Features

Northwest Journalists of Color scholarship – Apply today!

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Northwest Journalists of Color

AAJA Seattle is now accepting applications for the 2009 Northwest Journalists of Color scholarship. The chapter launched the scholarship in 1986 to increase the pipeline of minorities pursuing careers in media. NJC scholars receive a grant toward their college studies and access to mentors in journalism. NJC alumni have gone on to work for CBS News, Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times, Microsoft and Sony Pictures.

To download the application, click here.

2009 Lunar New Year event: Post your photos (and video) here!!

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Did you take some photos or video at our 2009 Lunar New Year party at the new Wing Luke Asian Museum?

Do you have a Flickr or YouTube account?

If the answer to both questions is yes, You can easily share your Lunar New Year memories with the rest of us!

If you’re reading this now, open up a new tab or new browser window. Go to your Flickr account.

On Flickr, bring up the web page with the photo that you want to share, and look in the right margin for a link that says “Share This.” Click that link and Flickr should give you several choices – e-mail, grab the link, embed it, or blog it. Choose the ’embed it’ option, select the code and copy it.

Then come back to the AAJA Seattle site and to this blog post about the 2009 Lunar New Year. At the bottom where it gives you an option to “Leave a comment” you can paste the code from the Flickr site. Please type a short caption that identifies who’s in the picture and who took it!

You’ll follow essentially the same process if you have a video you want to share. Thanks for sharing your memory with the group!

We’re still learning how to use the WordPress blog, so I apologize if you run into any difficulty. You may be prompted to register before you can submit a comment. The registration requirement is just so we can keep track of who is posting to the site and prevent spam.

– Sanjay Bhatt, AAJA Seattle Co-President

Lunar New Year Banquet this Saturday at the Wing Luke

As we start off 2009 with this Saturday’s Lunar New Year Banquet at the new Wing Luke Asian Museum, I hope you will join the chapter officers in supporting diversity in journalism. We are witnessing the toughest economic times in at least a half century, and even Poynter columnists are suggesting work outside journalism. It’s more important than ever that AAJA members support each other, and the chapter is doing its best to help members find work. Through professional workshops (like the one held last weekend at the UW), scholarships, job listings and networking events, AAJA makes a real difference in promoting greater diversity in the profession.

I invite you to attend our Lunar New Year Banquet this Saturday at the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. The event runs from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Karen Johnson, Seattle magazine’s web editor, is chairing the event and doing a remarkable job. Come drink, eat and mingle with cool people from a variety of backgrounds. We’ll have entertainment and some sought-after items in our silent auction, and all the proceeds benefit AAJA Seattle’s scholarships and professional development programs.

Save $5 by getting your tickets online at Brown Paper Tickets, or pay $35 (members)/$40 (non-members) at the door. See you there!

– Sanjay Bhatt, AAJA Seattle co-president

Schedule for Saturday’s Choppy Waters conference

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Please plan to arrive early to find parking and the conference room at Haggett Hall on the north side of campus. If you did RSVP for the networking luncheon, please plan on paying $15 cash when you check in, and help us out by bringing exact change. Thanks!! We look forward to a stimulating day of discussion.

LOCATION: Haggett Hall – Glacier Room, University of Washington

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Speakers at Jan. 31 Career Development event

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In the brave new world of Journalism 2.0, what can we learn from new approaches to journalism? Where can out-of-work journalists look to for opportunities?

These are among the questions that will be tackled on Saturday, Jan. 31, at a one-day symposium at the University of Washington’s Haggett Hall. Here are some of the journalists on our panels:

David Cohn, Spot.us

Russ Walker, Grist.org

Calvin Tang, Newsvine.com (invited)

Luke Timmerman, Xconomy.com

Tracy Record, WestSeattleBlog.com

Hanson Hosein, University of Washington’s Masters in Communication in Digital Media program

You MUST RSVP to this event due to limited seating. To RSVP, go to AAJA Seattle’s Facebook page or if you aren’t on Facebook, email aajaseattle@gmail.com. Please put “Career Workshop” in the subject line.

RSVP now for Jan. 31 Career Counseling Workshop!

