Indiana University School of Journalism » Blogs

Day 5

Amy Goetz and Jill Siegel — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:28:59 +0000

With two days left, we were ready to face our busiest day yet! We started at Bloomberg Tokyo, the interactive financial news network. While there, we toured the elaborate, modern office and media center. We then heard a presentation on Bloomberg’s business culture from Bloomberg employee Mikiko Moriya. Mikiko-san told the group about the vast opportunities available at Bloomberg locations in 146 countries.

Renowned author Bradley Martin fascinated the group with stories of his work as a foreign correspondent. Mr. Martin has worked in Japan as well as various other countries across Asia. He has spent much of his career focusing on North Korea. Mr. Martin explained to the group of eager young professionals that the most extreme form of PR can be found in North Korea. The entire North Korean culture is based around propaganda, pure and simple, along with fear.

After Bloomberg, we toured grounds around the Imperial Palace where we had a brief Japanese history lesson taught by our fearless tour guide, Hiromi Sumiyoshi.

We then headed to the American Embassy where the press attaché to the ambassador, David Marks, advised the group on opportunities in the state department. Mr. Marks earned his master’s at Indiana University, and told us how useful he found his IU education.

We were lucky enough to spend quite some time with the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, John Thomas “Tom” Schieffer. Today, Asia has the most opportunity for economic advancement, as well as difficulty, according to Schieffer. Japan, with the second largest economy in the world, continues to be a country that drives the world economy. Schieffer discussed with group the importance of the American presence in Japan to not only the United States and Japan, but also the entire world. Schieffer explained that by being in Japan, the U.S. has the ability to monitor the “sharp edges” that threaten the world.

Ambassador Schieffer encouraged the group to work for the government. He told us of the internship program that prepares young adults for working in a career in foreign affairs. He continued on, and stated that by working for the United States, you are privileged to meet very intellectual, thoughtful people. Also, the ambassador said he felt he has a “front row seat in history” doing a job he is proud to do and thoroughly enjoys.

Ambassador Schieffer gave our group some advice: he said that young people have a tendency to try and flip to the last chapter of our book. Instead, he said we should focus on the now as the last chapter has yet to be written.

While still at the embassy, we were then joined by Newsweek bureau chief, Christian Caryl. After a brief session, the floor was opened for a question and answer session in which Caryl moved the group with his stories of working as a foreign correspondent. After our fascinating session with Caryl, it was time to leave the embassy and head to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan (FCCJ).

Sophie Hardach of Reuters led us on a tour of the FCCJ and answered our questions about working abroad and in Japan. Hardach is the lifestyle and arts editor for Reuters in Tokyo. Generally, the stories Reuters focuses on business and economics. Therefore, the stories Hardach writes and edits are tailored to be relevant to the global Reuters reader.

Hardach also told the group about the Reuters graduate traineeship, or internship program. She said that working in any country with a culture that differs from your own requires adjustment. With some assignments in fashion, Hardach says she is able to see a reflection of society. She continued our discussion with the benefits of joining the Foreign Correspondents Club – it is a great place for networking.
Later that evening, a few students went out on the town and explored Tokyo after dark. Classmate Lauren Bristow’s longtime friend, Kana Suziki, showed us around the Roppongi area known for its nightlife.

Sayonara,
Amy-san and Jill-san

Convergence newsroom

Clare Krusing — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:12:28 +0000

Photo by Michael Beam

Sarasota Herald-Tribune photo director Mike Lang shows the Ernie Pyle Scholars the Sarasota News Network’s studio Friday. The Herald-Tribune operates SNN News 6, a local 24-hour news network.

At the center of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s newsroom, the paper’s section editors construct the layout for the weekend’s stories. Minutes before the editors scatter off to complete their respective assignments, the news director for Sarasota News Network, the 24-hour cable news network housed within the Herald-Tribune, rushes to the desk to share his last-minute story ideas with the print journalists.

Television journalists sharing their stories with the print journalists? It’s routine for those at the Herald-Tribune.

