On Wednesday evening, a new ethnic media web project held its launch party at The Seattle Times.
The project is led by AAJA member Julie Pham, who is managing editor of the family-owned Northwest Vietnamese News.
Sea Beez has its seed funding from the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and represents the newest “hive” for New America Media, the nation’s first and largest collaboration of 2,000 ethnic media organizations reaching 51 million adults. The NOLA Beez launched in January. The other hubs are LA Beez and San Jose Beez. LA Beez is part of a New America Media’s Digital Divide initiative, funded by the Ford Foundation.
Sandy Close, executive director of New America Media.
The evening began with networking and attendees admiring The Seattle Times’ Pulitzer Prize winning stories. Thanks to AAJA student member Peter Sessum for shooting photos.
The evening gave AAJA student members, like Andrew Doughman, a chance to practice networking and connect with editors looking for freelance contributors.
During the presentations, Julie explained the overall goals of the Sea Beez project.
Sandy Close told the audience that all of the “hives” have a Queen Bee, looking at Julie with a smile. Great work to all involved!
This has been a year of great accomplishments for our Seattle chapter in the face of the worst recession in our lifetime. It’s because of you that we continue to take a stand for diversity in journalism, nurture students and support media entrepreneurship.
As we all know, 2009 was the year of convulsions for our industry as advertisers retrenched and everyone was affected either directly or indirectly by newsroom layoffs. Hearst Corp.’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the city’s oldest newspaper, published its last print edition on March 17 and laid off most of its staffers. Despite layoffs in 2008, The Seattle Times itself was on the brink of bankruptcy, and the staff agreed to painful concessions. Local television stations imposed wage freezes and eliminated jobs as well. Freelancers had a tougher time getting paid their usual rates and finding outlets for their work.
Yes, there were challenges and setbacks, but they didn’t extinguish our spirit.
Here are some of the highlights of 2009:
In February, AAJA Seattle held one of its most successful Lunar New Year fundraisers ever. Karen Johnson, managing editor of Seattlemag.com, coordinated a team of volunteers who pulled off the classy event, which was emceed by Q13’s Lara Yamada. Our National Board representatives generously covered our biggest costs: Athima Chansanchai donated the cost of renting the Wing Luke Museum’s gorgeous space, while Chris Nishiwaki donated the cost of wine.
Our “Choppy Waters” conference in January at the University of Washington’s Haggett Hall and “Reboot Your Career” workshop in March at Microsoft were a hit with attendees. A big shout-out to the UW’s Department of Communications for making Choppy Waters possible and to freelance writer James Tabafunda for working with me on organizing the entrepreneurship-focused program. Doug Kim, managing editor for Microsoft Office Online, took the initiative to offer a resume workshop for members hunting for jobs.
For the first time, AAJA Seattle partnered with the Seattle Association of Black Journalists (SABJ) to develop a video to inspire the next generation of journalists of color. Amy Phan, an editor for NorthWest Cable News, and Jessica Boyd, a former Northwest Journalists of Color recipient, produced the video. Lisa Youngblood-Hall, SABJ’s president, supervised the young producers.
We screened the video in June at the Northwest Journalists of Color scholarship reception at KING TV. The NJC scholarship program, run this year by Caroline Li, who publishes earthwalkersmag.com, awarded grants to Peter Sessum, Martha Flores Perez, Kassiopia Rodgers and Ilona Idlis.
At the AAJA National Convention in Boston, our Seattle chapter had a stellar turnout with 16 attendees, including Whitworth University student Yong Kyle Kim, this year’s recipient of the Founders scholarship. President Sharon Chan delivered an inspiring speech, and Marian Liu led the Voices Student Project with aplomb.
In another first, the Seattle chapter went to Vancouver, B.C., in September to support journalists of color there and establish ties with major media. Jennifer Chen, associate producer for CBC’s Early Edition, and Alden Habacon, manager of diversity initiatives for CBC Television, worked hard to put together a packed two-day itinerary that included newsroom tours, a panel discussion at the University of British Columbia’s Graduate Journalism School and a Lunar New Year-style dinner that brought out 60 local journalists.
