Got a tip for Olivia? Send story suggestions and ideas to her at: olivia@thepublicsradio.org. Ella habla español, lei parla italiano, и она говорит по-русски.
Maddie Mott: Tell me about your journalism career.
Olivia Ebertz: I started as a journalist two and a half years ago. I had been working in documentary film, making my own documentaries, and [was] also working on set in a more technical role. It takes so long to make a documentary, and I decided that I just wanted something that was a little quicker, a little more immediate. And then the pandemic hit, all sets shut down, films had shut down for like six months. It was a good moment to make the transition that I had been wanting to make for a while. I wanted to work in public radio. So I was applying everywhere, and then I saw jobs in Alaska. And Alaska was the only place where you could work without any experience. And I was like, okay, guess I’m moving to rural Alaska, something that I had never envisioned for myself. And I went, and it was magical. I [spent] almost two years working for a station in Bethel, Alaska, covering a mostly indigenous area, an area about the size of Louisiana, where our station was the only daily news station for that whole area. It was a news desert. And then, I worked at WNYC [as a producer] for Morning Edition for about six months. I really missed reporting, which I’d done in Alaska. So then I came here.
Mott: Can you talk to me about why you wanted to work in public radio in particular?
Ebertz: I wanted to do public radio because I really liked listening to it. And I really liked the idea of something being community-owned, and owned by the people who participate in it or who listen to it. I really like journalism that’s fueled [by] questions from community members, problems people have, questions they have, or [things] that they have no idea how to solve. I like being able to help answer that. And I think public radio, because of its presence in communities, is a good way for journalists to do that.
Mott: What do you like about audio storytelling?
Ebertz: I like it in a similar way to reading. When I’m listening to a really good story, I have a full visual in my mind of what’s happening. That’s creative and engaging. I like the way that it engages the listener. I think it can be, like, really intimate – like you’re talking directly to someone.
Mott: Is there one story you’ve covered or an interview you’ve done that has affected you the most or stands out to you the most?
Ebertz: I covered a lot of wild Pacific salmon population crashes in Alaska. The crash of the population is due to a lot of factors, but sort of the primary driver is climate change. And it’s really, really impacting the people who [have] lived traditional lifeways dependent on these salmon for thousands of years. The Yup’ik people, which is the ethnic group that I mainly covered, they literally call themselves like the salmon people – they consider salmon their relatives; they are salmon, and salmon is them. … So I felt so privileged to be able to understand the [Yup’ik] culture through [covering this story], but then it’s just been absolutely horrific watching the thing that gives people’s lives meaning completely deplete. Villages are just so different in the summer now – there used to be fish on every fish rack, neighborhoods would smell like smoke. That was the whole activity in the summer, the whole thing families structure their time around, and now that’s gone. What do you do? And food is so expensive out there. I think it could be the beginning of the end for a lot of these traditional villages.
Mott: What are you up to when you’re not recording? What do you want listeners to know about you?
Ebertz: I really like hanging out with friends, cooking – I used to work in food service for a few years after college. It’s how I relax, and [it’s] like very zen for me. I also really like doing most outdoor activities. I’m into hiking, the beach. Camping, definitely camping. Sea kayaking. I got a sea kayak during the pandemic. So that’s fun.
Click here to read some of Olivia’s latest reporting.
