Certificate in International Journalism • Hamline University • Spring 2015 • Vol. 9 • No. 1

By Maria Herd The press conference room at the United Nations Foundation buzzed with reporters and camera crews waiting for the briefing on the Ebola epidemic to begin. Recorder in one hand and a pen in the other, I could barely contain my excitement as I took in the atmosphere of my first official press conference. Appearing to be the youngest reporter in the room, it felt like I had finally made it to the big leagues. After working for Hamline’s student-run newspaper The Oracle for three years, and interning at a magazine in Berlin, I landed a reporting internship

at the Washington bureau of the German Press Agency. Also known as DPA for Deutsche Presse Agentur, the inter-national news wire service distributes content in four lan-guages to newspapers around the world. The internship perfectly tied together all of my areas of study - political science major, German minor

and Certificate of Inter-national Journalism. Throughout my International Journalism internship, I frequently applied my German language skills trans-lating features from German into English, and many of my breaking news articles were translated by other reporters into German. Director of the World Health Organization Margaret Chan and the other UN representatives took the mics at the front of the room and explained how the Ebola epidemic in West Africa had taken a turn for the worse. That September 2014 morning, the experts estimated $600 million in aid would be needed

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Life in the fast lane –Reporting from the Capitol Hill

By Sarah Sheven

“You are listening to KFAI, fresh air radio” – I heard the radio host say as I first walked into KFAI radio’s studio to begin my CIJ internship at KFAI’s news department in Minneapolis. My supervisor Dale Connelly, the station’s news director, came out to greet me. My heart raced as Dale told me that I would be writing hourly news updates, and reading them live on air. “The best way for you to learn is just to throw you into the frying pan,” Dale told me. On the first day of my internship, I was giv-en approximately 30 minutes to choose a current event to cover, write up a two-minute summary of the event, and get ready to read my story on air. I was absolutely terrified. Needless to say, my first attempt was a little rough. But as time went on, I became accustomed to the fast pace of the news department, and I actually began looking forward to reading on air. My internship at KFAI not only gave me experience inside the studio, but it gave me the opportunity to go out into the community to do my own inter-views. The first event I helped cover was the “Not Your Mascot” rally that took place at the University of Minne-sota in October 2014. This rally was organized by various Native American rights organizations and their allies in protest of the racist nature of the Washington Redskin’s team name. At first, I stood back to watch and learn from the reporter I was working with, Robert Easley. However, about half

Jumping into the frying pan

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THEGLOBAL CORRESPONDENT

Page The Global Correspondent Vol. 9 No. 1

ContributorsAdvisorSuda Ishida

EditorMackenzie Bledsoe

Contributing WritersMarie HerdNick LozinskiSarah ShevenMaggie TiedeSofia White

About:The Certificate in International Journalism program enables students with advanced language skills and majors in global studies, area studies, modern languages, English, communication studies, history, political science, public health, and other majors to supplement their programs with preparation in international knowledge and experiences.

For more information on the program visit: www.hamline.edu/cij

Or contact Suda Ishida at sishida@hamline.edu

to contain the epidemic. This figure is a small fraction of what the international community has now contributed. Since then, the epidemic has grown to un-imaginable proportions. After the press conference, I made my way passed the White House back to my office in the National Press Building, home of many foreign bureau offices in DC. Upon discussing the edits of my article with the bureau chief, we agreed that I should continue to follow the Ebola crisis writing regular news updates. As the epidemic spiraled fur-ther out of control, my beat became a greater task to cover than I, or my editor, had anticipated. I attended Congres-sional hearings on the Hill regarding emergency funding and listened to numerous phone briefings by the Center for Disease Control and Preven-tion and National Institute of Health. In addition to my regular news arti-cles, I wrote an in-depth feature on how the Liberian media covered the crisis. “Liberian journalists calm the panic in heart of Ebola country” was picked up by newspapers from Africa to Southeast Asia. Even though covering the epidem-ic was depressing and challenging at times, I was fascinated by the local and international complexities of a global health crisis. I am currently applying my research to my senior thesis on how the international community failed in the Ebola epidemic. Besides interning 30 hours per week, my Washington D.C. semester program at The Fund for American Studies

included three courses accredited through George Mason University on public policy, constitutional interpreta-tion and political journalism. Fourteen other students from around the world became my built-in friends for the semester. All of us attended the same classes and lived in the same apartment building, three blocks from the U.S. Capital. I gained a Washington insider perspective listening to their experiences interning at advocacy organizations, media outlets and in the offices of Senators and Representatives. I didn’t look forward to sharing a one bedroom apartment with two other girls - sleeping on a top bunk brought back memories from living in the dorms my freshman year - yet I regularly Skype my DC