And in November, AAJA launched the Asian American Small Market Broadcast Journalists group. Chapter member Shawn Chitnis, a reporter for KNDO TV in Yakima, is co-coordinator of the group.
These and other members of our Seattle chapter are the reason why AAJA Seattle is one of the best chapters in the country. Our members are also lucky to have an extremely dedicated board, and I want to thank this year’s officers for their service. If you’re interested in serving on our board in the future, please drop me a note.
We have reorganized and expanded our board, dropping the co-presidency and establishing two new positions – vice president for events and vice president for member programs. Many thanks to Venice Buhain, board secretary, for managing the restructure and chapter elections. Here are the chapter’s officers in 2010:
President: Sanjay Bhatt, reporter, The Seattle Times
Vice president for member programs: vacant
Vice president for events: Caroline Li, founder, Earthwalkers Magazine
Treasurer: Nicole Tsong, reporter, The Seattle Times
Secretary: Venice Buhain, reporter, The Olympian
National Advisory Board representative: Athima Chansanchai, founder/president, Tima Media
The board held a retreat recently at the home of Lori Matsukawa and Larry Blackstock and developed a roadmap for the chapter in 2010 and beyond.
As we look ahead, we will inspire the next generation of journalists, promote diversity and support media entrepreneurship. We will focus our resources on outreach, training and mentoring. We will strengthen the relationships we’ve built and develop new ones.
Next year we plan to launch a training series, hold social events with other professional groups, and sponsor pizza nights with journalism students at colleges and universities. We plan to send one, maybe even two, students to the AAJA National Convention, Aug. 4-7, in Los Angeles (and hope to see you there).
Have an idea for a chapter event? Come to a chapter business meeting! We plan to hold them every other month on the second Saturday. Subscribe to updates at www.aajaseattle.org.
There are many ways you can support AAJA: Become a member. Attend an event. Volunteer your time or expertise. Make a tax-deductible donation. This is your community.
This year the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) Seattle chapter and the Seattle Association of Black Journalists (SABJ) partnered to produce a new video aimed at young minorities who are interested in pursuing careers in journalism. We wanted to counter the prevailing sense of doom and gloom, highlight outstanding local leaders and show the breadth of job opportunities in the industry.
In the spirit of encouraging young journalists’ creative spark, we handed it to two young women – Amy Phan, a former seattletimes.com intern who is working part-time as a video editor and a school teacher, and Jessica Boyd, a former NJC scholarship recipient who is continuing her education at Harvard in the fall.
Amy and Jessica conducted the interviews and shot the video, and Amy applied her video editing skills to create the final product. Thanks to all the journalists who agreed to participate in this project, and to Seattle University’s Prof. James Forsher, who made it possible for Amy to access the institution’s video editing equipment.
Also a big thanks to those journalists who sent in their own videos to be incorporated into the piece: Paris Jackson and Barbara Serrano. Email the video link to your friends. We hope the video goes viral and inspires many young journalists!
DONATIONS TO NJC
Donations to NJC, which AAJA Seattle administers, are fully tax deductible. Since 1986, NJC has provided scholarships to more than 100 outstanding college students in Washington state with a demonstrated passion for journalism. Make a pledge today! For details, contact Sanjay Bhatt at sbhatt@seattletimes.com.
Our friends at SABJ (Seattle Association of Black Journalists) organized a very useful, productive and inspiring event: the SABJ Career Reinvention Workshop, which I attended Saturday morning. In three hours at the Communications building at UW, it not only reaffirmed the path I’m currently on, but it also reminded me of the things I loved doing as a reporter and how those skills can translate to other endeavors.
The first panel focused on 4 former journalists who had transitioned — or are still in the midst of doing so — into other fields, while the second panel gave the audience practical tips and advice on how to self-promote and create an appealing personal brand for potential employers.
