They’ve had the choice of Reporting the Big Issues in Science, Documentary Video Production, News Editing, and Global Economic Journalism.

Nancy Tong with students

Documentary maker Nancy Tong is teaching Documentary Video Production.

“By the end of this course, students should be competent with the fundamentals in the production of documentary media: from conceptualizing an idea to production to editing,” said Tong. “They should also understand the impact of this form of media and recognize their responsibility as a practitioner of this social medium.”

Rusty Todd, visiting professor and director of Business Journalism, is teaching News Editing.

“We cover all aspects of copy editing, from headlines and other points of entry to writing cutlines and placing graphics,” Todd said. “We also learn how to plan a publication, whether it’s print or web.”

Sanday Chongo Kabange, a current Master of Journalism student, said the summer mini-semester helps shape one’s career path following graduation.

“It has allowed me to determine and decide what I’d like to do after classes end,” he said. “I am presently reading Reporting the Big Issues in Science with Professor Thomas Abraham because I want to fulfill the requirements for a special certificate in Heath, Science and Environment, as well as get into this line of journalism.”

“It’s not easy to decide immediately what you want to do after graduation,” Kabange said. “But once you are in the semi-semester, you are at least 99.9% sure of which career path you want to follow.”

The curriculum, with instruction predominantly in English, is designed to produce graduates for all types of local, regional and international media, whether the graduates ultimately practice in English, Chinese, or some other language.

From day one, students develop convergent skills enabling them operate comfortably in all aspects of the industry, ranging from print, audio, video, multi-media to online journalism.

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Some of the scholarship winners. From left to right: Connie Tse Cho Yi, Echo Yu Xinyan, Sophia Xu Qian, Paola Barisani, Sanday Chongo Kabange

Sanday Chongo Kabange of Zambia was among 13 students to receive a scholarship this year. The scholarships are given to talented students who would otherwise have difficulty funding their studies.

Kabange, one of several recipients of a South China Morning Post-Wah Kiu Yat Po scholarship, was already a journalist before he enrolled at the JMSC.

He has continued to file stories to the African media during the year, and one of these won the award conferred by the Republic of Zambia Ministry of Health, for the best reporting on malaria by Zambian journalists and media practitioners.

Kabange said he researched the story in Zambia before arriving in Hong Kong, but wrote it once he was here.

In April, he was honored at a special ceremony, presided over by HKU Vice Chancellor Lap-chee Tsui, to congratulate students for their achievements outside the university.

“I have also been influential in the coverage of news in Zambia through my tweets and posts on social media,” Kabange said. “At least 90% of the information I tweet or post is re-published or broadcast in major newspapers and websites in Zambia. This is because of my strong connections and the experience I have gained while on the MJ programme.”

Three other recipients of SCMP Wah Kiu Yat Po scholarships were Sophia Xu Qian and Cherry Yu Yichun, both mainland Chinese students, and Alexis Lai, from Canada.

Xu did an internship at Phoenix TV, where she worked on current affairs documentaries. She collaborated on the production of a documentary called Sunrise and Sunset in Pyongyang, and assisted in the production of a documentary called Scattered Pearls, Notes of Okinawa.

Yu has been doing a continuous internship at the Chinese-language blog of the Vancouver Sun since last October. So far, she has published 17 articles for the blog.

She has also been working on the Yahoo HK/JMSC experiential learning project, which required her and other team members to develop six video programmes that will be shown on Yahoo HK’s platform sometime in August or September this year.

Lai worked as an editorial intern at  CNN.com International and the Phnom Penh Post in Cambodia during the course of her studies at the JMSC.

“One of the highlights was taking the Literary Journalism course,” said Lai. “The fictional storytelling devices I learned enabled me to write about my real-life experiences in a way I was previously unable to.”

Lai also acted as a student reporter on the JMSC team working with Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) to produce Cantonese-language segments for RTHK 1’s radio programmes. She worked on that project alongside Connie Tse Cho Yi, winner of a JMSC Young Journalist scholarship.

Tse said that having her work at RTHK was one of the highlights of her MJ year.

“I produced two audio news packages for RTHK in my second semester,” said Tse. “The audience called in to the programme and expressed their views on the ‘Occupy Central‘ story my teammate and I produced. I was excited to hear them discussing the issue, since this is what journalism is about — giving voices to people and allowing people the chance to participate in debate.”

“The support of my scholarship provider enabled me to learn about and become inspired by the big picture of the media industry worldwide,” Tse said. “I am now better prepared to work in the fast-changing and vibrant digital environment, thanks to all the skills I have learnt here.”

Hua Lu, a mainland student who received a Hong Kong University Graduate Association Journalism Fund scholarship, worked as an investigative journalist for the Guangzhou-based newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily prior to studying at the JMSC.

“Environmental Communication and Reporting & Writing are the courses that have impressed me most,” Hua said. “As I previously worked in print, these two courses helped me to rethink my writing and reporting experience. I am on course to get the Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Certificate offered by the JMSC which I hope will be my future career direction.”

