Telling the Whole Story

Kristin Fraser, a 1991 Trinity University alumna, clacks away on her laptop computer keys one crisp fall morning in an outer suburb of Seattle, Washington. Her voluminous gray hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail, and her dark cat-eye glasses rest gently on her nose. She works in the world of freelance news, producing the next breaking political news article for D.C. from her kitchen table. "I start a story in the morning and by 3 o'clock, my time, it gets on the air," she says.

Fraser has won three Emmy awards and worked for international news bureaus such as the Cable News Network (CNN) and Al Jazeera America. Though it has been a little while since she worked in a physical news bureau, the hustle and bustle of producing knowledge-based, informative stories remains.

From College Student to Professional

When Fraser entered Trinity in the fall of 1988, she was on the pre-law track. She wanted to go to a big school on the East or West Coasts, but her parents wanted her to stay closer to home in Houston, Texas. Either of the coasts, according to her parents, were "too hard to bail me out of jail after I went to some protest." That was the cost of having a kid who was always causing what they called "good trouble."

With the options of the coasts ruled out by her parents, out of pure stubbornness, Fraser passed the college decision off to her guidance counselor. "She knew me very well, and she picked perfectly. '(Trinity) is the kind of place where you'll thrive,' and she was completely right."

Fraser entered Trinity as a political science major, thinking she wanted to be a lawyer. However, in her first semester, Fraser became involved with KRTU, Trinity's jazz radio station. About a year later, she thought, "Maybe being a lawyer isn't for me."

Fraser realized a communication major would allow her to "learn a little bit about a lot of things every day." She really liked the idea of continually seeking answers to questions.

Once Fraser identified her passion, she tested her mettle at Trinity. "I worked and did numerous classical shifts (for the radio station). I did a paid job doing the sign-off or maybe the morning sign-on-it was painful," Fraser says. "I do remember every now and then putting a record on, putting my head down and waking up to it being at the end. Yeah, I got a couple of calls-it didn't happen often!"

She kept track of everything the "old-fashioned way" because the radio system had not been digitized yet. Fraser recalls, "Most of our stuff was on records. I know, I'm making myself sound really old, but it was really neat to be sitting there in the studio and you had records all around you."

The station is a bit different now, although you can still find records lining the control room. KRTU uses an Automation system that holds several thousand digitized audio files. This is a hybrid system that allows both analog and digitized recordings to be played at any time.

With all of the technological changes that have occurred in the field, Fraser has had to continually learn and adapt. A lot of times, her ability to embrace a shifting media landscape has looked a bit random: "I don't know what I want. I want to be surprised. I want to be thrilled. I want to learn things I didn't expect to learn."

When Fraser was a kid, "there were maybe four channels of news you could go to, but very quickly, the ability to transmit stories just became exponential." In a world where there are so many outlets and sources of information, especially one where "the system is set up to make you want to engage in it more, and not to necessarily to give you diverse thoughts, or diverse anything," Fraser believes being curious, not judgmental, is of the utmost importance. Being open to new ideas, perspectives, and technologies is an invaluable quality, and "all of those things are part of the reasons I became a journalist," she says.

Producing International News

"I got out of college, and I didn't have a job." This is a common fear for many students. For Fraser, this sentiment led her to graduate school. She studied journalism and mass communications at the University of Georgia.

After graduation, she began her work in the news industry. She first worked in local television-reporting news in Columbus, Ohio, and Raleigh, North Carolina. Next, Fraser was contracted by the Cable News Network (CNN). She worked there for 10 years as a producer and bureau chief. She spent five years in Atlanta and another five years in Seattle.

When Fraser was laid off, via email, she transitioned into the freelance world of news where she remained for the next eight years. She worked for "all sorts of networks around the world" until Al Jazeera America called with an offer. "I thought they already had somebody for the position of bureau chief, but they ended up hiring me for it," Fraser says. "I was with them for their whole existence. It was an attempt to give something to the American people from Qatar. Our only real edict was to do fair and balanced news." In the American office, Fraser said she was encouraged to do "whatever she could dream up."

