Bella Liu figured out early that she was going to be a writer. What took longer was deciding what kind.
Growing up in San Diego in a house full of books, she imagined writing fiction.
After becoming interested in politics and joining her high school newsmagazine, she found journalism.
“I liked being a documenter of the moment,” she said. “The story writes itself. I’m not making anything up.”
Liu is a rising senior at UC Berkeley. She studies English, media studies, and journalism. She writes for the Daily Californian and serves as the e news director at CalTV, producing video stories about city and campus politics.
Liu joined Oakland Voices through the Dow Jones News Fund, a nonprofit which places college journalists in newsroom internships. Before arriving in Oakland, she completed a week of business-reporting training in Washington,D.C. focused on financial documents, government, and labor policy.
That turned out to matter less than where she landed.
At Oakland Voices, a program of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, which trains people to report on communities where they live and work, Liu embraced hyperlocal journalism, and meant the term as a compliment.
“Getting to know one smaller area really intimately has actually been super beneficial,” she said. “It forces me to scour deeper for stories and get to talk to people more to know things better.”
That approach produced a feature on the Charlotte Maxwell Clinic, which serves low-income women with cancer, and stories about Friday nights at the Oakland Museum of California and a multicultural folk theater troupe.
The beat has changed how she reports. She now asks organizations what organizations gain from free events and why museums open their doors. Following the money became a reflex, and a way to learn more about the Town than she knew. Liu had lived in Berkeley for three years and spent most of her free time across the bay in San Francisco.
Her bigger discovery was Oakland’s arts scene. Liu found creative communities that she otherwise might have never encountered.
Her recent stories about Fairyland for Grownups and the Anti-Lands music festival continued her exploration of Oakland’s cultural economy. Her goal for the summer is to publish ten stories.
Expanding the business beat
“Arts and culture, I think that is a business,” Liu said. “It’s a tight economy, and yet people are still spending money on art and things like that. What does that say about people?”
Liu hopes the next reporter has the same freedom to follow what’s happening in Oakland than to start with a fixed definition of business news.
After graduating in May 2027, Liu hopes to continue reporting – ideally in New York – and continue doing this kind of reporting.
“I could learn to be super passionate about anything,” she said.
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