AIDAN MCGLOIN



Aidan McGloin

Portfolio


Welcome to my site

Writings, photos, videos

I was raised in the emerging news desert of the Inland Empire. My family used to get copies of the Redlands Daily Facts, Riverside Press-Enterprise and New York Times, but like many families, turned digital. My local papers are now owned by absentee hedge funds, although a start up has been gaining traction.

I studied journalism, with a minor in law and society, at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where I worked as a reporter for all four years at the campus paper, Mustang News. I took a quarter break from the paper to work with New Times, an alt-weekly with a community focus born in the democratic media explosion of the 1980's. My senior year, I took a quarter studying European journalism, mostly in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Hungary, using free social archives. My senior project was a series of interviews with successful new-age publishers, from California to Switzerland, and from non-profits to free print-only papers.

My studies have convinced me that journalism isn't broken, publishing is, and it has been for a while.

Articles

Water Systems Consulting Engineer Dan Heimel leads a tour of 20 people in front of the water recycling demonstration facility.

Aidan McGloin | New Times

Inside Pismo Beach's plan to revitalize the Santa Maria groundwater basin

The Pismo Beach City Council wants to build a $28 million facility that will purify Pismo Beach and South San Luis Obispo County Sanitation District wastewater and inject it into the Santa Maria groundwater basin. If completed, it will prevent salt water from seeping into one of South County's water sources and provide more water to South County residents.

Feb. 21, 2019
Aidan McGloin | Mustang News

Aidan McGloin | Mustang News

Everything you need to know about President Armstrong’s raise

The California State University (CSU) Board of Trustees recently approved raises for campus presidents to match salaries from public universities nationwide, yet not all trustees were on board.

August 21, 2018
Cal Poly Employee Percent Changes

Aidan McGloin | Mustang News

Rate of administrative hires decreases, but tenure track faculty still down from pre-recession levels

Ten new administrative positions were created and filled last year — a decrease in the growth of administrators on Cal Poly’s campus.

Administrative hires have outpaced hires for tenured and tenure track faculty since 2007.

July 12, 2018

Photos

Environmental,
breaking
photojournalism

By Aidan McGloin

Water Systems Consulting Engineer Dan Heimel | Feb. 1, 2019

I shoot primarily with a Sony Alpha 330 with kit lenses.

CSU Chancellor Timothy White
CSU Funding Protest | April 4, 2018

Solidarity March of students after blackface
Cal Poly | April 14, 2018

San Luis Obispo jail death protestor Dawn Anderson
SLO Courthouse | March 19, 2018

Independent tutor and activist Eric Greening
Cal Poly

California Gov. Candidate John Cox
Cal Poly | May 1, 2018

Sometimes I shoot with a Nikon D3300, like I did with this photo of Carl Benjamin, Milo Yiannopolous, Laura Loomer, and Austin Fletcher.

I try to think of it as not cheating on my Sony, but I know it is. I don't have a telescope lens with Nikon, which can be a problem, but D3300 takes video. Ideally, I have both.

Fake News Forum
Cal Poly | April 26, 2018

Nikki Petkopoulos
Cal Poly Graduation | June 16, 2018

All of my photos I personally edit. I've used Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Camera Raw and Pixlr over the years to edit them, but now I stick with Lightroom since it makes edits more efficient.


Cal Poly Title IX Sexual Assault Protest
Cal Poly Graduation | June 16, 2018

Design Village, Cal Poly | April 21, 2018

Cal Poly Student and tuition protestor Shauna Sweeney
Governor's Mansion, Sacramento | April 4, 2018

Cal Poly Sexual Assault Survivor Gina Ghigleiri
Cal Poly | June 7, 2018






Whalebird Kombucha Founder and CEO Mike Durighello
Whalebird Kombucha Offices | April 3, 2018



Resume

Experience





Malheur Enterprise—Reporter, June 15 2020–now
Reporting on Malheur County in eastern Oregon.

CalMatters—College Journalism Network Fellow, March 5. 2020–July 2020
Reporting part-time for a California-wide non-profit about higher education. Writing mostly focuses on students financially impacted by coronavirus. Part of a team of five Californian student journalists hand selected by CalMatter’s College Journalism Network Editor

New Times—Editorial Intern, Jan. 2019–April 2019
Wrote for a weekly San Luis Obispo newspaper with a community/alternative model. Filed stories on environmental issues such as agricultural pest deterrents and water reclamation projects. Threw myself into unfamiliar environments and wrote headlines, photo captions and articles in AP Style. Took and edited own photos.

Mustang News—The Hill, Aug. 2019–May 2020
Founded and leading an investigative data team at Mustang News, Cal Poly. Managing and teaching college reporters R, data visualization, database building with Google Sheets, California Public Record Act Requests and beat reporting.

Mustang News—Multimedia Reporter, July 2016–Dec. 2018, April 2019 – May 2020
Filed a story weekly on administration or student life. Built a beat from faculty, administrators and students. Took my own photos. Designed 35 data graphs using Adobe Illustrator and published 70 stories. Shot photos with Sony A330s and Nikon D3300s/ D3400s. Edited photos with Adobe Lightroom. Occasionally helped layout paper on InDesign.

Cal State Student Wire—Editor, March 2020–now
Founded a wire service to share stories between student papers across the 23-campus California State University system. Wiring about three stories weekly across 13 participating papers.

Digital Democracy—Journalism Fellow, Sept. 2017–Sept. 2018
Analyzed word and paragraph structure of legislative news reports to be adapted into an auto-generated article creater for syndication.

Education





Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo—Journalism major, Law and Society minor, graduated June 2020

Redlands High School—Graduated June 2016

Skills





News Gathering—Web scraping, natural language processing, leg.info.gov searching, legislative analysis, data crunching, Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, interviewing, beat developing

Visualization—Visual Composer, Adobe Illustrator, Infogram, Python, Photography with Sony a330 and Nike D3300s, Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, videography and video editing, editorial illustrating, photo collages

News Publishing—Lede writing, caption writing, headline writing, AP Style, WordPress, Search Engine Optimization, Adobe InDesign, HTML, CSS, Javascript, photo publishing, website maintenance, graphic design