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On Saturday, Jan. 31, from 8:30 am to 3 pm, AAJA Seattle will hold a Career Development Workshop at the University of Washington. This workshop will feature news entrepreneurs and new media journalists describing what they do and their tips for thriving in the future.

This event is FREE to all journalists, although AAJA members will get priority. You MUST RSVP to this event due to limited seating. To RSVP, go to AAJA Seattle’s Facebook page or if you aren’t on Facebook, email
me at sbhatt@seattletimes.com.

The Great Multimedia Shootout

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BY SANJAY BHATT

When I arrived at the UNITY conference fresh off a red-eye flight, my mind was focused on entering my first-ever Multimedia Shootout.

After all, I was confident in my abilities after having shot video, recorded audio and produced pieces for a few months, albeit for non-deadline stories.

I sat down in a room with a dozen other contestants, most under the age of 35. We looked at each other’s gear, trying to size up our rivals.

I think we were all just a bit too cocksure. Two days later, we’d be walking out a few feet shorter with hard-won lessons in the art of being a multimedia mojo. More on that later.

We were given a list of ethnic Chicago neighborhoods in which to go report and return with a finished multimedia piece within 48 hours.

There was only one catch: Nobody goes to a neighborhood of their own ethnicity. So I headed off to Bronzeville, a South Side neighborhood steeped in African-American history and popping with new condos, renovated brickstones and developers trying to turn it into the next ‘it’ spot. I spent several hours wandering around, getting the lay of the land and establishing a base for the next day’s shot.

I was glad that my mentee, University of Washington graduate William Kim, accompanied me on my urban exploration. Yes, I was there to share with him my thought process and tricks of the trade. But I was also glad because two is safer than one in a place you don’t know, especially when you’re carrying expensive digital equipment. We carried a digital camera, video kit, and audio recorder. For better or worse, I left my tripod at home because I just couldn’t carry any more on the plane.

We spent the entire day walking from place to place. I blissfully took lots of photographs, captured audio and sought a diversity of perspectives. The people we met were friendly and engaging. We also steered clear of certain characters. I don’t think I would have ever found myself in what some residents there called “the projects” if it hadn’t been for the Multimedia Shootout. This is true immersion. It’s what UNITY is all about.

What I failed to appreciate was just how long it would take to string all the material into a compelling narrative. I didn’t give myself enough time to write a good script. And so what I turned in on deadline Friday was a sad sliver of my vision for a three-minute masterpiece on the Bronzeville neighborhood. The content of the photos didn’t match the audio track. I thought it was awful. The judges did too; they eliminated me in the first round. Ouch.

I have new respect for my broadcast colleagues. This is hard work!

Now, with hindsight and plenty of time, I’ve taken that raw material and created a pretty good audio slideshow. I’m sharing it with my fellow AAJA Seattle members for two reasons:

  • Feedback: We learn by doing but also by listening to how others experience our work. So I hope you’ll post a constructive comment. What’s good? What’s weak? What else would you have liked to see or hear?
  • Copycats: I want to see more of our AAJA Seattle members doing their own multimedia storytelling. Your news organization may not have the bandwidth for it or the interest in it, but your AAJA chapter sure does. We’re here to support your professional development, starting with giving you a place to submit your latest effort and get feedback from peers.

And stay tuned: We’re planning to hold a multimedia workshop later this year, where you can learn the nuts and bolts of this work, when to use the tools and why multimedia skills can help you keep (or get) a job. And if you’re a student reading this who can juggle these tools with your eyes closed, strut your stuff on the multimedia section of our AAJA Seattle site!

Sanjay Bhatt is co-president of the AAJA Seattle chapter.

Founders’ Scholarship winner learns to network at UNITY

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This year the AAJA Seattle chapter awarded the Founders’ Scholarship to University of Washington junior Anusha Roy, who is interested in broadcast journalism and currently the multimedia intern at seattletimes.com.

The Founders’ scholarship, which covers the cost of registration to the national AAJA convention, was established in 2000 to honor Frank Abe, Ron Chew, and Lori Matsukawa, who founded the AAJA Seattle chapter in 1985. The recipient must be a current AAJA Seattle chapter member and enrolled in an accredited college or university in Washington state.

