Katherine Li Email and Phone Number

I started out with this program as part of the California Reporting Project on police accountability. I prepared reporting memos, did research, filed FOIA requests, and combed through police reports to generate data driven story ideas. Then I was part of the open source investigative reporting team, that spent a year on a story about how the Brazilian beef and its international supply chain has directly contributed to violence on indigenous people in Brazil. We learned how to Boolean search, crowd source from social media, and geolocate. Meanwhile, I pitched my own investigative story idea to the program, about water issues in Northern California and the struggle when it comes to reservoirs. My pitch was accepted and I am approaching the goal of completing it by the end of summer.

I was brought on as an AAPI community reporter for my fluency in Cantonese and Mandarin, because the SF Bay Area has a huge Asian community (San Francisco is more than 30% Asian) that has not been proportionally represented in the news. I covered a wide range of issues that included both breaking news and features, such political activism, lack of housing, city budgeting, education, and the aging community.

I started out with the NYT Hong Kong bureau as a summer editorial intern, but things took a turn when the 2019 pro-democracy protests came. When urban conflicts and police violence broke out, I became a frontline reporter, mainly covering the street protest and local politics that was beginning to have wider implications. I worked with a team of editors and reporters, researched stories and pitched ideas during editorial meetings. I continued my duties as a freelancer after my contract as summer intern ended, until the following year when the pandemic came.