A group of chapter members is working on making improvements to AAJASeattle.org so that it serves your needs even better. The site was launched in 2008 during the UNITY conference in Chicago. It runs on the WordPress platform and is hosted by DreamHost.
We’d love to get your feedback on the site and what you would most like to see in Version 2.0.
Please fill out this survey and send it to your friends who come to the site!
Three years ago, AAJASeattle.org was re-launched on the WordPress platform. Happy birthday, AAJASeattle.org!
AAJA should be proud of this little website. It’s an important community resource in the online landscape of Pacific Northwest journalism sites. Don’t believe me? I too was shocked when a research study that came out at the 2010 Journalism That Matters conference put aajaseattle.org on the map – literally. Use the Zoom (+) button below and look at the center of the map.
Data visualization of the Pacific Northwest News Ecology, Jan 2010
Over the years, as the site’s founding editor, I’ve watched it grow and become a part of our chapter’s strategy for building community online and reaching out to members hungry for training, mentoring and jobs.
My vision for AAJASeattle.org was and still is a place for our members – especially students and freelancers – to post their profiles, share links to their stories and offer emerging, diverse journalists a platform to display their storytelling in new media (and maybe get constructive comments). I think it could realize that vision with a staff of three to five dedicated volunteers.
The chapter’s costs to keep the site up are minimal – a server hosting account and domain name – but the content our authors contribute is priceless.
The blog post items, which chronicle chapter news and turbulent times of our profession, come from members willing to donate their time. And sometimes we get photos and videos posted of chapter events.
With no advertising, no dedicated staff and sporadic blog posts, the site has attracted nearly 7,000 visits over the past year (yes, we track it using Google Analytics). We set up the site so that @aajaseattle sends out a tweet for every new post.
Now it’s time for a new editor with fresh ideas and energy to assume the duties and nurture the site’s evolution.
This is a great VOLUNTEER opportunity for anyone who hopes to be a web producer, blogger or site manager some day.
Skills you will develop as site editor:
Recruiting and managing contributing writers.
Tracking and interpreting site analytics.
Managing the WordPress platform.
Skills we’d hope you have or are willing to learn if you want this gig:
Knowledge of any blogging platform, i.e. WordPress, TypePad, Tumblr, Blogger.
Proficiency in editing copy.
Editorial judgment and basic understanding of libel, privacy and copyright.
The time commitment is minimal – an hour a week, perhaps – but you could spend more time if you want to create something cool. Definitely something to list on your resume when you apply for jobs at news websites.
If you’re interested in volunteering, please email Sanjay Bhatt, chapter president/aajaseattle.org editor, at sbhatt@seattletimes.com. Please write “AAJASeattle.org – Editor” in the subject line. Thanks!
Ben Huh, a former AAJA member and Northwestern University journalism grad, is founder and CEO of Seattle-based Cheezburger Network. He’s recently blogged about problems he sees with how news is presented online today, and ReadWriteWeb reports on a new news platform Huh is developing – The Moby Dick Project. Be sure to add your comments to the conversation!
Thanh Tan is the keynote speaker for this year’s Northwest Journalists of Color awards reception, which will be June 7 at KING TV.
Get your free tickets at EventBrite!
The reception, which marks the 25th anniversary of AAJA Seattle’s flagship program, brings Thanh Tan from Austin, Texas, to share her experiences with this year’s scholarship winners.
Tan, a three-time NJC scholarship winner, is a multimedia reporter/producer for The Texas Tribune.
She previously worked at Idaho Public Television, a PBS station that serves a statewide audience.
While there, she was an Emmy award-winning producer/reporter/host for the longest-running legislative public affairs program in the West, Idaho Reports, moderator of The Idaho Debates, and a writer/producer for the flagship series Outdoor Idaho.
Prior to joining IdahoPTV, she was a general assignment reporter at the ABC affiliate in Portland, OR and a political reporter for KBCI-TV in Boise, ID. Her work has also appeared on the PBS NewsHour and This American Life.
She graduated with honors from the University of Southern California with degrees in International Relations and Broadcast Journalism.