roommates and now gratefully con-sider them life-long friends. Other highlights of my semester in-cluded attending a White House press

briefing, frequently running into Con-gressmen at my metro stop, staying up all night to cover the mid-term elections, and touring Politico, the Finnish embas-sy and many other sites around the city. On the weekends, my roommates and I visited as many free Smithsonian museums and national monuments and memorials as we could. You can never run out of things to do and see in DC. Above all, the political junkie in me loved being at the heart of American politics. There is no doubt in my mind that I will eventually return to Wash-ington to pursue my career in political journalism.

Cont. from p. 1 ‘Life in the fast lane’

“Appearing to be the youngest reporter in the room, it felt like I had finally made it to the big

leagues.

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By Maggie Tiede

Forget everything you knew about North Korea, and then think again – you might just get the gist of the presentation titled “Pyongyang Entrepreneurs – Business Stories from North Korea” by Nils Weisensee, a CIJ alum (’03) who returned to Hamline campus on September 30, 2014. The event was co-hosted by the CIJ program and Hamline School of Business, Alkire Chair in International Business and Economics. In the presentation, Weisens-ee talked about his experience as a coordinator for a Singaporean non-profit organization, Choson Exchange, which works with dozens of business experts from around the world. At Choson Exchange, Weisensee was first asked to bring his entrepre-neurship expertise to North Korea, where the organization is working to give citizens opportunities for economic development. Because Weisensee is a German citizen, he was able to obtain a visa for a preliminary visit to the DPRK, or Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – known to most of the world as North Korea. After the first visit, which Wei-sensee described as being driven by “curiosity,” he became strongly involved with Choson Exchange and its mission of helping foster “ca-pacity-building” in young business leaders in the DPRK, especially women. Weisensee’s work with Choson

Exchange includes facilitating workshops for business-inclined DPRK citizens, both in the DPRK and the ideologically neu-tral Singapore. The workshops focus on building teamwork and entrepreneurship skills that partici-pants can take back to North Korea’s capital city, Pyongyang, and other communities. The idea for the event was brought to the table by Professor Suda Ishida, the CIJ director. She stressed that opportunities like those Wei-sensee has experienced exist for every CIJ student and alum, as long as we are willing to go out of our comfort zone. After the presentation was finished, Weisensee said that during his time in the CIJ program, the most important thing he learned was how to ask questions to get the right answers – and, more importantly, know who to ask. He said that the world is made up of layers of complexity, and that the earlier students start learning to be less afraid of other complexities, the better. Weisensee started at Hamline as part of a year-long bilateral ex-change program between Hamline and University of Trier, Germany, eventually finishing out his under-graduate degree in political science

at Hamline. He then went on to get his master’s degree in media and political studies, and started to work at the U.S. news agency, The Associ-ated Press, based in Frankfurt. While Weisensee continued to work on journalism, he shifted some of his focus to business when he and his wife Lindsay Messenger, also a Hamline CIJ alum (’07), start-ed a coffee company in Shanghai, China – startup which, after a few hiccup, became highly successful. “Why North Korea?” asked Weisensee during his presentation, answering himself in the same sen-tence: “Because it is important.”Indeed, as Weisensee continues to work with Choson Exchange to provide the tools and skills DPRK citizens need to enact positive change, it’s hard not to feel like an important difference is being made, a step at a time.

CIJ alum returns home to share global experienceabout North Korea

Photo: Lindsay Messenger, Nils Weisensee, and Suda Ishida

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CIJ alum returns home to share global experienceabout North Korea

By Nick Lozinski

Every day, CIJ alums across the globe have inspired younger generations to push for positive change in the world. One such alum is Kestrel Jenkins (’07), the founder of the AWEAR World program. Kestrel was recently named an inspiring changemaker by eco-fashion organization Ecouterre, which is part of the fair-trade fashion movement. According to Jenkins, “AWEAR is intended to help inspire people to think about what they’re purchasing.” AWEAR focuses on sustainability, fair trade, and affordability. When people buy clothes, they often only consider price

and style. They don’t, however, take into consideration where the clothing was made, how it was made, or who made it. Jenkins says AWEAR is trying to change that. Jenkins began her work in sustainable clothing five years ago with her blog, Make Fashion Fair. She decided that for the duration of a year, she wouldn’t buy cloth-ing “made unethically, or that blatantly harmed people or the environ-ment in its making.” This began her work with fair trade fashion. From her blog stemmed the AWEAR World project. According to Jenkins,

