Welcome to my portfolio website

The sto­ry behind a storyteller

An inter­view with high school biol­o­gy teacher Mar­lee Mooney on the fem­i­nist move­ment of the 1980s turned a fic­tion writer into a jour­nal­ist. A list of ques­tions for a his­to­ry class evolved into a con­ver­sa­tion dri­ven by gen­uine curios­i­ty, and that was the moment I learned I want­ed to pur­sue journalism. 

I began by writ­ing for the news sec­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut news­pa­per, The Dai­ly Cam­pus, with no expe­ri­ence in report­ing. I nev­er expect­ed I would end up being the news direc­tor for WHUS Radio. With that posi­tion, I worked to bring the news depart­ment back on the air after a two-year hia­tus, start­ing Husky Nation News, a FM broad­cast and pod­cast. All the while, I con­tin­ued to write sto­ries and edit audio for the radio station.

In addi­tion to report­ing for WHUS, I host­ed a show called “The Fan­ta­sy Realm: Inter­ac­tive Sto­ry­telling with WHUS” where I wrote orig­i­nal sto­ries and read them on the air along with curat­ed playlists. I took cours­es for my jour­nal­ism and French majors, I was the edi­to­r­i­al direc­tor for the Spoon Uni­ver­si­ty UConn chap­ter and I was the pres­i­dent for the UConn Coali­tion of Writ­ers. I plan to con­tin­ue seek­ing intrigu­ing con­ver­sa­tions that will inspire me to write more sto­ries. Explore this web­site to see my accom­plish­ments and expe­ri­ences thus far.

The sound behind the radio broadcaster

When I began my posi­tion as WHUS Radio news direc­tor in Novem­ber 2017, my biggest goal for the news depart­ment was to bring it back onto the FM broad­cast. Before I took on the posi­tion, we only pro­duced online con­tent. The news depart­ment lost inter­est­ed mem­bers, so much so that the depart­ment was pro­duc­ing no con­tent and the news direc­tor posi­tion no longer had a place on the gov­ern­ing board.

After anoth­er UConn stu­dent renewed inter­est in news and laid the foun­da­tion for the depart­ment, I took the next step as the new news direc­tor and got us back on the air. With recruit­ment, mem­ber­ship retain­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion with mul­ti­ple depart­ments in the sta­tion as well as orga­ni­za­tions at UConn, I was able to get us a week­ly show on the air ded­i­cat­ed to the news. The idea was to have a seg­ment in which we read news sto­ries, and a seg­ment for an inter­view where mem­bers could prac­tice their inter­view­ing skills.

With that, Husky Nation News was born. As the pro­duc­er of the show, I select­ed the sto­ries that we cov­ered on the show. I reviewed and edit­ed the host’s script. I cre­at­ed a sched­ule for the semes­ter. I super­vised the show dur­ing its record­ing, whether it was pre-record­ed or live, to fix any tech­ni­cal issues that may have occurred. I also edit­ed the audio file and wrote the sum­ma­ry for each pod­cast episode post­ed on whus.org and on the iTunes pod­cast­ing app.

For the first semes­ter, the WHUS News Team con­sist­ed of four mem­bers, includ­ing myself. After great suc­cess with the show, more news depart­ment mem­bers were inter­est­ed in join­ing. The next semes­ter, we had sev­en co-hosts. By click­ing on the graph­ic below, you can lis­ten to one of the episodes I host­ed and produced. 

Graph­ic cre­at­ed by Isabelle Geller.

Husky Nation News: Episode 16

Host­ed by Daniela Don­cel | Aired on 91.7 FM on Jan­u­ary 25, 2019 | WHUS Radio, News Direc­tor and Reporter

For the news, we cov­ered UConn Pres­i­dent Susan Herb­st last “wel­come back” as pres­i­dent, six burst pipes across cam­pus, new leg­is­la­tion mak­ing fund­ing for stu­dent clubs eas­i­er, the store Amazon@Storrs’ clo­sure mak­ing stu­dents unhap­py, de-icers across cam­pus mak­ing rivers salti­er and more acidic, brown paper bags replac­ing plas­tic bags at Storrs and the UConn sky­div­ing team win­ning gold at a para­chut­ing championship.

Tomb Raider Suite com­pos­er Nathan McCree joined us in the stu­dio to talk about the music of the Tomb Raider games, the dif­fi­cul­ties in fund­ing the project, his thoughts on the new theme for Tomb Raider writ­ten by Jason Graves and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a theme being writ­ten for beloved but­ler, Winston. 

View oth­er Husky Nation News episodes here.

To see more of my work, go to the port­fo­lio sec­tion of this website.

Con­nect with me

Select the port­fo­lio tab, the resume tab or the about tab for more information.

If you wish to con­tact me, email me at danielaandreadoncel@gmail.com. I typ­i­cal­ly respond with­in 24 hours.

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