Our visit to the Herald-Tribune newsroom was the culmination of our weeklong convergence study. News organizations have embraced the gradual marriage of print, broadcast and online journalism, and the Herald-Tribune is one of the first newspaper companies to integrate broadcast into its news coverage. The honeymoon, however, has been short-lived.

Empty desks are all that remain from the Herald-Tribune’s former feature section that was completely eliminated last month. SNN’s two-full time reporters and five photographers must rely on the paper’s reporters to supplement their 24-hour coverage. And with the Herald-Tribune’s parent company, The New York Times, calling for smaller staffs and bigger profits, executive editor Mike Connolly said staff lay-offs are common within today’s news organizations.

“The newspaper industry is facing staff reductions across the board,” Connolly said. “But what hasn’t changed is the need for people who can ask the tough questions and get people to say things to them that they shouldn’t be saying to anyone else.”

Connolly has yet to give up on traditional print journalism. A daily reader of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and several other national and local publications, Connolly said “the most serious stories can only be found in newspapers.” Newspapers can provide more space for reporting than a 30-second broadcast package. At the Herald-Tribune, print journalists also serve double-duty as television commentators and reporters for SNN.

Our visits with the Florida journalists have significantly changed my perception of the profession. Not only are recent graduates expected to be talented reporters, but they’re also expected to be video producers, photographers and editors. The definition of journalism has greatly expanded since the rise of the Internet. Despite the journalist’s changing role, Connolly said the fundamentals remain the same.

“The newsroom may change,” Connolly said. “But we still get to cover the type of stories, the important ones that make a difference, that make us go into journalism in the first place.”

Leaving for Indiana

Beth Moellers — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 00:47:22 +0000

8:30 p.m. Friday, Indiana time / 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Tokyo time:

The Tokyo group has checked in at Narita International Airport and cleared security before heading to the gate. The flight leaves in about 75 minutes and is expected to arrive in Chicago around 8:10 a.m. Saturday. The group left the hotel early Saturday morning and took the Narita Express to the airport.

Students are expected to arrive in Indianapolis around 1:15. A bus will take the group from the airport to Bloomington.

Professor Jim Bright wrote before leaving the hotel Saturday morning:

"During the past two days we visited:

Bloomberg¹s futuristic newsroom where Senior Editor Bradley Martin gave us an in-depth look at what¹s happening in North Korea
The U.S. Embassy where Ambassador Tom Schieffer (brother of CBS News Anchor Bob Schieffer) talked about the office and his career. Meanwhile, Press Attaché David Marks (an IU graduate), joined by Newsweek Bureau Chief Christian Caryl, shared his experiences in dealing with the media.
The Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan where Sophie Hardach of Reuters gave us a tour and introduced us to several Tokyo-based western journalists
Gavin Anderson (one of the world¹s largest PR agencies) where President and CEO Deborah Hayden and her team discussed the challenges and opportunities of working in PR overseas
A karaoke box where we discovered some unbelievable singing ability among our International PR students!"

A visit with the Ambassador

Beth Moellers — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 18:58:42 +0000

Courtesy photo

The International Public Relations class with Tom Schieffer, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan. The students also visited Bloomberg-Tokyo, Newsweek Tokyo Bureau Chief Christian Caryl and the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan Thursday.

Students visited the United States Embassy on Thursday afternoon and met with the U.S. ambassador to Japan, J. Thomas Schieffer. Schieffer has served as ambassador since April 2005. He spoke to the students about his job and then took questions.

The meeting was set up by Indiana University alum David M. Marks, press attaché, U.S. Embassy. Marks, who studied history at IU, told the students he also took a journalism course with Professor Owen Johnson.

In the morning, the students visited Bloomberg and met with reporter Bradley Martin, a North Korea expert and author of Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty.

Martin has covered Asia for many years, working for Newsweek, the Asian Wall Street Journal and other outlets.

The final event of the day was a visit to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan.

Visiting Poynter

Cory Barker — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:13:41 +0000

On Wednesday, The EP Scholars headed to the Poynter Institute for a more participatory experience. On arrival at Poynter, we were able to sit in on a class taught by Poynter professor Al Tompkins about multimedia reporting, primarily Internet video.