AWEAR takes the ideas she developed from her blog and “applies it to a large community of changemakers who are prepared to take their style to the next lev-el.” On her website, awearworld.com, she highlights people who are involved in the fair trade fashion movement. The website also provides suggestions about how to begin

buying clothes that are sustainable, but also affordable. Some ways include buying second

hand, supporting fair trade brands, and purchasing clothing made from recycled or upcycled [reused] material. Since the movement is fairly

Sustainability with Style

“AWEAR is intended to help inspire people to think about

what they’re purchasing”

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new, Jenkins found herself run-ning into a variety of problems. First, she said it was sometimes

hard to explain to people. The issue of fair trade is a complicat-ed topic; it isn’t simply black and white. However, with the increase of news coverage of events related to fair trade and labor laws around the world, such as the factory collapse in Bangladesh, more

people have become interested in this issue. Another issue Jenkins faces is

the complicated nature of the supply chain in the fashion industry. There are many different materials and production needs that go into a single article of clothing. This can often be daunting for a consumer, and therefore accessibility to fair-trade

merchandise is the key. Jenkins tries to ease this problem by facilitating access. On the AWEAR website, there are many different links to a variety of web-sites that sell fair trade clothing, connecting fair trade manufactur-ers with consumers. Readers may also be curious-about how Jenkins’ time at Ham-line helped her prepare for the AWEAR project. In addition to pursuing a Certificate in Interna-tional Journalism, Jenkins was a Global Studies major with Span-ish proficiency. The CIJ program helped her understand the breadth and depth of international sys-tems. To fulfill the program’s requirement, she went to study abroad in Chile and completed an internship at KIFI, a newspaper in Valdivia, Chile. These experi-ences helped her to make global connections, which is a vital part of her work with AWEAR World. When asked if she had any advice for people who want to get involved, she said that her biggest piece of advice is “don’t be afraid to make the jump.”

Last fall, the CIJ program hosted a two-week visit by Dr. Christof Barth from Department of Media Sciences, University of Trier, Germany. Dr. Barth was a guest lecturer in Prof. Ishida’s two media class-es – Introduction to Critical Media Studies and Media in Global Perspective between October 6 and 16. He also met with a small group of Hamline faculty and students outside of the classroom.

“don’t be afraid to make the jump”

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By Sofia White

In December of 2010, a vegetable vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi lit himself on fire in protest against the Tunisian government. Bouazizi’s act of defiance turned up globally through the help of social media, becoming the first event in the Middle East to trigger the series of uprisings by the people against their governments in anticipation of yield-ing democracy. The sequence of protests and riots are colloquially referred to as the Arab Spring. These uprisings are extremely con-troversial and complex, and have led to some of the most intense riots, bloodiest revolu-tions, and debated conflicts in history. Today, while the phenomenon of the Arab Spring has diminished in popularity, it is clear that there remains severe conflict in most of the Arab countries, with the aftershock still reverberant. This region is a prime location for

research and fieldwork because of its nature of complex dynamics, and the erroneous representation of the uprisings in Western media. One of the countries not normally under spotlight is Morocco. For this reason, Morocco became the country of focus for my collaborative research project. Fast-forward to summer 2014: my experience in the collaborative

research program at Hamline! This program is a rare and generous opportunity of undergraduate students who are

looking to develop their interests and grow in the world of academia. Hamline provides funding for about 25 to 30 summer collaborative research projects per year. My project that was funded was formally titled “A Tale of Two Mon-

archies: A Comparative Study of Social Media and the Democratic Movement in Morocco and Bahrain”. The project focused on the countries’ protests during the uprisings, and the use of social media as a means for democratization and mobilization. My work with Dr. Leila DeVriese, my collaborating professor, connects well with her field of study. Both of the countries possess constitutional monarchies, and have been affect-ed by the Arab Uprisings, yet they remain closed off to Western media coverage. In May of 2014, I found out that my project received funding from Hamline. By then, it was time for me

A Guide to Summer Collaborative Research - the Moroccan Exception

“I believe I can continue to develop and thrive with time

and experience.”

