The University of Hong Kong is proud of its journalism programme and is committed to supporting it and helping it grow, says Deputy Vice Chancellor Roland Chin. He made the pledge recently at a gathering of HKU’s journalism alumni, hosted by HKU Vice Chancellor Lap-Chee Tsui and Professor Ying Chan, founding director of the Journalism and Media Studies Centre (JMSC).

The gathering was held at University Lodge, home of Professor Tsui, to celebrate the JMSC’s 14 years of operation.

The Deputy Vice Chancellor predicted that JMSC graduates “are going to take us even higher. We look forward to the way you will change the world and reach a global audience”, he told the gathering. “Ying has done a tremendous job giving birth to this centre”.

About 100 JMSC alumni attended the event, along with JMSC faculty and staff members, and media professionals.

Professor Chan expressed delight at having current students and staff meet the alumni. “This is a rehearsal for our 15th anniversary celebration next year”, she said. “It is gratifying to see our alums working across the industry – for local, international, Chinese and English outlets, across the spectrum. I’m very proud. They’re out there in the world telling stories, and all thriving”.

JMSC founder Professor Ying Chan speaking at the Vice Chancellor’s house.

Founded in 1999, the JMSC graduated its first class of Master of Journalism students in 2001. It launched the Bachelor of Journalism programme in 2004.

Mayella Cheung, the Deputy Head of Corporate Communications and Standards for Radio Television Hong Kong and Managing Editor of RTHK’s Media Digest, recalled the journalism school’s early days.

“We were the first batch of MJs when the school started in 1999. We were the guinea pigs”, she said. “Imagine what it was like in 1999. There was no social media. No Facebook, no Twitter, no iPhones… Ying invited Dan Gillmor from the San Jose Mercury News to teach a course on new media. And he taught us weblogs – since this was before there was such a term as a ‘blog’. We were the first school in the world to include blogs in the curriculum. We are pioneers!”

Zhou Ping (MJ, 2011) recalled how the Master of Journalism course at the JMSC was the gateway to a more exciting life.  ”Before I went to the JMSC I was a Korean editor for a publisher in Beijing working on textbooks and dictionaries”, she said, “and less than one year later I had my MJ degree and the JMSC courses gave me the confidence to be a reporter in an international media market. And only one month after I joined the Financial Times I was the first international media reporter in Wukan after rioters clashed with the police at an anti-corruption protest“.

Other alumni said they have taken the lessons from the JMSC into their professional lives.

Vice Chancellor Lap-Chee Tsui with Elmy Leung (MJ, 2008)

“There is not much of a difference between the assignments I was doing when I was a student at the JMSC and what I do at my current job”, said Jing Yang (MJ, 2012), who became the first person from Mainland China to work at Lloyd’s List, one of the leading daily newspapers covering the shipping industry.

“Every day I’m faced with challenges of business ethics and every step is difficult”, she said. “How shall I manage the integrity of my company and the integrity of the parties involved in a story and my own integrity as a journalist? What I learned at the JMSC was how to practice it in daily work. The JMSC taught me what is right and I am able to remind myself and use what I learned as a yardstick to monitor my work every day”.

Frank Proctor, publisher of Muse Magazine, said the goals Professor Chan set for the JMSC are being realized.  “Being at the event was a reminder that most of the people who are having a positive impact, or who seek to have a positive impact, on media in Hong Kong have passed through the JMSC and have been mentored by Professor Chan in one way or another”, Proctor said.  ”That’s a remarkable achievement and the JMSC is really a treasure of this city”.

Diego Laje (MJ, 2009) and Elmy Leung (MJ, 2008) shared master of ceremonies duties for the evening. Since graduating, Leung has become a TVB News host, and Laje is Asia Correspondent at CNN en Español.

Speeches from the event may be viewed below:

20130130.JMSC.ConneXions from JMSC HKU on Vimeo.

Vincent Du (MJ, 2011) and his sound recordist at work filming Deqi for his documentary “Almost Famous”.

