2008 NABJ Allison E. Fisher Scholarship Recipient

Angela Joy Bass Biography

Angela Joy Bass is a native of Oakland, California. She is studying for her Master's in Journalism at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. She will graduate in May 2010.

Angela used writing and activism as personal empowerment tools in her teens against the social issues that persistently ravaged her community. Her need for and love of creative written expression led her to San Francisco State University's creative writing program, where she learned how to merge distinct writing elements, and to stand up for her own voice.

While working as a community reporter in 2003 for CityFlight Newsmagazine, a Bay Area Afrocentric monthly, Bass interviewed a human rights activist who told her that anything, even journalism, could be used as a tool for positive social change. Soon after, she began to identify as an international human rights journalist with a major focus on issues impacting women, girls, and people of color.

From homelessness to homicides, Bass transcribed the scenes she witnessed in her often chaotic hometown. Her diaries and notebooks were filled with related poems, fiction, and mock news articles complete with quotes from friends and teachers. By college, she developed a stronger desire to write for wider audiences concerning issues that still plagued her life and community, which led her to the world of freelance human rights journalism.

Reporting on racial workplace discrimination in California hospitals for Bay Area Business Woman News allowed her to inform readers of how the problem adversely impacts the entire healthcare system, not just nurses and patients of color. She also learned how to balance the emotional and technical sides of covering complex social issues. With one ear, she listened to personal stories of pain; with the other, for compelling quotes.

Bass has always possessed the spirit of one who expects to affect positive social change. She gravitated to the Black Student Union (BSU) during her sophomore year of college, where she co-worked to mobilize the student body for positive change on and off campus.

Through BSU, she found her way to Oakland's Ella Baker Center for Human Rights (EBC), and joined their youth organization, 510 Connection (now Silence the Violence). EBC exposed her to various empowerment strategies, such as practicing conflict resolution to quell turf wars between east, west, and north Oakland youth; rallying downtown at city hall against the construction of a new juvenile detention center; and creating anti-violence art and music.

Social change organizations helped broaden her views on issues and their solutions, but what initially drew her to activism—the foundation of her journalistic work today—was a need to counter the instances during which she felt vocally, economically, and educationally disempowered.

"I feared living a marginalized life of voicelessness, poverty, and ignorance," she says. "Undercurrents of condoned sexual violence in my community also motivated me to find my voice against it all. And it motivated me to inform other women and girls of color how to combat these issues as well."

In late-2007, Bass completed the news internship at KPFA Radio in Berkeley, which led to an unpaid position as a Saturday evening news reporter, where she produced stories on such topics as female genital mutilation, political unrest in Pakistan, and the systematic killing of women and girls in Latin America known as femicide. Covering such issues gave her the chance to again merge journalism with activism, bringing her closer to her goal of becoming an international human rights journalist.

As a teen, she was drawn to the hip-but-intelligent newsweekly, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, and pored over the latest issues during early morning train rides to school. In May 2007, she completed The Guardian's five-month editorial news internship, during which she contributed feature articles and women's resource lists, covered press conferences on human trafficking and the city's ban on alcohol at street fairs, and assisted the investigative reporter with research.

Freelancing for Oakland Magazine and the San Francisco Bay View helped to define her personal writing style, while her stint in September 2007 as a reporter at the small-town Martinez News-Gazette exposed her to the rigors of daily newspaper reporting.

After years of devouring magazines, Bass finally came full-circle when she began working as a full-time editorial intern in November 2007 at Via Magazine, the west coast's AAA travel publication. There, she participated in the daily operations of a 3.5 million-circulation publication—from story conception and stages of editing, to cover design and fact-checking.

Although proud of her accomplishments, her purpose never rests. Each experience has increased her skills and confidence a thousandfold as a journalist today. But tomorrow, she sees herself reporting from Guatemala on femicide for National Geographic and National Public Radio. Her enduring purpose is to confront human rights abuses by kindling awareness, social responsibility, and action across every demographic via journalism.

Like the human rights activist she interviewed three and a half years ago, she hopes her work will benefit all of humanity, even if just by giving others something to think about. To achieve this, she has chosen to take her skills to the next level by studying for her Master's in Journalism at UC Berkeley's Graduate School Journalism. She will graduate in May 2010.