Want to work next summer at The Seattle Times or The Boston Globe?
Nov. 1 is the deadline!
The Seattle Times offers paid summer internships in reporting, copy editing, photojournalism, design and multimedia to outstanding students pursuing a career in journalism. For 10 weeks, interns work on varied assignments. They attend weekly training sessions given by members of a Pulitzer-Prize winning staff. Interns receive a skill-development plan and a staff mentor to support them in achieving it.
Qualifications:
Internships are open to sophomores, juniors, seniors or graduate students attending a four-year college or university. Applicants must have a demonstrated commitment to print and online journalism. At least one previous internship at a daily news organization is preferred, and multimedia experience is a plus.
Go to The Seattle Times website for instructions on how to apply.
The Boston Globe gives 10 interns the opportunity to work as reporters, as well as photographer, designer or copy editor.
The 12-week program places reporter-interns in our Metro, Business, Living/Arts, and Sports departments; the photo intern shoots stills and video for all sections, the design intern creates sections fronts and information graphics for print and online, and the copy editing intern works on local, national, foreign and business copy.
The Globe provides guidance and direction, as well as a writing coach dedicated to the interns. Globe interns produce every day and finely polish their journalism skills over the summer.
To apply go to The Boston Globe’s website.
EDIT: In addition, the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund also has a Nov. 1 deadline for its internship program. The program offers internships in copy editing and business reporting. Along with a 10-week paid internship at media outlets around the country, Dow Jones Newspaper Fund participants also receive pre-internship training and a $1,000 scholarship.
The program is open to juniors, seniors and graduate students.
For more information and tips on applying go here.
Have you launched your own company recently? Do you have a story to share about your media company?
Our AAJA Seattle membership has many talents, and more and more of them are pursuing their passions as a business. These entrepreneurs are working day and night, seven days a week, to get their ventures off the ground and achieve profitability.
It’s time for them to be recognized for taking a risk and trying to create a new product, service or adventure they can call their own.
Let’s meet three of them.
Calvin Tang, AtlasOmega
Calvin founded social media news web site Newsvine.com in 2005. Two years later, MSNBC bought Newsvine for an undisclosed sum, marking its first acquisition ever. He continued to serve as chief operating officer of Newsvine for the next three years.
From 2005 to 2010, Newsvine grew to over 4 million users, 15 million monthly pageviews and came to power virtually all of interactive features across the MSNBC Digital Network family of brands, including properties such as the NBC Nightly News, TODAY Show and The Rachel Maddow Show.
He also is founder of the Northwest Dive Club, a passion that turned into his next career move.
Earlier this year Calvin left MSNBC to launch AtlasOmega.
Here’s how the site describes its value:
“As we enter the virtual age of ‘the real-time web,’ where stories are packaged into successfully smaller sound-byte sized units, repurposed and republished with little value added – AtlasOmega swims against that current, by producing original, feature quality stories and images about the wildest and least known parts of the world.”
“All of our explorers and adventurers spend enormous amounts of time and energy in the nitty-gritty details of preparation, equipment selection, technique and safety. Yet, these critical aspects are oftentimes never known by the person who enjoys the final result, be it an in-depth story about a pioneering expedition or a stunning set of images that bring to life a lesser known part of the world.”
“AtlasOmega tells the story behind the story, and sets out to answer the question, ‘How did they do that?'”
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Caroline Li, EarthWalkers
Caroline is founder of social media travel web site Earthwalkersmag.com and its print edition, Earthwalkers Magazine. She is also vice president of events for AAJA Seattle, freelances stories and works for TD Wang Advertising Group, a full-service marketing agency that helps companies reach the Asian-American market.
Here’s what Caroline says about her venture:
“I started Earthwalkers because of my love for journalism, travel and international issues. It’s also my answer/vision to next generation journalism.”
“Earthwalkers Magazine and the Earthwalker Community were created so that travelers could make the most out of their travel experiences and continue learning when not traveling. Earthwalkers’ mission is to educate and inform readers about the world through in-depth features and first person stories from the Earthwalker Community. We’re not only building a network for travelers, but a magazine that writers and local bloggers can call their own.”