JMSC alumnus Vincent Du’s latest documentary has been picked up by Al Jazeera. “Almost Famous” features China’s largest school for rock music and will play on the network’s English-language programme, “Witness”. We caught up with Du (MJ, 2011) to hear how the project has evolved since Al Jazeera commissioned a version, and to get his take on successfully pitching and producing documentaries for the big networks:

Like much of Vincent Du’s other work, “Almost Famous” aims to show a side of Chinese society not generally seen by the outside world. The film follows the journey of seven-year-old Deqi, a protégé drummer at the Nine Beats Education Institution for Modern Music, to a percussion competition in Italy. Du explained that Deqi’s father, Mu, newly wealthy but from a poor rural background, “is looking to her to fulfill his dream”. Deqi was sent to board at the prestigious school and practices long hours in order to hone her talent. The film explores the impact that the stress of constant practice and competition and the pressure of meeting the expectations of China’s ambitious and aspirational parents has on a young child.

In July, Du sent a trailer that profiled three of Nine Beats’ young students to Open Call Asia, for consideration for Al Jazeera’s Viewfinder series, which showcases independent filmmaking from around the globe. Al Jazeera then invited Du to London to meet the “Witness” programme editor and executive producer to discuss the possibility of working together. His proposal was chosen for air after this meeting, but he was first asked to send still more preliminary work.

He submitted a piece made for JMSC professor Nancy Tong’s class that focused on the encroachment of urbanisation on a small Hong Kong village close to the mainland border called, “The Last Villagers“. Al Jazeera then asked Du to attend the Viewfinder workshop at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea last October, where he worked to develop the story further. In the end, he was commissioned to shift the focus of “Almost Famous” to a more in-depth study of one single student.

Deqi’s parents watch Deqi practice at Nine Beats.

Du chose to focus on Deqi Mu, he explained, because her “family reflects the progress of Chinese society in transition…perfectly.” Her father was from an impoverished village, and was among the first generation of migrant workers to become wealthy owing to China’s economic reforms. A typical Chinese parent, Du continued, Mu “is investing everything in his daughter for the future of their family. So, as I see it, the documentary is not only about the little girl, but also about the whole family in contemporary Chinese society”.

He is currently mid-way through filming, and expects the product to be finalised by February. The release is scheduled for June.

Du advised anyone looking to market a documentary, or even starting out in documentary journalism, to learn as much as possible about the technical side, such as editing and filming techniques, before setting out. He said the most important thing to master was the ability to tell a compelling visual story that helps viewers make an emotional connection.  Du researches and pre-interviews his documentary ideas. He writes proposals and makes trailers before pitching, which he does through pitch competitions and events like the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam, the Sundance Festival in the U.S., and the Sheffield Documentary Festival in Britain.

Du has also found it “important to understand foreign [Western] media and how it works”. For example, he said, your work needs to explain cultural differences, unnecessary when working on a Chinese subject solely for a Chinese audience. “Western audiences may think that you cannot learn rock (music) like academic study, because it is free expression. But it is no difference for Chinese children to learn maths, English, ping pong or rock”, he said.

“Be inquisitive”, Du advised.  “You need to go to as many film festivals and workshops as possible”, because “you can’t get all the answers from the university”. But he still said he considered university the best place to start building a network. “You need to learn from classmates as well as teachers and keep contact with people, even though they may work in different areas”.

Deqi hikes with her father at The Great Wall.

According to Du, filmmaking is a continual learning process. He is in daily communication with his two producers – the Al Jazeera producer who is based in Malaysia, and the producer from the film production company OR Media who is based in London – but all the work is done remotely. Al Jazeera is overseeing the film’s progress, but ultimately Du said its up to him to film and edit the work before sending it to Al Jazeera as a finished product. OR Media is assisting Du with the production and post-production.

Du admits that working for the first time with the big networks can be daunting. He said you need a very clear idea of where you want your work to go, but you must also be flexible. “We have different opinions”, he said of his producers. “I think Deqi’s Italy scene should [be] put at the end of the film. The producer gives me another option that probably we can put this part at the beginning. Even though we have not made the final decision yet, I believe it is a good way to listen to producer’s opinion, as she’s more professional in terms of how to tell the story”.