We had the opportunity to listen to real deal professional journalists from all over the nation and from high-profile news organizations – NPR, The Washington Post – and delve into their struggles with converging media. The pros actually asked us a few questions. It seemed like a really unique situation to have veteran journalists make inquiries to the inexperienced.

Throughout the seminar, Tompkins spoke to the pros and the EP scholars about the ethics of video editing. The primary discussion centered on whether or not it’s ethical to deceive the audience by altering video packages and Tompkins provided everyone with numerous examples of ostensibly quality work that had actually been altered to produce a predetermined outcome.

Obviously, mostly everyone present agreed that altering videos to deceive isn’t a move any journalist using video should do, even if the audience is aware of some editing. However, there were a few heated debates among the professional journalists that stemmed from their different backgrounds. Tompkins left the group with these great words of wisdom: “Anything we do to affirm the public’s suspicion that we in the news media aren’t telling the truth is something that is very bad,” he said.

After a tour of the Poynter building, we reconvened in a boardroom with IU grad Wendy Wallace for a bit of a debriefing on the seminar. In the boardroom, the discussion turned to the differences in ethics between journalism and PR. There seemed to be conflicting opinions on whether or not PR people had a code of ethics to follow or not, and while it wasn’t really resolved, the conversation was definitely interesting.

Post-lunch, we met with Poynter Vice President and Senior Scholar Roy Peter Clark. Clark, author of “Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer.” He spoke to us primarily about tips from that aforementioned book. He gave us a shortened version of his tips, some of which we discussed thoroughly. Clark talked to us about a theory of reading he calls “X-Ray reading,” which requires us to look closer at quality writing to determine why it’s really good.

Clark also spoke to us about how to use words and punctuation to improve our writing. He noted that the number one thing journalists really do is make important things interesting, not just report the truth. Plus, he played us some John Mellencamp and Sonny and Cher on an acoustic guitar.

Into the countryside

Beth Moellers — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:01:20 +0000

The mountains and rural areas of Japan provide a remarkable contrast to the neon lights and skyscrapers in Tokyo. On Wednesday, students visited Nikko National Park, a World Heritage Site about two hours north of Tokyo.

The group left Tokyo at 9 a.m. on an express train to Nikko, arriving at 11. Nikko is one of 14 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Japan.

The group walked through the park area. Nikko is the site of several important temples and shrines. The surrounding area is filled with mountains, waterfalls and monkeys. A relief carving over a door at Tosho-gu Shrine features the Three Wise Monkeys, known as Mizaru, Kikazaru and Iwazaru – or, the famous representation of the idea, as known in English, to “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”

Days 3 and 4

Amy Goetz and Jill Siegel — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:05:04 +0000

“It’s so much easier to get up on a Monday morning if you are doing what you love,” said Simon Sproule, Vice President of Global Communication and CSR at Nissan Motor Company.

As part of our experience at Nissan, we were treated to a tour of the headquarters and manufacturing plant. At the headquarters, Simon Sproule, along with Gina Pasco of the emerging markets division, presented the group with a glimpse into Nissan’s communications strategies and tactics. They spoke about the globalization of business and its effects on corporate communications. Sproule, a UK native, spoke about the language and cultural barriers that he has faced in his time overseas, and how he coped with and overcame these hurdles. We not only learned about business and public relations in Japan, but even got to witness a Japanese fire drill!

After the Nissan experience, some students explored China Town in Yokohama where classmate Matt Beuoy entertained the crowd with impressions of Professor Bright. Others shopped the streets of Shinjuku and dined at an izakaya (traditional Japanese restaurant).

On Wednesday, the group traveled up the countryside of Japan to the mountains of Nikko, an ancient city outside of Tokyo. There
we explored Buddhist and Shinto temples and shrines, including the famous Toshogu Shrine. Lindsy Wise explained that she had been hoping to experience this side of the Japanese culture since we arrived on Saturday.

Marsha Dawes, who is currently studying Zen Buddhism at IU, said, “It was interesting to see the temples and shrines that I have been studying. It really puts everything into perspective for me.”