Roy, a Seattle native, got interested in journalism when she started as a reporter for The HuskyCast, the University of Washington’s online webcast. She got hooked on broadcast journalism when she interned with New Delhi Television News in Kolkata, India, during the fall of 2007. She expects to graduate in the spring of 2010.

Anusha Roy

By ANUSHA ROY

Networking, a very unnatural habit, finally came easily to me at UNITY. UNITY is a conference that brings the Hispanic, Asian, African American and Native American journalist associations together for a conference every four years. This year, thousands of minority journalists gathered in the windy city of Chicago. The first person I talked to at UNITY – he happened to be from the Washington Post – started up a casual chat in line waiting to register. After that, I had dinner with Lori Matsukawa from KING 5 News, made contacts at AP, CNN and Northwest Cable News, to name a few.

I incessantly presented myself, promoting my interests to any broadcast news organization that had an internship. This was once again made easy at the job fair where every news organization imaginable was there, crossing newspapers to TV. I seized the chance to have my resume tape critiqued by NBC, CNN and Belo Corporation. This rare privilege gave me insight into what these companies value in a reporter.

“Right now it is about survival in journalism, but at the same time people reassured me that there are ways to make a career in journalism; they just might not be traditional.”

Since I was not looking for jobs, my time at UNITY was relatively stress free, especially since I was not on the receiving end of “we have a hiring freeze but give us your resume to file” or “we are hiring internally for those positions.” The uncertain times of the media industry, particularly newspapers, refused to be hidden. But, as a group of journalists should, people were straight up with the facts. The associations are prepping their members to acknowledge the choppy times ahead. But the associations also see an opportunity for their members to adapt and survive these difficult times. The associations remain focused on their mission of increasing diversity in newsrooms to reflect the population of America, a goal that will lead to more accurate and fair news reporting.

In the momentum of adaption, there was an all-day multimedia workshop. There were sessions on web writing and editing video for the web. There were panels on foreign reporting in changing times. Right now, multimedia skills are key to being marketable in this industry for print and broadcast. For broadcast journalists, learning to be a one-man band is incredibly important, a trend being picked up by many TV news stations. To be able to film, edit footage, write scripts, complete voiceovers and stand ups are important, since there is no longer a strict divide in responsibilities according to job titles.

My most important discovery at UNITY was the courage and enthusiasm found at the conference. Right now it is about survival in journalism, but at the same time people reassured me that there are ways to make a career in journalism; they just might not be traditional.

Preserving worthy journalism is a top priority, and that is why UNITY was such a success. The thousands of minority journalists at the conference understood that they are key to increasing the quality of journalism and a changing industry will not stop them.

AAJA Seattle named Chapter of the Year!

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BREAKING NEWS

AAJA Seattle wins Chapter of the Year award

AAJA Seattle wins Chapter of the Year award

CHICAGO — The Seattle chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) has been named the 2008 Chapter of the Year, recognizing its success in establishing a $100,000 endowment for minority journalism scholarships.

Sanjay Bhatt, AAJA Seattle Chapter Co-President, accepted the award on behalf of the chapter. Bhatt co-chaired the past two years’ endowment campaigns, which culminated last year with a record-setting $45,000 in donations. The typical individual donation was $100, but people gave as little as $10 and as much as $7,500.

“I’m honored to accept this award on behalf of all AAJA Seattle members, who have demonstrated their commitment to encouraging tomorrow’s journalists of color,” Bhatt said. “I also want to thank all of our donors, whose generosity allowed us to achieve our vision.”

The endowment supports AAJA Seattle’s Northwest Journalists of Color (NJC) program. The NJC scholarship was started in 1986 by local leaders like Lori Matsukawa (KING TV), who raised $5,000 each year to fund the scholarships. NJC has awarded scholarships to more than 100 student journalists. NJC alumni have gone on to work at major news organizations, such as The Seattle Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Associated Press, CBS News and Sony Pictures.

The endowment drive kicked off four years ago under the leadership of then-AAJA Seattle Chapter President Sharon Chan, who is running for AAJA National President. Seattle’s success story can be replicated, says Chan, who will lead a national AAJA endowment campaign dubbed “The Power of One.”

“What Seattle’s success simply shows,” Bhatt said, “is that individuals — co-workers, friends and family — support diversity in our profession. It’s our job to give them a concrete way to express that belief in our mission.”