In January, the Media Arts Program (MAP) hosted NBC Bay Area’s business and technology reporter Scott McGrew as part of their MAP speaker series presentation. Students who attended the talk were entered in a raffle, and the seven students who won were able to attend a tour of the NBC Bay Area news studios on March 23.

For most MAP speaker series talks, the speaker offers a prize that the attendees can win in a raffle.

“It was McGrew's idea, and he really wanted people to experience the workplace while people were working to see a media job in the real world,” said speaker series organizer Isabelle Rieken, a junior.

Rieken also adds that the prize was special because only a few students got to experience it firsthand from a professional in the media world.

The seven students were freshman Ananya Senkharan, Grace Stuart and Grace Green; sophomores Connor Oaklander and Rayne Schulman; junior Sirisha Munukutla and senior Elicia Ye.

The tour lasted nearly two hours and was hosted by McGrew himself. The students walked around the studios and witnessed a live morning news broadcast.

The raffle winners also got to sit at the tables that reporters and newscasters speak from and experience it themselves.

“On the surface, the way it works may look simple,” Oaklander said. “But when you see what's happening, there's so much going on at once.”