“The website is a hybrid of user generated content and social network where members are encouraged to share their appreciation for travel by sharing their stories, joining groups and being available to other like-minded travelers around the world.”
“The content on the Earthwalkers website and in the print edition is written by members of the social network. Most stories are written by Earthwalkers that are local bloggers and travel writers while more in-depth features are written by freelance journalists and our Common Language Project team.”
“Through our travels and the people we meet, we hope to unravel the wonders, the forgotten, the shadows, the beauty and the truth about our world. We believe that the world is about more than trade negotiations, poverty and luxury vacationing, but full of people just like you and me that are celebrating, surfing or struggling through life – because in the end, we are all just passing through.”
Who does Caroline expect will use her site?
Journalists & Bloggers: Earthwalkers Magazine is a platform that bloggers, journalists and travelers can use to promote their writing, photography and video. Your user profile is your writing resume/history with Earthwalkers. Writers also have the opportunity to be published in the print edition of Earthwalkers, receive paid writing assignments, and join our Earthwalkers core reporting team on stories around the world.
Like-minded Travelers: So you’re an Earthwalker. You’re going to visit another country but you don’t know anyone there. You don’t want to do the typical toursist thing while you’re there. Get on Earthwalkers, search for other Earthwalkers around the world and connect with them to get insights, advice or even plan to meet up.
The Curious Learner: Just browsing? The stories on Earthwalkers are insightful, informative and inspiring. Regardless if you are traveling or not, it’s important to be informed about world issues.
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Christine Chen, Chen Communications
Christine is founder of Chen Communications and frequently requested moderator of business and community events.
Christine is an 18-year veteran of broadcast journalism, launching shows on FOX and PBS in Seattle. She launched her marketing consulting group in January 2007 and has built an impressive list of clients in a relatively short time, including Microsoft. She was a speaker at the 2010 AAJA National Convention in Los Angeles.
“It’s more important than ever to tell an engaging story, define relevance and pick the right places to share that story,” according to her site.
Christine is in great demand as a moderator of community events. In October 2009, she moderated TechFlash LIVE: Women in Tech, an event that brought together a who’s who of women in technology.
And this past August, Christine moderated the Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s Young Professionals Network Event on the Eastside, an event that drew more than 300 people. The panelists included Kirk Nelson, Washington President of Qwest Communications; Bob Donegan, President of Ivar’s; and Anne Fennessy, Partner at Cocker Fennessy.
Christine says her marketing communications consulting firm specializes in connecting companies and communities for business through strategic thinking, messaging and outreach.
The firm offers these consulting services:
What differentiates her firm from other PR/MarCom consultants?
According to Chen, her firm “fuses traditional and new media approaches at a senior level, with an editorial eye and unique perspective on branding. Practical experience and tactical execution power a virtual team that is called on for projects, as needed, keeping overhead down and passing the savings on to the client. We are able to work with C-level executives as well as larger teams, as an outsourced service provider or as integrative team members.”
She’s also the creator of the blog xboxbride, which catalogs what happens when a non-video gamer weds an avid video gamer.
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I’d like to have AAJA Seattle host a workshop in the not-too-distant future on entrepreneurship.
We led the way in January 2009 by holding the Choppy Waters workshop at the University of Washington in association with its Communication department.
And several of you have joined startups in our area, like Patch.com. We want to hear about your experiences too. Send your story to us.
If you would like to become more involved in new experiments in journalism, you can!
AAJA Seattle participates in Journalism That Matters, which meets once a month to discuss current startup ideas in the region and to support their leaders. If you’d like to participate in JTM, please email me at sbhatt[at]seattletimes.com.
[Mary Pauline Diaz, far left, with fellow Northwest Journalists of Color Scholarship winners Katelin Chow and Peter Sessum and AAJA co-founder Bill Sing during the 2010 AAJA National Convention in Los Angeles.]