After visiting the shrines, we set off to explore the old town of Nikko, dining in local restaurants and shopping in the numerous antique and souvenir shops. We then took the two and a half hour train back to Tokyo, where we all split up for dinner and touring of the city.

Tomorrow is a big day for the group. We are visiting Bloomberg Tokyo, the U.S. Embassy and the Foreign Correspondence Club of Japan.

Sayonara!
Amy-san and Jill-san

Convergence and the Tampa Tribune

David Boeyink — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:43:48 +0000

Photo by Michael Beam

Dennis Joyce, senior editor for continuous news of the Tampa Tribune (left), and Rusty Coats, managing director for product & audience development (center), explained the central news desk at the Tampa Tribune to IU’s Ernie Pyle Scholars on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Ernie Pyle Scholars from the School of Journalism toured the production plant of the St. Petersburg Times, where trucks loaded with newspapers leave the dock once a day. On Thursday, they visited a newsroom where the news is leaving the dock every minute.

Since August 2007, The Tampa Tribune has operated a “continuous news desk,” producing news 24/7 for tbo.com, the online site of the Tribune. That desk is changing the way news is handled in an era of convergence. For Michael Beam, one of the 16 honors students on the week-long spring-break trip, that operation has opened up a vision of what is possible in an era of converged media. “I thought that some of the things that Rusty was showing on the screen and what he talked about, such as the databases and how tbo.com operates, put a face on convergence,” Beam said.

Rusty Coats, managing director for product & audience development for Media General Interactive, hosted the IU group. Coats, an IU alum, gave students a personal history of online journalism, dating from his creation of the Modesto Bee’s first online site to his recent work on Tampa’s tbo.com.

What he’s learned young journalists may find surprising.

Learning to be an Internet journalist doesn’t have much to do with technology. “It means understanding the audience,” Coats says. Knowing what audiences want and when they want it drives the work of the journalist more than knowing HTML or Flash.
“Some of the things that are most valuable to me as a journalist are not as valuable to the advertiser or the audience,” Coats said. Journalists might take great pride in a story about the homeless, but the online audience may be more interested in personal health and fitness.
Audiences can still be attracted to local news. The Continuous News Desk at The Tampa Tribune has been operating since August 2007. As a result, local news page views are up 100-160 percent over the previous year. Local news was no. 5 on in online popularity a year ago. Now it’s no. 2, according to Dennis Joyce, senior editor for continuous news.
User-generated content is critical to a successful online news site. In its “Snap” section, tbo.com has published more than 1. 7 million photos from its audience – and that’s just the beginning. User-generated content is now 20 percent of tbo.com. Coats says the goal is 40 percent.

On the second floor of The Tampa Tribune, a central news desk is surrounded by the newsrooms of the paper, the television station and the online operation. The central news desk coordinates coverage for all three news operations.

So what does 24/7 news mean for working journalists? For 17 journalists who work for tbo.com, it means coming to work at 5 a.m. Why? Most of the traffic on the site comes between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. Good news for morning people; bad news for reporters who like to drag in with hangovers at 11 a.m., Coats said.

More critically, Joyce argues that all of this convergence makes journalism better. The online operation is generating more breaking stories. Some of these stories turn into print stories. A story on unclaimed lottery winnings is being developed today for tbo.com. It’s also likely to be a page 1 enterprise story in The Tampa Tribune.

And this process is not only increasing the number of people looking at site’s pages, it is generating more newspaper stories. “We are doing better journalism because of online,” Coats said.

Still, not all the problems have been solved. In media convergence, relationships are not created equal. Coats believes the link between print and online works well. So does the link between television and online. But print and television? “That kind of marriage doesn’t work,” Coats said.

Coming tomorrow: A visit to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, a news organization that has tried to make that marriage between print and television work.

Getting down to business

Lauren Brucker — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:41:24 +0000

Courtesy photo

The Ernie Pyle scholars visit the St. Petersburg Times.

