{"id":8121,"date":"2025-07-22T21:13:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=8121"},"modified":"2025-07-22T23:27:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T04:27:16","slug":"stories-from-the-streets-of-evanston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/stories-from-the-streets-of-evanston\/","title":{"rendered":"Stories from the streets of Evanston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Approaching strangers in a new city might seem daunting, but for many cherubs, it became second nature. In hundreds of interviews, Evanston residents eagerly shared their stories as this year\u2019s group of 90 students completed their assignments.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t know much about me, yet they were so willing to devote their time to talk to a student on a journalism assignment,\u201d said Samantha Yee of Sacramento, California. \u201cA lot of times, they thanked me for interviewing them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Some interviews took unexpected turns.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aadhya Yanamadala of Dallas was working on her street react article about the TikTok ban when she saw a woman on a park bench and approached her to ask a few questions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The woman told her that she was a fortune teller and she predicted that TikTok would get banned.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though Yanamadala didn\u2019t quote the woman, she said the experience was still valuable.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely a crazy encounter that wouldn\u2019t have happened if I didn\u2019t do the street reacts,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some interviews weren\u2019t so simple to acquire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Satvika Ramanathan of Ann Arbor, Michigan, spent days chasing a retired newspaper delivery driver for her trend story. After an \u201cemotional roller coaster\u201d of emails and cold calls, she reached him.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe ended up having a 40-minute phone conversation,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was a really sweet old man, and I enjoyed talking to him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Though not every person cherubs talked to this summer was quoted in a story, each experience helped them learn something new.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stella Bleiweis of Bethesda, Maryland, said she grew more confident after her first successful interview with a man at Sweetgreen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a great interview,\u201d she said. \u201cAfter that, I thought, \u2018Okay, I can do this.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cherubs reflect on their experiences interviewing in Evanston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":239,"featured_media":8330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,19],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[502],"class_list":["post-8121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-city","category-living-in-evanston"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":502,"user_id":239,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mollykurtzer","display_name":"Molly Kurtzer-Ellenbogen","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f8197b99af936c68db4872a740b397c057a1aefcbcb408cb09d21b5120cb811b?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Kurtzer-Ellenbogen","first_name":"Molly","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8121"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10192,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8121\/revisions\/10192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8121"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=8121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}