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to dive right in. At this point, I knew that it was crucial to have a general direction for my project’s devel-opment. During the summer, the group of students and faculty members whose projects received funding are required to meet three hours each week to discuss the progress of their work. These meet-ings allow for presentations on our

research findings, tips on proper research techniques and strategies, and even a discussion on grants and graduate school applications. Not only did I receive constructive criticism from my peers and faculty members, and received six credits for my work, but all students also received a stipend amount of $2,500! By the end of the summer, I was

able to complete what I had set out to do. The collaborative program allows for students to grow on their own. Because of this, I have posi-tively reshaped what it is I was seek-ing to understand in my research project. After the summer, I revised my research project which led me to my new title “The Moroccan Excep-tion: A Study of Social Media and Morocco’s Democratic Movement.” Having a research project under my belt as an undergraduate opens the door for a future’s Departmental Honors Project, conferences, grants, and graduate school opportunities. Fast forward again to Spring 2015 and my study abroad semester, required by the CIJ and my Global Studies major. This is where my fieldwork in Morrocco occurs. I have conducted interviews and ac-cessed private online forums while in Morocco. I now realize that the summer collaborative research pro-gram has given me the confidence to continue with the bulk of my meth-odologies and that’s something that I can never take for granted.

“This region is a prime location for research and fieldwork because of its nature of complex dynamics, and the erroneous

representation of the uprisings inWestern media.”

Cont. from p. 3 ‘A Guide to Summer Collaborative Research’

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International Journalism

MS-094

Hamline University

1536 Hewitt Avenue

Saint Paul, MN 55104

• Print, Radio, Television Journalism

• Online, New Media, Social Media

• Public and Private Media

• Political Campaigns

• Foreign Policy and Public Service

• Legal and Educational Laisons

• Public Relations and Advertising

• Communications Technology

Cont. from p. 1 ‘Jumping into the frying pan’

Career Possibilities for CIJ Graduates

• Local, National, International Organizations

way through the event, Robert said he wanted me to do an interview. He told me that Dick Gregory, an African American who was extremely active during the civil rights movement, was in attendance at the event, and Robert thought I should do the interview. I had never heard of Mr. Gregory before this moment, and I had no ques-tions prepared. Before I knew it, one of the rally organizers took me by the arm and led me to the edge of a raised concrete sidewalk extending about six or eight feet above ground level where I was standing. “Wait here, I’m going to get you a chair,” the rally organiz-er instructed me. When she returned with a folding chair, I was prepared to sit down. To my surprise, however, I was instructed to stand on the chair instead, as Mr. Gregory was seated on the sidewalk above me. This was exactly how I was introduced to the civil rights leader, and how I was situated during the duration of our interview. I shouted my questions over the din of the crowd, and I stood on my tip toes on the chair in order to see Mr. Gregory over the concrete wall. It was an experience I will never forget. Later that day, I was put into contact with Chase Manhattan, a local Native American hip hop artist who was to perform at the rally. During our brief conversation, I became interested in his music and he agreed to meet with me at the KFAI station for an interview. The day of the interview came and my

supervisor walked me through the steps of using the recording equipment in the studio. “It’s not too hard, you’ll get the hang of it quickly,” he reassured me. I read, and reread over the ques-tions I had prepared. Finally, I saw Mr. Manhattan enter the studio. I led him back to the recording room, and we began our interview. I tried to think of all the advice my supervisor had given me; look relaxed, talk directly into the microphone, and make sure you are quiet while the interviewee is talking. I thought everything was going smooth-ly. Mr. Manhattan was responding well to my questions, and I hadn’t made any major fumbles yet. However, about half way through the interview, I realized I hadn’t turned on the record button on the computer. I managed to stay calm, quickly hit the button and proceeded with the interview. Thankfully, I ended up having enough material to create a seven-minute segment for KFAI’s morning news program. I padded the timing a bit by editing in a snippet of one of his songs. Another perk of this internship was becoming familiar with Hindenberg Editing software. Although many say this program is easy to handle compared to others, anyone who has edited audio before knows that it takes time to learn how to do it. By the end of my intern-ship, I became fairly adept at working with the Hindenberg, a skill that has proved helpful in searching for opportu-nities in radio.

Overall, my internship at KFAI provided me with an invaluable, hands-on learning opportunity that put the knowledge I gained in my CIJ classes into practice. I personally believe that the only way to learn how to be a jour-nalist is just to “jump into the frying pan.” My internship at KFAI gave me a taste of what it feels like to work in the field. I left the internship more inspired than ever to start my career as a jour-nalist.

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