In addition to “Almost Famous”, Du has produced shorts and documentaries about such issues as homosexuality, cancer and Catholicism in China. He said he hopes his work will help raise awareness of social issues in the country that are often hidden from outside view, and “make a bridge between China and the West.”

Jonathan Stray (MJ, 2010)

Jonathan Stray (MJ, 2010), who leads the Overview Project for the Associated Press (AP), is at the JMSC for four weeks teaching the school’s first Computational Journalism course.

He’s also making clear what the difference is between “computational” and “data” journalism, two new terms of the digital era that are often confused.

“Data journalism is about getting data and reporting on data and visualizing data and communicating data”, he said. “Computational journalism is about how the tools that handle data are put together. So the data journalist uses the tools the computational journalist designs”.

One of the tools Stray designed, the Overview Project, was developed at the Associated Press to help journalists search through documents in order to find stories buried in large amounts of data.

During the recent US presidential election, Jack Gillum, an AP campaign finance reporter, used Overview to sort through almost nine thousand pages of documents he had received after filing a Freedom of Information Act request with every federal agency, asking to see what Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan had lobbied for as a congressman.

He discovered that Ryan had sought money from a lot of the same programs, like Green Energy, that he had been publicly criticizing as wasteful on the campaign trail. “This was a case where there was a story in those thousands of pages of documents somewhere”, said Stray. “But reporters can’t read or sift through them all on a deadline, so they use these kinds of tools to help”.

The Overview Project won a 2011 Knight News Challenge Prize for Digital Innovation.

Stray’s course consists of eight lectures and a series of tutorials that teach students how to apply computer science techniques to all parts of journalism.  It covers topics like how Google News works, how modern surveillance operates, how the computers and programs involved in data journalism are built, and the privacy and security issues that surround current reporting.

He taught a similar course at Columbia University in New York last fall.

“It’s really good to be able to bring the course to the JMSC”, said Stray, who taught Internet Strategy for News Organizations at the school in 2010, ”because Hong Kong University is at the cutting edge of data journalism work in China”.

“It’s very easy to fall into an inward looking perspective in New York and get cut off from the rest of the world”, he said. “When I am teaching at the JMSC I am forced to think, ‘is this true for China?’, before I say something. The role of the press, the language, the algorithms that expect a certain concept of what the world is – they all work differently here. It challenges a lot of assumptions I don’t even know I have”.

Stray was the AP’s Interactive Technology Editor from 2010 to 2012. Prior to this, he was a freelance journalist in Hong Kong, and a senior computer scientist for Adobe Systems. He has a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Toronto and a Master’s in Journalism from Hong Kong University.

Stray is on Twitter at @jonathanstray and blogs at jonathanstray.com/.

Sergio Held at Radio Super

Held has been made Deutsche Welle‘s correspondent for its new Spanish-language TV news channel. He will also co-present a radio programme called “La Hora de la Verdad” (The Hour of Truth) on the Bogatá station Radio Super,  alongside Fernando Londoño, a former minister of the interior.

Held’s radio shift will run from 5am to 11am. He will then devote the rest of the day to TV production for Deutsche Welle.

Held, now 27, first received a law degree, and then entered politics, being elected a councilman for one of the 20 boroughs of Bogotá. He remained in office for three years before he decided that he wanted to become a journalist, and applied to the MJ programme at HKU.

While studying for his master’s degree, he worked as a correspondent for Radio Super. He also did an internship with CNN en Español, where he met JMSC alumnus Diego Laje (MJ 2009).

Laje proved to be instrumental in getting Held the job with Deutsche Welle, connecting him with a former colleague who now works for Deutsche Welle TV in Berlin.  Held stopped in Berlin on the way back to Colombia, and was given the job.

The radio show then slotted into place. “Once they knew I was moving back to Colombia, they asked me to co-host the news talk show,” he said.

Held says his MJ degree has enabled him to find these two positions.