Sometimes, working for an international news conglomerate can mean being assigned to go on unexpected adventures. "They sent me to South Africa to cover Nelson Mandela's funeral, and they sent me to Japan to cover the anniversary of Hiroshima, so I got a lot of cool opportunities through them," Fraser recalls a memory of her experience in the Al Jazeera America office: One Monday afternoon, she got an email saying she needed to fly to Qatar on Friday. "Nobody said anything to me. I'm like, 'that's not true,'" Fraser says. "I scrubbed my bathroom floor Monday night because I was like 'I don't need to get ready; I'm not going to Qatar…' and then a couple days later, they were like 'Oh yeah, we've got your ticket.'" So, she got on a plane with a small team from the American office to learn about the Al Jazeera English and Arabic offices.

Fraser gathered a lot of international and managerial experience-in a very positive and constructive way. The end of her time at Al Jazeera America was more technical than dramatic. "I was really sad when it closed, because of some boring stuff-cable carriage agreements-really kept it from being able to expand like they wanted to, so about four to five years in they had to shut it down." This was the second time a news bureau had let her go, though it was positive closure. She says it was the only place she ever worked that "threw a goodbye party."

From Al Jazeera America, Fraser went to work as a producer and West Coast bureau chief for VICE News. "But they went bankrupt," she says, "So that's my third layoff." In her time at VICE, Fraser was named a National Emmy winner in 2020 and 2021 for outstanding news coverage.

Telling Stories from the Kitchen Table

Today, Fraser is still working in the news industry, albeit with a slightly different frame. "I still do news; I do some D.C.-producing out of my kitchen table in Washington state. I'm probably over-involved in politics right now, which isn't my first choice," she says, "but it's where a lot of the news is right now."

Fraser explains how her understanding of what it means to be in the role of news producer has changed over time. "When I came out of Trinity, I never would have said I was a storyteller," Fraser says. "I would have said I was a news person and I would have been really proud of that-I just give you the facts." However, now, she views herself as a storyteller. This is a view she has held ever since she realized how important learning is to her.

This is where Fraser's intriguing perspective on news reveals itself. To her, producing news means assembling information with the ultimate goal of sharing the narrative-the story. Fraser explains, "I want people to have access to information." However, importantly, "I want people to have the ability to not just know what people who are just like them think, but to have the ability to have empathy and understanding of what's going on in the world so they can make decisions that are good and just and make society better."

To Fraser, this means doing her part as a producer to weave an unbiased, informative narrative for readers to absorb, consider, and conclude from. She's telling stories to the best of her ability and balancing the functional and narrative sides of news. She works with the editor and the reporter, "making sure everything is correct, making sure that everything is factual and all of the logistical details come to place."

Her job has never been to tell others what to think, or how to think about it: "I don't think I'm smart enough to tell people what to think," she comments. "I want people to know how to think for themselves. I want people to question information." Fraser holds that critical engagement with news will lead to the most holistic understanding of the information presented. "I want people to know where it comes from, to know original sources, how to check things to see if they're true. I want all those things to go into the decisions they make."

That is why her role as a producer is so significant and meaningful to her-being directly involved in the process of understanding a topic, event, or situation and telling the story for others to interpret on their own. "I make my own decisions for myself, and I want other people to make their own decisions for them. That's what's pretty great about democracy, right?"

According to Fraser, the privilege of being a reporter, producer, and chief is that "I get to talk to people who sometimes tell me things they wouldn't tell their closest family because I meet them at the best and worst times." The privilege of being part of people's lives, and telling their stories, never gets old for Fraser.

Reflecting on Her Career

Fraser reflects on the evolution of her career and the news industry: "I do realize that stories are the basis of everything." Communication, commonalities, relationships, and our understanding of the world around us are often shaped by how stories in the news are told and how we interact with them. For Fraser, the value of being informed reveals itself when "we have to connect with people in some way-we have to tell stories in a way that connects us all. I really have fallen in love with the story." Her love for storytelling has become a surprising focal point for Fraser's life.

She continues, "Although strangely, right, I went to Trinity!" She says, "I read a bunch of novels. I read novels in my art history class. I read novels in anthropology class. There were so many stories in my time at Trinity. And I didn't know that's what I had got from that time."

As for the future, Fraser is trying to "figure out how to take 30 years' worth of experience and move into the thing I want to do next." She wants to share her experiences with others. "I've been really involved with helping journalists from overseas," she says. "I was just with a German journalist this past weekend. I had a Thai journalist stay with me for a few weeks. In the past couple months, I've talked to journalists from India, the Indo-Pacific, a group of a dozen African journalists." Fraser's ability to impart her passion and experience for critical storytelling reminds her, "it's a really amazing career, and I'd like to be able to share those skills with others."