For Kaja Andrić, the best news stories are wherever she happens to be, whether it’s at News Decoder or the New York Times.

Madison Square Garden in New York City was flooded inside and out with NBA fans. They came 14 June to witness the basketball championship game between the San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks.

Reporting from inside the venue were New York Times veteran sports reporter James L. Edwards III and his colleagues from top news organizations. On the outside of the packed stadium, among crowds of ecstatic Knicks fans was Kaja Andrić, fresh out of New York University. Her job? To capture the atmosphere of Knicks fever for the New York Times. 

A former intern for News Decoder, Andrić started reporting for the Times even before she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in journalism and Romance languages.

“I started my sophomore year of college,” Andrić said. “I’m a stringer, someone who they call out for breaking news stuff and freelancer for them, too.”

For the Knicks game, the Times assigned her to report on a store that sold Knicks jerseys to document the city’s maddened, desperate rush to get their hands on customized Knicks merch.

An early start in journalism

You might say it was the perfect story for Andrić to cover, as her life seems to be one big mad rush to get out of it all she can. Even as she answered our questions, she ate breakfast, packed her bags, yanked on her shoes and fed her kitten.

Andrić said the Times first called on her to help out their reporters covering a hush money trial of Donald Trump, the first criminal trial for a sitting U.S. president.

“I would wait in the press lines, from 4:30 [a.m.] to 8:30. They let me hang out until 10:30 when they went into the courthouse,” she said. “So I really got a vibe for outside the courthouse and that kinda kickstarted everything. I fell in love with it.”

It doesn’t matter to Andrić that she covers the smaller stories; that they send her outside the stadium not in the center of the action.

“I think the stories kind of stick with you, plus the people you meet along the way,” she said.

Finding the story in the unusual

Her favorite assignment so far was about a Halloween store open all year round.

“It commercially doesn’t make sense to run a year-round Halloween store,” she said. “But these guys are very adamant on running their store and they’ve created a year-round community that gathers around Halloween.”

The story turned out to be long — 1,400 words — with multiple interviews woven into it and multiple elements that came together, in part because she spent a significant amount of time in the store.

“I was very grateful they let me be in the store for so many hours and took me in as one of their community members,” Andrić said.

Her satisfaction at covering that kind of small story — a stand-alone mom-and-pop store named Halloween Adventure, dedicated to a single celebration — exemplifies what has made her so appreciated at both the New York Times and News Decoder: the ability to locate and animate stories in unlikely, sidelined places.

“It’s always about staying vigilant and predicting what your editor’s going to ask,” she said, describing a Times article in which she reported and documented the atmosphere at Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-A-Lago, during an attempted shooting. “I live in West Palm Beach, by Mar-A-Lago, and I literally called my editor that morning and asked ‘This is happening, you want me to run over?’” she said.

Meeting deadlines

Andrić said that she learns something new with every article. As an example, she brought up the story about the store that sold Knicks merchandise.

“That was challenging because it was a quick turnaround,” she said. “I wrote that story in like an hour and a half because it was a tight deadline.”

She finds such pressure exhilarating. “I’m totally hooked on news and hooked on the process and I think News Decoder did a lot of that for me by exposing me to that world and teaching me that stories are everywhere,” she said.

At one point during her internship, she told News Decoder that she would be traveling to Greece for a school trip. Marcy Burstiner, the educational news director there, suggested that while in Greece, she do a story about the Elgin Marbles — the remains of ancient Greek sculptures taken from the Parthenon and held by the British Museum — and the looting of cultural artefacts. “I realised, yeah, news really is everywhere!” she said.

She learned that you can find stories all over the world that will connect with readers everywhere. She saw that play out later, when she was doing a story for the New York Times relating to the World Cup.

“I was stringing outside of Madison Square Garden for the World Cup and seeing all those teams it was like seeing News Decoder’s vision for the world play out in real time,” she said.

Finding stories

It was one of many things she learned while interning at News Decoder.

“Marcy has consistently taught me that pitching and writing and reporting and editing is just so much about perseverance and grit,” she said. “She’s always reminding me that it’s good to be tough in the sense that things that are thrown your way in a way you don’t expect could be used for good. When an interview throws you for a loop or when someone cancels your interview, it’s important to keep going.”

Burstiner said that by the end of her time as an intern, Andrić had made a deep impression.

“She loves to do everything and when she didn’t know how to do it, she asked for help,” Burstiner said.

You don’t see those two traits often in young people, Burstiner said. Too many try so hard to prove they are competent that they end up flailing around, she said. “You see so many kids who are cynical,” Burstiner said. “But there was not an ounce of cynicism in Kaja.”

Learning and teaching

Maria Krasinski, managing director at News Decoder, said that Andrić showed a combination of curiosity, optimism and wanting to soak up as much as she could.

“She has such a big open heart,” Krasinski said. “She’s fearless but not in an arrogant way; she has no problem with just jumping right in, saying ‘I don’t know’ — which is a very hard thing to do when you’re trying to prove yourself.”

What Andrić learned at News Decoder complemented what she was learning at NYU under the mentorship of writer Helene Stapinski, a writer who taught her not only how to be a reporter, but why it is important to also be a good person.

In the fall, Andrić will pursue a master’s degree in journalism at Harvard University.

This summer she is working for the New York Times in another capacity, as a journalism co-instructor for their summer academy to give pre-college students first-hand exposure to journalism.

Andrić said she wants to encourage more young people to enter the field of journalism as it gives them appreciation for one another and puts them in touch with their own humanity. “It sounds cheesy, but it’s true,” Andrić said.

To her students and fellow learners and writers, she said: “Always read the news and always stay curious.”

Finishing her mad rush to get ready, she slung a bag over her shoulder and ran out onto NYC’s streets, concluding her interview with thanks and a laugh.

 “I have no idea what’s next,” she said. “I’m very excited. My kitten will be with me every step of the way.”

Isabel Wen is a News Decoder summer intern. Having grown up in both England and Taiwan, her interest in global affairs and cultures means she is never in one place for long. Currently studying English Literature in Trinity College Dublin, she will also be studying at Columbia University. She has been exploring different literary programs and organisations from across the world, spanning from Oxford to Amherst to Taipei to the basements of the New York Times. When she’s not hopping around the literary world, her time is otherwise occupied with long hikes or training sessions as a target-shooting athlete.​