“The JMSC gave me the opportunity to become a real journalist,” he said. “Not only the networking and the opportunity of adding CNN to my CV, but also the great professors who taught me how to face all the challenges of being a real journalist.”

“From Rob McBride who taught TV News Production, who showed us how to be a correspondent with just a backpack and shared his experience of working for Al-Jazeera, to Matt Walsh who taught How to Write for TV, who told us about his work for CNN, to Thomas Abraham who taught us how to produce and deliver international news with his great experience in this field. All of them gave me the knowledge that I now require for these new challenges.”

Alison Hui (on right) receiving her award

“I felt very excited to win this award,” said Hui.  “Getting this has really helped to build up my confidence and encouraged me to put extra effort into my research.”

“Depression is an increasingly prevalent illness, but the low help-seeking rate has been a huge and worsening issue,” she said.

“As the media is powerful and influential in spreading messages, we would like to make use of this research to systematically test how the media can encourage help-seeking in depression. This includes understanding what the public has to know in order to increase their help-seeking incentives and, in turn, build more tailor-made and effective media messages.”

After graduating from the JMSC with a Bachelor of Journalism degree in 2011, Hui started work as research assistant for Dr. Fu King-wa. She then went on to do an MPhil, under Dr. Fu’s supervision.

“As a well-trained journalism graduate at the JMSC, Alison understands the secret of communication,” Dr. Fu said. “She was able to present an academic topic in a simple, illustrated way in just five minutes. She also addressed a couple of tough questions from the audience nicely. That’s why I think she deserves the award.”

“Many people know that the JMSC offers high-standard professional training for journalists, but don’t know about our postgraduate research degrees, the MPhil and PhD,” he said. “This award is a recognition of the JMSC’s capacity in training excellent postgraduate research students.”

Sugarman’s  first award was in the category of “Analysis,” for a story called “Employers Avoid Seeking Skilled Worker Visa”. The story covered the reluctance of American employers to hire from abroad because of the difficulties getting workers employment visas.

His second prize winner, in the category “Feature Story of a Serious Nature,” was called “International Appeal”. It looked at a growing trend of foreign students who go to the U.S. and spend more than $50,000 a year on law degrees, and then end up without jobs.

Sugarman received his Master of Journalism degree at the JMSC before starting a job as a writer on the Bay City News Service,  a San Francisco newswire.

He moved on to the Daily Journal in June 2011.

“I am constantly looking at opportunities through new jobs, awards and fellowships,” said Sugarman. “My biggest challenge is remembering what opportunities are out there and when those deadlines are. I’ve been making a big push to keep on top of that this year, which is why I applied for the Peninsula Press Club awards.”

“I think these awards reflect my interest in international affairs, which the JMSC fostered,” he said.

“It was really nice to receive an award for all my hard work. I also loved that my former editor of the Bay City News Service presented me with the award. That was a special treat.”

Sylvia Chan (MJ 2007)

The bilingual (English and Chinese) volume will be published by Muse Books in Hong Kong.

Chan, a Hong Kong native, studied at the JMSC in 2006-2007. After graduating from the JMSC, she worked as a reporter at the trade publication Cargonews Asia for half a year and then joined Muse Magazine, a leading arts and culture magazine based in Hong Kong, as a staff writer.

In 2010, she returned to academia, taking a master’s in Histories and Theories of Architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.

“Writing In(to) Architecture is actually my thesis for the MA course,” said Chan.

“The book is about the evolution of architectural journalism in China from 1949, when the PRC was established, until the present,” she said.  “In a nutshell, the book explores the relationship between journalism and the actual design and construction.”

She said she was interested in exploring how the general public can influence architectural design by contributing to the discourse on architecture.  Architectural writing provides a platform for the general public to participate in debates on architecture, which are otherwise dominated by architectural professionals, she said.

Chan found her studies at the JMSC useful when it came to researching and authoring first her thesis and then her book.

“My studies at the JMSC deeply reinforced my research and writing skills, which have been extremely valuable both within and outside the realm of journalism.”

“The literary journalism course offered by the JMSC was certainly a source of inspiration for my book. Through the course, I realised how texts could simultaneously document and provide alternative lenses to look at social phenomena.”

