Field Notes: The Media School Travel Blog

My first stop on the Chicago Career Trek was WBEZ, the Chicago NPR affiliate. As a lover of NPR, I was excited.

We collectively trekked down the Navy Pier where the office is located. Navy Pier is a pretty cool place to work, and the office itself was beautiful. It boasts colorful murals and an open-concept newsroom, where journalists chatted excitedly about that day’s news.

Our tour guide was IU alumna Araceli Gomez-Aldana, BAJ’13, a news producer for the station. She arrives at the office by 5 a.m. each day, which gives her a chance to watch the sun rise.

She gave us a tour of the modern-styled station and also took us into one of the studios. Students took turns reading a script, trying their hand at their best radio voice. I have been in some radio booths before, but none as large or with as much advanced technology.

Afterward, she took us to a conference room and talked about her career path and answered our questions. I learned a lot about storytelling in audio form.

Gomez-Aldana said the story she is most proud of so far in her time at WBEZ is one she did on a Latino artist at a local music festival. She said she created it fairly quickly, but she was able to get the rights to the artist’s music and weave it throughout the piece.

I have mainly focused on print media thus far in my time at IU, but this experience made me want to explore audio more.