Mary Pauline Diaz, a 2010 Northwest Journalists of Color Scholarship winner, spent her summer writing for the Seattle Weekly. As a recipient of AAJA Seattle’s Founders Scholarship, Diaz she also was able to attend the 2010 AAJA National Convention in Los Angeles in August. As AAJA Seattle’s student members return to school, Diaz, a junior at Seattle University, shares why she returns with a renewed confidence in her career path.
It’s easy to feel daunted and overwhelmed by the changing state of the journalism, especially at this point in time. But at the AAJA National Convention, the language and the feeling definitely exuded a renewed hope. As a nervous convention first-timer and forward-minded student, it was refreshing to be around so many journalists who were excited about the future of journalism, who had enough passion to propel themselves past hurdles or who were gearing up for the hurdles they were facing: unemployment for seasoned vets, first forays into a fickle field for students and recent grads and the utter volatility of the industry for everyone.
And that’s not the only good news. The good news (and I think this is good news) is that journalism as we know it is being turned on its head. I jotted down a few quotes from some convention workshops that totally threw me for a loop, but they indicate exactly how journalism itself is being redefined and regenerated.
Get excited. The time in front of us is the perfect time to experiment, reexamine our roles and position yourself for the upper hand in the market.
“New media, digital media, perhaps even journalism don’t really apply as terms for what I do.” – John Bracken, Director of New Media at The Knight Foundation
Let go of those traditional conceptions of your job description. Regardless of what Bracken himself does, every journalist has to face the transitioning ambiguity of what journalism is, what media is and what audiences consider their sources of information.
“Audio is really a visual medium.” – Sora Newman, Senior Trainer at NPR
Though every format and every story is unique, the richest part of a converging media market is indeed the convergence. It’s not just about the parts sitting beside each other but the way they meld and speak to each other. Newman and the others on the Audio Storytelling for Print Journalists panel challenged participants to look beyond the verbal portion of audio stories and to capture the ambient sounds and bits that paint that “picture” for the listener.
“Content is king, but collaboration is queen. If you think of a chessboard, the king is the most important, but, let’s be honest, the queen is most powerful.” – David Cohn, Spot.us
The most hopeful thing to hear over and over again at the convention was the call to collaborate, a particular theme of the hyperlocal news panel featuring Cohn. Especially as citizen journalism grows and culture’s demand for transparency and immediacy grows, the spirit of collaboration not only grows in importance but in creativity. Spot.us, for instance, uses a unique model of collaborative funding — freelancers can pitch stories, and community members can pitch in the cash.
“It’s not about what the staff is doing. It’s about what the reader is experiencing.” – Wasim Ahmad, Multimedia Journalist and Assistant Professor at Stonybrook University
So often we get caught up in what all of this change means for our jobs and our futures, but journalists should really be mindful of what the changing media landscape means for the audience — not only in how it will change the way people receive information but also the way people interact with information and what they choose to do with it.
“The business of journalism is the business of relationships.” – Raja Abdulrahim, Staff Writer at Los Angeles Times
“You’re not just a journalist. You’re a human being.” – Eiji Yamashita
I put these two together because they pull at a similar issue. So often do we, in the pressure to remain objective, lose sight of the communities and people who are affected the most. It’s not impossible to be both empathetic and fair, and perhaps empathy is intrinsic to justice. Our work as journalists are strengthened by nurturing relationships and trust with the people around us.
“This is not news in one point in time. I want to tell a story with an arc.” – Christopher Wong, Filmmaker of Whatever It Takes
Especially with tools like Twitter, there’s a lot of hype around up-to-the-minute bites (or bytes) of news, quick snippets of information. And the reality is, there’s definitely a demand for that in this fast-paced world. Yet as we reimagine different ways to make the news, we gain more opportunities to harness the power of a compelling story, something that isn’t just informative in an intellectual and utilitarian sense but something that speaks to the bigger picture.