Hua put her studies to good use during her winter internship. “I interned as assistant editor in the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend,” she said.  “I was mainly in charge of editing environmental news, which allowed me to use the knowledge I learned at the JMSC.”

Scholarships donors to the JMSC also include the William F. Woo Memorial Journalism Education Fund, Frank Proctor of Muse Magazine, the Hong Kong University Graduate Association Journalism Fund and the JMSC Journalist Grant Scheme.

A seven-day class taught by Gillmor looks at the culture of start-up companies and why digital media suit them so well.  During the course, students are pinpointing a gap in the media market and developing a start-up project to fill it.

They are also learning how to identify their audience and how to pitch to potential investors.

“The future of traditional media is very uncertain, but there is a great deal of innovation in media and business models,” said Gillmor. “Entrepreneurs will have a lot to say about how tomorrow’s media ecosystem will function.”

Gillmor, an internationally recognised author and leader in digital media, is the founding director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, USA.

Workshop in action

Sanday Chongo Kabange, a Master of Journalism student from Zambia who is about to graduate, is taking the course to hone his practical and technical skills.

“I want to understand the enterprise side of digital media in an environment that is jam-packed with enormous digital tools and applications,” Kabange said.

He said he is learning how to pitch business proposals to potential investors that are marketable and sustainable as an avenue for employment creation. “I would highly recommend this training to future BJs and MJs interested in starting up their own businesses or companies,” he said.

“I didn’t want to pass up on the chance to learn about web startups from someone like Dan Gillmor,” said Jaime Chua, another MJ student.

“Dan was both gentle and harsh as he poured realism on our business proposals, but in two short weeks we became more astute at evaluating and presenting ideas.”

Gillmor says he is gratified at the response he has seen from the students.

“I’m happy to see them thinking hard about the questions and I’m delighted with many of the ideas and the way the students are developing them,” he said.

Dan Gillmor

As the news media are put through wrenching changes by the digital revolution, the future of the traditional journalism business has never been more uncertain. In reaction, Professor Gillmor says, the media ecosystem is growing more diverse, with innovators and entrepreneurs creating new ways of providing information and making those ventures economically sustainable.

Professor Gillmor is founding director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, USA.

This lecture is part of the JMSC Shanghai Public Lecture Series. It will be free to the public and all are welcome to attend. Attendees must register by filling out the registration form and e-mailing it to jmscsh@hku.hk before May 19^th.

Date: Saturday, May 19^th, 2012
Time: 2-4:30PM
Location: HKU Shanghai Study Centre, 1st Floor Lecture Hall, 298 North Suzhou Road
(北苏州路298号) Hongkou District, Shanghai.

In celebration of the grand opening of JMSC Shanghai Public Lecture Series, there will be a wine tasting from 1:30-2PM. Please come early and bring your business cards for exchange and to meet the lecturer.

Download Registration Form

Some of the BJs 2012 at the FCC party

The party was organised by JMSC Honorary Lecturer, Jeff Timmermans, and held on Friday, 27 April.

“After three years of very hard work learning to be a journalist, I thought it was important for the graduates to be welcomed into the profession in style – both as a reward for all that hard work and as a public recognition they’d made it,”  Timmermans said.

Suhani Jain, BJ 2012, said the party was a rare chance to mingle with all the professors and classmates in one place.  “It was really nice to spend time with professors on a more personal level,” she said.  “It’s a wonderful gesture by Jeff and the JMSC to have thrown us this party.”

Jain said that she had enjoyed the late Diane Stormont’s Advanced Online Journalism course the most during her time at the JMSC.

“Diane’s dynamism blew me away,” she said. “The class reaffirmed my motivation to be in journalism at a time when I was getting quite low on the drive. It was fun (though extremely stressful) to be producing at least one story every week — it was real journalistic practice. The course pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and really go out there and produce multimedia stories.”

Su Xinqi also appreciated being able to see every one again at the gathering. “It reminded me of the first time we met three years ago,” she said. “We have grown up and learned a lot at the JMSC.”

She said she felt the most important thing she learned was “an attitude towards life and people, a type of curiosity and inquiry.”

Manon Pierre felt she’d leanrt a lot during her undergraduate years at the JMSC.

“It’s a bit of a paradox as we were taught journalism’s strict ethics and morals, but I also learned to always be critical of the media and news and to question everything I read or hear,” said Pierre.

Pierre’s thoughts, like many other graduating students, have turned to finding a job.

“Most of us are really anxious about the future and unemployment has been a recurrent topic in our conversations lately,” she said. “But the professors seem confident we’ll do well and that’s a comforting thought. I will try to live up to their expectations.”

Sarah Spaeth, also BJ 2012, said she hoped to work in journalism though would be willing to work in another field if necessary.

Spaeth’s ambitions are noble: “I hope I can change the world, be it on a small or great scale,” she said. “I hope to make the world a better place.”

Jain, who hopes to start her own performing arts and multimedia venture, put together a short and entertaining video of messages from staff to the graduating students which was played during the party.