Paul Hollie, the first panel’s moderator who is the vice president of public relations for Safeco Insurance, still identifies as a journalist, nearly a decade after he left a newsroom. This is something that rang especially true to me, because even if I end up in another field, I will always identify as a journalist, having spent 13 years in the business. That’s part of who I am, my history, but also my legacy.
Former Seattle Times reporter Alex Fryer, who now works in the Mayor’s office as a media relations manager, said he still missed the newsroom and that it was the best atmosphere he ever worked in.
I feel the same way. Luckily, I have retained a sense of community by staying in touch with my P-I friends and staying active and involved with AAJA, where I am on the national board of directors.
Consistent in each of the panelists’ discussions about dabbling or being dunked into the non-newsroom world: culture shock. Hugo Kugiya, a former national reporter for the AP, said he did a brief stint in the corporate world as a researcher and in hindsight, wished he would have braced for it better, prepared himself for the fact that this was a much different world from a typical newsroom, where people pretty much come and go as they please so long as they produce. (Sometimes, not even.) The reality, he said, is that freelance life is a lot like living the “starving artist” life.
In the new world sans newsroom, my former P-I colleague Gary Washburn spoke on the array of skills used to do reporting and writing — something a later panelist would reiterate in resume writing — as a means of selling yourself as an appealing package.
While all were hooked into some kind of social media — Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — they couldn’t emphasize enough the importance of personal connections helping them land jobs, assignments and other opportunities.
Justin Carder — vice president of business development for the start-up Instivate, maker of Neighborlogs — told us to think of “writing as an asset” that shouldn’t be underestimated, especially when the hunger for information is so ravenous.
The panel brought up some deeper issues, such as the current state of the industry. Kugiya made a statement that can’t be said enough: It wasn’t journalism that collapsed. It was the advertising model that had fueled it for so long.
I think papers need to be more transparent about that process. I think the Joe and Jane Public have very little idea the work that needs to go into a story, even a short one.
In the future, the public might not have the benefits of all the moving parts of a paper, and there are many the public never sees : the process of choosing stories, reporting them, holding them up to standards of credibility and accuracy, writing it as a narrative (something Fryer says he rarely sees on those blogs, which he does credit with giving the public very relevant information) and editing it.
Now, all the information is out there and readers have to sort through it. Finding a place in that world is a challenge for many of us.
The second panel gave us some concrete tips toward overcoming those challenges.
Natasha Jones, deputy communications director for the King County Executive’s Office, and a former TV journalist, told us to pump up reporters’ skills and translate them for a broader audience: research (reporting), project management (stories) and networking (interviewing), for example. Her advice: break down jobs into actual tasks.
Susan Long-Walsh, who runs her own consulting business after years working for Starbucks and Paul Allen, told us to spend a lot of time on our resume. “That’s your Superbowl ad,” she said. “You want someone to eat your hot dog and drink your beer.”
That stuck in my head, as did her advice about looking at a resume as a brag book where you not only list your key accomplishments but reel them in with a summary. Other points I took away from her: Make your resume neat and easy to read, emphasizing points that show you can grow with the organization.
In short: Sell, sell, sell yourself, but do not sell-out. As Scott Battishill, vice president of DDB, put it, build your own personal brand.
Jones told us to volunteer for non-profits and other organizations to pick up skills and add more to a resume while you’re looking for a job. Rhonda Woods, human resources recruiter for Seattle University, encouraged by saying what a natural transition it was for journalists to go into communications, even ponying up a recent opening at the school for a New Media specialist (I know a few people who have already applied for it.)
Jack Evans, director of public relations for legal and policy issues at Microsoft, was an early victim of one of the low points in the industry — not quite as dire as now, but definitely one of the dips in the roller coaster — in not even getting an interview with the P-I back in the day because he happened to arrive for it on the day they announced lay-offs. But it worked out for him and he offered something we all need: a message of hope.
I left Saturday feeling not only hopeful, but better equipped toward finding my own way post P-I. But that’s another story and another post, which you’ll soon see here.
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