She currently works as a communications officer at an international research-based architectural firm. She is responsible for promoting the firm in Asia and also serves as a researcher on architectural phenomena.

Monami Yui and Marco Lui (MJ 2009)

Marco Lui and Monami Yui both graduated with a Master of Journalism degree in 2009, and both found jobs with the Bloomberg news service.  Although Marco is based in Hong Kong and Monami is in Tokyo, they meet periodically to run ultramarathons together.

“I started running in summer 2010,” said Lui. “At that time I could barely jog three kilometres and was looking for a physical challenge.”

“I saw a company e-mail saying it would sponsor employees to participate in the UNICEF Hong Kong charity run in November as part of its corporate social responsibility project. I thought it was a great idea to keep yourself fit and help others at the same time.”

Lui trained and completed his first half-marathon (21km) in 2 hours. Since then he’s been hooked.

Inspired by Lui’s half marathon, Yui started to run too and a running partnership developed.

They ran the Borneo Marathon in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, in May this year.

“The race started at 4am and the weather was perfect at around the mid-20-degree Celsius mark,” said Lui. “But by 8am the sun had climbed and the temperature rose to 30-ish. We crawled through the finishing line at 5 hours 20 minutes.”

Not to be put off, the intrepid pair flew to Mongolia’s Lake Hovsgol to join the Mongolia Sunrise and Sunset 100 km ultramarathon race. Through sponsorship, they raised US$300 for the preservation of Lake Hovsgol National Park.

Lui and Yui running in Mongolia

“It was an amazing experience to compete in such a beautiful nature, surrounded by mountains and the world’s second largest lake,” said Lui.

“We took 16 and a half hours to reach the 88km check point, 30 minutes behind the official cut-off time. We were disqualified and exhausted but felt more satisfied than ever. Mongolia is definitely a place we will come back to – to finish the race and explore the rest of the vast country.”

The pair are currently preparing for the Hong Kong 100 Ultra Trail Race next February. They plan to run it for the charity Shoe 4 Africa, which aims to build the first children’s hospital in Kenya. So far, they have raised US$600 out of a target of $1,500.

The pair, who met at the JMSC, formed a tight friendship based on their love of the same sport.

At Bloomberg News, Yui currently covers foreign currencies and the Japan bond market in Tokyo, while Lui is on the headline team in Hong Kong, sending headlines and writing quick breaking news stories.

They used to train together in Hong Kong on weekends, running for up to eight hours across the city’s mountain trails.  Yui has continued her training in Tokyo.

“Monami is my best running partner,” said Lui. “We train and finish races together. In long-distance running there can be many surprises such as weather changes, injuries and water and food intake which can severely affect your performance. We know each other’s mental and physical condition well and look after each other during the race.”

Justin Heifetz (MJ 2011)

“The role is unique in that I write stories and sub-edit only half the time; the other half of the time, I’m having to curate social media,” said Heifetz.

“This means I’m posting everything to Facebook and Twitter. It surprises me how much journalism is actually involved in that, because, for it to work, you have to write great headlines. It’s about distilling the story and making it catchy.”

Heifetz is also working on web editing, which involves turning print stories into online offerings.

“This is also a lot more involved than I ever thought,” he said. “Things don’t come out pretty or looking good from the newspaper design application to the web, so you really have to re-do it. That means sub-dividing it into headlines, learning to cut unnecessary content, doing whatever you can to find extra visuals, and generally just being able to make it eye-catching.”

Heifetz is enjoying working in Cambodia because it’s the first time he’s visited Southeast Asia.

“I haven’t been bored for a second, which is great,” said Heifetz. “The job is pretty multi-faceted, so there’s tonnes to keep me interested. I’ve also never worked for a newspaper before, so that’s incredibly exciting too.”

He said he thinks that Phnom Penh is a great place to cut his teeth as a rookie journalist.