“I wanted to do something special for the class,” she said. “My university life has been the best three years of my life so far and I think a lot of my classmates feel the same way.”

JMSC Director Ying Chan gives a speech while Jeff Timmermans and staff member Wylie Cheung look on

“A little collage of memories and farewell messages from our professors just brought it all together into one place for the class to look back on the three years, and at the same time look ahead at what came next. It was a graduation party: somebody had to inject a little dose of nostalgia in there.”

Jeff Timmermans included a message to the students saying how much he’d learned from them.

“Since I only started teaching full time at the JMSC in 2009, this was the first class of Bachelor of Journalism students I’ve seen all the way through to graduation – so it will always be a special class for me” he said.

“And whether they knew it or not, along the way the helped me become a much better teacher. In fact, I think I may have learned at least as much from them as they learned from me.”

Click for Radio 1's schedule

Students applied the skills learned from the JMSC’s Radio News and Online Journalism courses to produce five-minute segments for broadcast during RTHK Radio 1′s morning Talkabout show and its evening Phone Openline Openview.

The collaboration lasted for eight weeks from February to April and the JMSC team’s pre-recorded packages ran each Wednesday.

The team consisted of 12 students — six BJs, five MJs and one BA.

One of the team members, MJ Chloe Deng, helped to produce a segment about password security for online accounts.

She explained that the team first did man-on-the-street inteviews to find out how people set their passwords. “Many of them said they often used birthdays and phone numbers and seldom changed passwords,” said Deng.

She said the team  interviewed a local student whose Facebook account had been hacked, and the chairman of the Hong Kong Internet Society and a professor at City Univerity to find out how serious the problem of online security is and ask for solutions. It also asked an IT expert to offer some useful tips for choosing and remembering passwords.

Deng was delighted to be able to take part in such a project: “It offered me a valuable chance to work as a real journalist and to air my own work to the public,” she said.

Chloe Deng (MJ 2012)

“The instructors pointed out our problems and gave us useful suggestions. I have learnt how to make radio programmes, the skills of pronunciation, storyboarding, sound mixing and editing. Besides that, I can add this segment to my portfolio, which will add to my experience as a journalist and is useful for finding a job.”

Rachel Li, a veteran news broadcaster and a senior consultant for Breakthrough, a non-profit-making Christian organisation that provides cultural and educational services for young people, helped to prepare the students for the project.

“I want to offer a few words for the budding journalists I’ve worked with in this journey,” she said. “Curiosity, courage, and concern make good initiatives.”

“Professionalism (fairness, accuracy, depth, effort) and good attitude (active listening, persistence, humility) make a good story.  Being a good partner is the first lesson to learn in order to become a good member of a newsroom.”

The University of Hong Kong, the JMSC’s parent institution, is one of five institutions that cooperated with RTHK on the project.

The others were Chu Hai College of Higher Education, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Shue Yan University and Hong Kong Baptist University.

Rachel Li, one of the instructors, mentoring students for the RTHK project.

Dan Hallin

Health and medicine are major subjects in the news, and the media play a central role in circulating medical information and establishing the cultural meaning of medicine. However, there has been relatively little scholarly attention to health and medical reporting.

Hallin proposes a framework in which health and medical journalism plays an active role in helping societies construct medical knowledge and culture.

He has written many books on the media, some of which are considered  among the most influential works in comparative media research in recent decades. His topics include media and politics, media and war, media and public health, the history of journalistic professionalism, and comparative media systems, particularly in Europe and Latin America.

Date: Friday, 20 April 2012
Time: 12-1pm
Venue: Shum Wai Yau Reading Room, Eliot Hall, The University of Hong Kong (see map)

For more information on the JMSC Media Research Seminar series, please click here.

Thomas Abraham

The Leveson Inquiry was ordered after it became apparent that the News of the World, the Sunday tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, had hired private investigators to hack into the phones of celebrities and other people in the news in order to get stories.

It has since emerged that news organisations in the UK have used private investigators extensively for a variety of purposes including obtaining people’s bank account information and hospital records. The revelations from the Inquiry have re-opened the debate on press freedom and media regulation, and focused attention on what the boundaries of press freedom should be.

About the speaker:
Thomas Abraham is a former editor of the South China Morning Post. Prior to joining the SCMP, he spent 13 years as a foreign correspondent based in Sri Lanka, at the United Nations Office in Geneva, and in London, for one of India’s leading newspapers, The Hindu.

Abraham has reported on conflicts in Sri Lanka, the former Yugoslavia and Northern Ireland. He has also covered major global issues such as world trade negotiations, human rights, arms control and disarmament. He has worked for the United Nations in Geneva and been a regular commentator on South Asian issues for BBC World Service.

He is the author of Twenty-first Century Plague: The Story of SARS (Hong Kong University Press, 2004, 2007).

Date: Friday, 13 April, 2012
Time: 12-1pm
Venue: Shum Wai Yau Reading Room, Eliot Hall, The University of Hong Kong

For more information on the JMSC Media research seminar series, please click here.