Extracurricular activities in cover letter I am a science PhD student applying for a workshop on documentaries and video art forms, organised for liberal arts students. In the past few years I worked part time as a reporter; in your opinion, what is the best way to describe my background?

What I have now is 


  I am a PhD student in bla bla with [a passion for]/[experience in] journalism and multimedia storytelling


But I am not very happy of any of the solutions. Let me know if you have any tips on how to improve the phrase!
Your extracurricular activities are certainly relevant here, so you can just say what they have been.  You've done so quite clearly here:


  In the past few years I worked part time as a reporter.


Now just add a sentence that notes how this connects to your interest in the workshop, and you should be fine.