Please say hello to The News Tribune’s summer news intern, journalist Julia Park

Greetings, Tacoma and Pierce County! I’m Julia Park, and I’ll be an intern reporter at The News Tribune this summer.

I’m a recent graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle, where I double majored in English literature/language and journalism. I also minored in Korean and spent a semester studying abroad in Seoul.

I grew up in the Puget Sound region. I’ve spent most of my life in Bellevue.

I got into journalism when I started working for The Daily, our student newspaper, my freshman year of college. I grew up loving to read and write and wanted to give journalism a shot. After starting out writing for our arts and leisure sections, I moved on to become primarily a news reporter covering the University District neighborhood of Seattle for two quarters and working on occasional human-interest features for our quarterly special editions and Pacific Wave magazine.

My senior year, I freelanced for the South Seattle Emerald, a local online news outlet that primarily covers news in South Seattle neighborhoods such as Rainier Valley and Columbia City and puts a special focus on covering communities of color and social justice issues. I was there doing coverage for the Emerald along with reporters from The Daily when students at the University of Washington set up an encampment on campus to support Palestine and protest the university’s response to the Israel-Hamas war. Covering those protests together, sometimes in the night, helped cement a sense of community among student journalists at UW as we looked out for each other when reporting on tense interactions between protesters and counter protesters.

I also interned for Cascade PBS, formerly known as Crosscut, this past spring and contributed content for the outlet’s 2024 Voter Guide, writing biographical summaries of candidates running for office in the state and for Congress this election cycle. I also published stories on the delayed roll out of the 2024-2025 FAFSA and literary translators in Seattle.

Community journalism is important to me because I’ve found it so personally enriching. Learning about the issues that impact others has helped me see beyond my own bubble and feel connected to the community around me. I’ve found that some of the best stories come from stopping to notice little things that make me question or wonder: How will this impact someone else in a big way?

Connecting across differences is something very personal to me, as I grew up in a multicultural family where my grandparents passed down their Korean heritage in part by telling stories about their immigration journeys. That gave me a value for listening to others’ experiences and then recording them as a way of deepening meaningful relationships.

I hope the stories I write this summer help you feel more connected to your community.

Got a tip for a story? Contact me anytime via email at jpark@thenewstribune.com or @thejuliastory on X.