“I was so keen to work here because, right now, Cambodia is one of the major epicentres of Asian news,” he said. “With the Khmer Rouge Tribunal developing right before our eyes, and of course the flooding disaster, there’s so much incredible material to cover. You couldn’t ask for a better place to be a journalist right now, especially starting out.”

Heifetz credited his Master of Journalism degree at the JMSC with making this new job possible.

“Everything I’m bringing to this position at the Phnom Penh Post I’ve learned from the JMSC,” he said.

“I wouldn’t have a clue how to do web stuff if it weren’t for [Senior Teaching Consultant] Diane Stormont‘s class, and [Teaching Assistants] Kevin Lau and AJ Libunau are always available to give me extra help. Sometimes, out of the blue, (the Post editors) might ask you to run and get video footage or get a radio package ready and recorded. Those are skills I could have only learned this well at the JMSC. Nowadays, as a young journalist, they really expect these things of you — especially, if it involves any sort of technology.”

As for the future, Heifetz is happy to take each day as it comes.

“It’s been an incredible two weeks, in terms of learning and the amount of responsibility I can take on,” he said. “I went from barely functioning on the first day to juggling stories, copy, and the web. So, for the short term, I’d say my goal is to just do great here and keep learning. For the long term, I’m just excited to see where everything leads.”

Richard Schuster (MJ 2011) at the Economist Intelligence Unit

As the sister company of The Economist magazine, a member of the Economist Group, the EIU is a business intelligence organisation with expertise in country analysis, economic forecasting and business research.

Richard works for it business-to-business services which capitalise on its global access to information.  and its extensive analytical and forecasting capabilities.

It delivers information, analytics and forecasts  on international affairs and business on a range of products and customised research programmes.

The Hungarian journalist wrote an account of his time there:

“So far I have spent four months at the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which is a leading source of research and business intelligence in the world.

“The EIU is a unique organisation where I have been able to make use of the MJ course and my experience as a journalist in brand new ways.

“I have been working as an assistant analyst on the “Custom Research” team in Hong Kong, which conducts research projects customised to clients’ needs. The team produces various studies, reports and innovative information programmes that explore issues and answer questions that the clients — international organisations, governments, NGOs and business entities — are faced with.

“I have been involved in research design, data collection and visualisation, copy editing, web-video production and information packaging, while working on longer-term projects on topics ranging from demographic trends in China to breast cancer in Australia.

“Here are some of the projects I had the opportunity to work on:

Innovative information package for a multilateral organisation

“The EIU conducted research focusing on the environment for infrastructure investments in a number of Asia-Pacific countries. To supplement the main report, the team produced an innovative application with which the detailed findings of the study can be discovered through an interactive surface. Using an MS Excel file as a platform, readers can compare countries, analyse and visualise the related data, and, best of all, focus only on countries and drill down to questions in which they are interested without having to read through the entire report.

“My job was to help produce a video including a user guide for this interactive application and an introduction to the research. In addition to my background in video production, the skills and tools from Diane Stormont’s Advanced Online Journalism course proved to be more than useful.

Data projects: collect, input and visualise
“For a major international not-for-profit organisation, the EIU produced a study on the effects that the rapid economic transformation of China will have on its higher education and employment. For this project, too, the EIU presented the findings in an innovative form by producing a digital application with an interactive heat map of China’s demographics, education and employment.

“My job was to assist in the design and programming of the application, to gather large amounts of data using The Economist’s internal information hub and to input additional data. Irene Jay Liu’s Computer Assisted Reporting course has been invaluably useful in these projects.

Research design
“I participated in development of a proposal for a data model to assess and compare disease risk in countries around the world.

“One of my responsibilities was to look for available data sources and other potential sources of information in more than 30 countries. I had the opportunity to assist in the initial research design, where I could make good use of the course on research concepts and methods by Miklos Sukosd and King-wa Fu.

“Working at the EIU has been a crash course on China, a plunge into regional and global issues, and an opportunity to gain experience at a global organisation that is well known and respected around the world for its editorial quality.

“Most importantly, the EIU has helped me to explore my interest and potential in a field that — like the EIU itself — lies somewhere on the spectrum between journalism, research and business advisory.”