Every summer, a selected group of students comes together with professionals from around the region and the nation for NPR Next Generation Nevada Bootcamp. The boot camp is a week-long journalism training project for college students that emphasizes digital storytelling. This year, the NPR Next Generation Nevada Bootcamp program at the Reynolds School of Journalism welcomes seven bright, young journalists. Meet the 2018 NPR Next Generation Nevada cohort.
Lauren Bain
Lauren Bain is a senior at the Reynolds School of Journalism and has a dual major in French. She’s hoping to report on the diverse perspectives and unique insights that can only be found in the northern Nevada community during her time in the NPR Next Generation Bootcamp. Lauren is also looking forward to gaining a better understanding of audio storytelling with the help of her professional mentors during the week-long intensive training.
Taylor Caldwell
Taylor Caldwell is a senior at the Reynolds School who will be graduating in December 2018 with degrees in both journalism and international affairs. She has always dreamed of reporting for NPR. Taylor hopes to walk away from the boot camp with a deeper understanding of how to use a subject’s own voice as a means of storytelling in a professional and compelling way. She’s most excited to work alongside her friends, experienced professionals and her favorite professors at the boot camp.
Karina Gonzalez
Karina Gonzalez is a senior at the Reynolds School with an emphasis in news and broadcast. She knows that great video requires great audio. She looks forward to the boot camp as an opportunity to improve her audio production skills in order to bring her work in video to the next level. Karina hopes that the boot camp will also help prepare her for her summer internship with KUNR’s bilingual journalism program.
Taylor Harkrader
Taylor Harkrader is a senior at the Reynolds School with an emphasis in broadcast journalism and a minor in videography / time-related media. In her time at the Reynolds School, Taylor has focused on photography and videography. She hopes that participating in the boot camp will help her become a more well-rounded journalist and broaden her job prospects in the future.
Jazmin Orozco-Rodriguez
Jazmin Orozco-Rodriguez is a journalism and Spanish dual-major with an emphasis in news. Jazmin hopes to one-day document stories that impact the nation’s Latino community and is most excited to meet her mentor for the boot camp, who does just that. During the program, she hopes to build her relationship with the journalism community outside of the Reynolds School as well as build her skill set as a journalist.
Christian Romero
Christian Romero is a senior at the Reynolds School who loves anything and everything about podcasts. Not only is he an avid listener, but he also likes creating his own. He hopes that the NPR Next Generation Nevada Bootcamp will help him build both his editing and audio storytelling skills. Eventually, Christian hopes to be a professional podcaster, bringing information about technology, video games and music to listeners across the country.
Jana Sayson
Jana Sayson is an incoming senior with an emphasis in visual communications, who is working on honing her craft through all forms of multimedia. Jana became interested in participating in the boot camp as a way to challenge herself to create quality content while being able to be mentored by professionals in the field. She hopes that this experience will be one of many that will help open the door to the professional journalism industry.