Peter Sessum’s mug shot for AAJA Voices
This post was written by Peter Sessum, an AAJA Seattle student member. Sessum recently was one of 20 students to participate in AAJA Voices. He received training and mentoring on a variety of media platforms to cover the AAJA National Convention, which was held last month in Los Angeles. Sessum, a three-time recipient of the Northwest Journalists of Color Scholarship, last wrote about the chapter’s recent innovation salon on Twitter for the AAJA Seattle website.
I have benefited from AAJA more than anyone else I know. Workshops, scholarships and of course the mentorships. There is one thing that wraps it all up in one neat little package: The AAJA Voices Convention News Project (CNP). For a week in Los Angeles, students benefited from everything AAJA has to offer. I was lucky enough to be one of them.
If the convention is a sprint for most convention goers, for the Voices staff, it is a marathon that started long before registration.Twenty students were selected to be part of CNP. Once selected, we got to work. There were webinars that needed to be completed and story assignment ideas. We were paired with a professional mentor. Mine was William Wan from the Washington Post. I couldn’t have asked for one better.
By the time I arrived in LA, I already had one story in the can. I had written my column about how I came to be a journalist. After that, I just needed two more in two different media. This is what separated the journalists from the writers. You have to do research to know what story ideas to pitch. There were still a lot of unknowns heading to the airport, but excitement was high.
There is a saying among Navy SEALs, “The only easy day was yesterday.†For the convention, the only easy day was Monday. After all the students trickled in, introductions were made and we headed out to dinner. It would be the last time everyone would eat together outside the newsroom until after the convention.
Voices Director Marian Liu quickly laid down the law. Three students failed to complete the assigned tasks prior to the convention and were told not to come. From the start, Liu kept the group on task. Every day was full. If we weren’t working on a story, there were tours, guest speakers or some form of training or networking. One day was spent at The Los Angeles Times.
With so many moving parts I have no idea how Liu kept it all straight. It was more coordinated than most military operations. Nothing got past our leader. As soon as a student would finish a task, Liu would be calling their name with something new to do.
When the convention started on Wednesday I felt like I was in the eye of the storm. Despite furiously working against an ever impending deadline, tweeting updates for AAJA and Voices and trying to work on future stories, I felt calm. For me, it was not my most stressful newsroom.
The days were filled. Something was scheduled just about every minute. Fortunately, one of my stories was about Katelin Chow, an AAJA Seattle student member, NJC scholarship recipient and a first-time convention goer. Following her got me out of the newsroom and into a couple workshops.
When recruiters talk about elevator speeches, they mean it literally. When heading to my next event, I found myself in an elevator with a person from USA Today. I had missed her at the job fair. In the six-floor ride down, I was able to give her my pitch and we exchanged cards.
I was one of the lucky few who not only got out of the newsroom, but also had some time at night to get some downtime. I was able to spend time with members of AAJA Seattle. And I even found time to make some new friends. My roommate, however, was working far into the night.
National conventions are an Olympics of a conference. While most spring from event to event, the members of the voices project run a week long marathon. By the end of it, I was running like a well-oiled machine. One being operated by a rabid, schizophrenic badger.
Despite all the hard work, the Voices project was one of the most rewarding weeks of my life. I left feeling prepared for next year when I graduate and will be looking for a job. I also picked up some skills to make me a better journalist. As a side bonus, I had some fun.
I would encourage anyone to get involved with the program. Professionals will be able to mentor the next generation of journalists — some of who are really impressive. For students, the CNP is a great experience. They select the best AAJA has to offer, but only the best of those who apply.
The “Sea Beez” ethnic media project is holding a roundtable on best practices in journalism from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sept. 23 at KOMO’s Fisher Plaza.
In May, AAJA Seattle and the Seattle Association of Black Journalists (SABJ) co-hosted the launch party for the Sea Beez project, which aims to build the capacity of Puget Sound area ethnic media and empower them to strengthen their business and journalism practices.
Julie Pham, managing editor of Northwest Vietnamese News, directs the project. Pham invites AAJA and SABJ members to the event on Sept. 23. The project’s website is seabeez.com.
The Online News Association has a link to all the presentations from its daylong Parachute Training session held during the convention.
