D.C., and an associate producer at Axios.
Cash Martinez
Cash Martinez was a student journalist at San Francisco State University during their fall 2020 internship. They covered education, local politics, and LGBTQ+ issues in the North Bay. In the past, they have written for the Press Democrat, Sonoma Magazine, and the Bohemian. Martinez served on the SF State Journalism Student Advisory Board and was the founding president of the SF State chapter of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.
Megan Munce
Megan Munce was a Bay City News intern through the Emma Bowen Foundation in summer 2021 while a rising senior at Northwestern University studying journalism and political science. She served on Daily Northwestern’s editorial board for two years, covering student activism and pandemic recovery as the paper’s campus editor, and was awarded a regional Mark of Excellence Award in General News Reporting in 2021 for her coverage of students’ difficulties with mail-in voting. She also covered the 2021 Texas state legislative session as a reporting fellow for The Texas Tribune.
Claudia Russell
Claudia Russell was a senior at Head-Royce School in Oakland when she worked as an intern for BCN in 2018. Her special project was to create a comprehensive database of regional public agencies and public information officers to help the entire team with reporting resources.
Kate Selig
Kate Selig was a winter 2020 intern for BCN, writing a series of profiles about arts organizations and nonprofits published on Local News Matters. She was a rising sophomore at Stanford who took a year off to pursue journalism internships. She served as The Stanford Daily’s news managing editor and previously covered sports and politics for The Harvard Press and environmental news for the blog “… & the West.” She’s passionate about covering issues of equity and is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association and NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.
Rebecca Smith
Rebecca Smith is a rising senior at UC Berkeley where she is studying Political Science and Journalism. She is passionate about multimedia journalism and local news. Before coming to Bay City News, Rebecca worked in public radio at KQED and was the News Director for Cal’s broadcast journalism club, CalTV. She has a strong interest in covering local politics, education, breaking news and crime.
Annie Steuart
Annie Steuart, a graduate of Head-Royce School, worked for a summer at BCN between high school and college in 2018. She wrote a lot of stories about Bay Area events, news and nonprofits. She entered Kenyon College as a freshman in fall 2019.
Olivia Wynkoop
Olivia Wynkoop was a student journalist at San Francisco State University, originally from Dixon, California. She’s been managing editor, social media editor and reporter for her university’s student-run paper, Golden Gate Xpress. She also previously interned at the San Francisco Examiner and News Break. She has a flare for local politics and Bay Area-based human interest stories. After her internship at Bay City News, Olivia was in 2021 hired as a swing shift editor at the company.