Raise your hand if you’ve ever had the opportunity to hire someone. There’s nothing quite like the feeling, especially if you’re hiring for a new role on a relatively small team. For me anyway, it’s a mix of relief that help might be on the horizon, a real nervous thrill of expectation — this mystery person could change everything about the way we do things! — and then the glassy-eyed dread that you might not find the right person at all.
Once applications started rolling in, the dread changed to oh God I hope these people actually want to work here (I hope my therapist is reading this). The field of candidates was deep and diverse and passionate about Spokane, and truly interested in joining the RANGE team and creating a more informed and empowered Inland Northwest. We thank them all for their interest in advancing RANGE’s coverage.
At the end of the day, we had two dynamic candidates, Alyssa Baheza and Erin Sellers, emerge and we’re ecstatic that we could make offers to both.
They started this Monday and we’re happy to present their first work for RANGE, introducing themselves to the community! Enjoy. — Luke
Erin Sellers (Editor/Organizer)
In the cartoonish plotlines of community-theater melodramas, where heroes vanquished evil villains and good always prevailed, Erin Sellers found their place on the stage, and a love of storytelling, as a young theater actor.
Growing up in Weippe (pronounced differently than you might expect), a town of just over 400 people tucked so far back into the Clearwater Mountains of Idaho’s southern panhandle that people post dashcam videos of driving the switchbacks that lead to town, Erin describes themself as an energetic and social child. Always excitedly greeting and striking up conversations with strangers, Erin’s parents knew their child would thrive in the spotlight, so their father signed Erin and himself up for acting roles.
Erin says acting in those plays alongside their father kindled a lifelong passion for theater.
They got their start in journalism at the age of fourteen with a summer job at the library in Weippe, which included writing for the area’s newspaper, the Clearwater Tribune. Erin loved the combination of working for the community, talking to people about their experiences, and then telling those stories. “I love that it’s curiosity as a career,” Erin said.
Erin’s passion for theater brought them to Spokane, and to Gonzaga University, where they double majored in Public Relations and Theater Arts.
Erin fell in love with the city, and decided to stay after graduation in 2021. At first, Spokane felt like a big city (Erin's parents still feel that way about it), but having lived here for six years, they gradually realized that, while it’s big enough to never get bored, there’s also a small-town feel when it comes to finding your place in the community.
They also reported for the Gonzaga Bulletin during college and, in their most recent role, managed communications for Spectrum Center, which creates safe, intersectional, intergenerational, 2SLGBTQIA+ community gathering spaces. In their free time, Erin now enjoys serving as an intimacy coordinator for local theater productions, as well as acting in and directing productions.
Erin hopes to tell stories that elevate under-heard voices and come from diverse perspectives. “It’s important for me to represent the queer communities I’m a part of,” they said, “as well as bring the empathy of that experience to my journalism.”
Alyssa Baheza (Reporter/Producer)
You might not guess it by looking at her floral skirts and precisely drawn eyeliner, but Alyssa Baheza (Coeur d’Alene/Okanogan), is a bit of a scream queen.
Baheza, a reporter/producer on RANGE’s new Civics desk, describes a childhood home where her father’s DVDs and VHS tapes lined the walls, Halloween was the preferred holiday, and zombie movies — her mother’s favorite — were a staple. Her passion for horror movies is all-encompassing, with a watchlist boasting prestige horror like Jordan Peele’s Get Out alongside the “schlocky” 2016 flick Terrifier.
It’s not the thrill that draws her to them, but a curiosity about the conditions that create them.
“Horror movies tell you so much about the anxieties that a society is feeling at the time the movie came out,” she said.
Though she loves horror, genre films aren’t the only kind of storytelling Baheza is passionate about. She’s been a RANGE podcast listener since the start, and is drawn to media that reveals something new about the world.
After graduating with her associate degree from Spokane Falls Community College in 2020, she interned for NPR’s award-winning podcast Code Switch while taking English literature courses at Eastern Washington University. The internship and her path of study, combined with her lived experience as a Native American woman, sparked a desire to tell diverse stories that center the perspective of the people who are marginalized.
“Less than 2% of the population are Native American … I’m used to the experience of feeling like my stories aren’t told or aren’t told in a way that includes me,” Baheza said. “I have always been interested in issues surrounding race and cultural and identity groups and issues that affect people who are marginalized, specifically along the lines of race.”
Long before her time at Code Switch crystallized her professional interest in radio and podcast, Baheza stumbled into a love for audio storytelling as a way to pass the time on long bus rides to and from middle school. Shortly after discovering the podcast app on her phone, she applied for a summer job at KWIS, the Coeur d’Alene tribe’s radio station.
“It just sounded really cool as a 14-year-old to be working in any kind of media,” she said. “It was my first time editing audio and I found that really fun…There’s so much diversity in the way that stories can be told through audio and that’s always kept my interest ever since I was in middle school.”
Baheza is excited to join the RANGE team and tell the diverse stories of our community.
Reach out, say hi, and send tips: alyssa@rangemedia.co & erin@rangemedia.co
