As Audience Engagement Intern at Oakland Voices, Ashley Dong aims to engage and meet the Oakland community where they are.
Dong is a rising junior at Northwestern University and joins Oakland Voices through the Dow Jones News Fund.
She started journalism in high school, and continued at The Daily Northwestern where she does photojournalism, feature writing, metro news reporting, and was a Social Media Manager. Dong also runs social media for the Vincent Chin Institute. She aims to bring the skills she’s learned to Oakland Voices.
“Doing audience engagement and social media at Oakland Voices iskind of a fun experiment for me in a way,” Dong said.
Dong aims to work on a few projects this summer, one being search engine optimization, or SEO, to increase Oakland Voice’s content visibility in search engines. Her other projects include creating social posts on news content and experimenting with storytelling on social media accounts using graphics and images.
She defines herself as someone who is more of a traditional print journalist. Being able to work on news stories solely for social media has pushed her “own comfort zones” and her understanding of journalism. It allowed Dong to think more creatively, teaching her how useful it can be.
Being a part of a local outlet, Dong sees the potential that Oakland Voices has and the ways it can grow. Recently, she tabled at the Temescal Street Fair with Oakland Voices Director Rasheed Shabazz where they spoke to community members, many of whom expressed how much they love their city and its uniqueness.
“It’s been really cool because my role as audience engagement is to try to tap into that,” Dong said. “Because Oakland cares so much about its community, a lot of people want to see our coverage, so I’m doing whatever I can to try to put us out there.”
Dong believes this to be a “cool challenge,” having the opportunity to explore which may not have been possible at a more established newspaper.
Dong aims to get their content out there and gain traction to community responses. She does work that aims to get a positive response from the community of Oakland and in a way that she hopes they want to be represented.
“Yes, we’re a tiny newsroom, but that just means there’s a lot of space for us interns to grow and take initiative in trying new things,” Dong said. “That is what makes working at a small paper like this so exciting.”
Editor’s Note: Every summer, Oakland Voices invests in emerging journalists. They report on Oakland communities while learning community journalism. Support from readers and donors helps make this work possible.
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