Though we thoroughly enjoyed our time sitting in the sun and seeing the sites of St. Petersburg, the Ernie Pyle Scholars were ready to get down to business, and that is exactly what we did today. We started our day with a guided tour of the Times Printing Plant, which prints the St. Petersburg Times along with the New York Daily News, the New York Post and even the London Express. Tom Frick informed our group about many routine processes of the press.

Articles are printed on aluminum plates and then covered in photo polymer. After the polymer gets washed off there is a blue and silver aluminum bender, which allows the aluminum to attach to the machine that prints the copies onto paper. The sheets are covered in ink and where there is no ink, in water. The water, known as “purified mist,” is the most purified water there is, according to Mr. Frick, a print quality analyst for the Times.

Photo by Michael Beam

Print Quality Analyst Tom Frick answers a question during the Ernie Pyle Scholars’ tour of the St. Petersburg Times Color Printing Plant Tuesday.

After our printing tutorial, Mr. Frick showed us the paper storage room, where each roll of paper is 7.5 miles long and the paper currently in storage is enough to be rolled from St. Petersburg to Detroit (that’s a lot of paper). We finished the tour and headed to the St. Petersburg Times headquarters to meet some Hoosier alumni. Editor, CEO and Chairman of the St. Petersburg Times Paul Tash, who was once the editor of the Indiana Daily Student, hosted us for an enjoyable lunch.

The paper is quite a thriving publication. Another publication of the St. Petersburg times is the Tampa Bay Times. The Times has a great online Web site with one link in particular worth recognizing. Take out your pens everyone and write this down: politifact.com. This edgy site provides an interesting perspective on politics today and was recognized as one of the “Best Overall Newspaper Web (sites)” by the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge.

Our discussion unfolded into a currently popular topic among journalists: convergence in the media. Tash, along with Nancy Waclawek, Eric Deggans, Rob Hooker and Tim Nickens all joined in on our conversation. Tash asked a key question during our luncheon, “Where are newspapers going?”

Everyone had their two cents about convergence in the media. Nevertheless, I think all of us came to the conclusion that newspapers aren’t going anywhere for a while. In order to survive, however, some adaptations and changes in the current newspaper world must be made. Those papers that find the fine balance between convergence and classic newspaper style will prevail. Additionally, looking at the business perspective, newspaper revenue remains in print ads, which of course are an extremely important aspect of every paper. The conversation continued with questions about values and convergence, the ethics of blogging and the ethics of anonymous sources.

It was truly a great experience to be able to converse with extremely successful journalists (most of whom were Hoosiers!) about the future of a world we care so much about. Newspapers are the core of journalism – that is undeniable. It’s where it all began. And it some sense, it is comforting to know there is a place for newspapers in our future.

For more on convergence in the media see Eric Deggans’ Blog: http://blogs.tampabay.com/media/

Communications and Cars

Beth Moellers — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:51:19 +0000

Photo by Marsha Dawes

Professors Radhika Parameswaran (left) and Jim Bright (right) pose with the the group in Yokohama’s China Town.

Tuesday’s main event was a visit to the world headquarters of Nissan in Ginza and a production plant in Oppama.

In the morning, the group met with Simon Sproule, the corporate vice president of global communications and investor relations. Mr. Sproule knew Professor Jim Bright from their work in automotive communications.

He talked about Nissan’s public relations work and cultural differences in communications, especially in Japan and China. Students saw a PowerPoint show about Nissan’s global communications structure within the company.

The group took a local train for about an hour to the Oppama plant. Nissan’s Yoshie Yamasaki, executive assistant, global communications, served as the escort. The company provided lunch for the group.

The group took a company bus to the nearby Oppama Wharf to see where Nissan products are shipped abroad and to Japanese cities. Then they visited the factories, including a walking tour of the automobile production, with robotic welding of panels and an assembly line for interior parts and the final inspection. The new cars included both Nissan and Infiniti models.

Photo by Ashley Thursby

The Nissan assembly line.

After the day at Nissan, some of the students stopped at Yokohama, Japan’s second largest city (Osaka is third). Yokohama is a short train ride from Tokyo and includes a major port and one of the world’s largest Chinatowns. The students ate dinner in Chinatown before returning to the hotel for the evening.