AAJA-Asia

After a long and festive holiday season, AAJA-Asia’s Seoul contingent kicked off the Year of the Black Dragon with some much-needed hobnobbing during happy hour at the Seoul Foreign Correspondents Club. In addition to our current members, we welcomed a lot of bright, young faces, including some prospective new members!

Topics of discussion over the evening included new job opportunities, reporting on K-pop, the sartorial choices of the South Korean president and first lady and, of course, future events.

Famished after all that networking, the crew headed out to a crowded downtown bindaetteok joint for some deliciously crispy mung bean pancakes.

Interested in attending AAJA-Asia’s events in Seoul? Check back here for news on future events and email aajaseoul@gmail.com. In the planning stages now is a panel on freelancing in Korea.

Photos by Hannah Bae, AAJA Seoul VP

This may be a good opportunity for freelancers or journalism students:

GlobalPost is looking for part-time writers to join their Breaking News and Social Media team. The writers will be responsible for contributing three or four 250-word news briefs a day. The stories will be a mix of important breaking news pieces and fun or quirky global stories that have the potential to go viral.

We are looking for people with strong news judgment as well as strong online skills. Writers are responsible for producing their own pieces – entering them into our system, adding links, adding photos, writing web-friendly headlines, sending them to our community on Twitter and Facebook.

Writers can be based anywhere. Send resume, Twitter handle and links to articles and/or blog posts to Hanna Ingber at hingber@globalpost.com.

The East-West Center is taking applications for its Jefferson Fellowship. The program from June 3-25 will take fellows to Honolulu, Hawaii; Singapore; Guangzhou, China; Songdo/Seoul, Korea. The theme this year is “Changing Cities: Innovation for an Urban World.”

Working print, broadcast, and on-line journalists in the United States, Asia and the Pacific Islands are eligible to apply. Five years of experience preferred. English fluency required. 12-14 fellowships will be awarded, 4-5 for American journalists, and 7-9 for journalists from Asia and the Pacific. Deadline to apply is February 15.

Go to the East-West Center’s website for more.

POSTECH University’s Bilingual Campus Program in Pohang, South Korea, is now recruiting Korean-English bilingual chief editor and editor positions, responsible for visioning, translation and editing of materials.

Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in South Korea is a world-class research university, which launched a bilingual campus program in March 2010. As a result, lectures at POSTECH are now delivered in English and university publications and materials are extensively translated and produced in English. The Bilingual Campus Program is responsible for overseeing this ground-breaking venture, providing visioning, translation and editing of articles and transcripts. This is an exciting opportunity to be at the forefront of work promoting world-class innovation and collaboration across languages.

See job descriptions after the jump.

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AAJA-Hong Kong kicked off 2012 with dim sum, one of many monthly brunches to come this year. It was good to see old acquaintances, new faces and a pair of New Yorkers passing through the city!

Next month’s event should be an even bigger one. Stay tuned.

A new English-language magazine/community newspaper is launching in Indonesia, and it is seeking writers and copy editors. The position is full-time and based in Batam, Indonesia.

The job posting reads:

You will have the opportunity to assume a key role in developing a range of English-language information media (Press, e-news, websites, blogs, social media) serving the resident expat community and foreign-owned business interests.

You will be able to work quickly and accurately, will have an interest in layout and presentation, and will be familiar with publishing programs (we are currently using PagePlus). You will be able to take photographs (digital).

Go here to find out more or apply.

Two opportunities have opened up at the Korea office of The Asia Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco. One is for a resource development and external relations officer; the other is for a program assistant. Application deadline is January 6.

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AAJA-Asia rings in the new year with 17 new members for 2012… so far. Welcome all! See the list and profiles below.

It’s not too late to join or renew. Maximize your membership by joining now; membership is good for a calendar year (up to December 31, 2012) no matter when you join this year. Don’t forget there are multiple of levels of membership and students get a 60% discount.

(As of December 2011)

Go to AAJA’s national website here for a full members list.

Choonsik Yoo (@choonsikyoo)
Elaine Ayo (@eieayo)
Jennifer Chang
Paul Kerry (@iampaulkerry)
Maryam Khazaeli
Foster Klug (@APklug)
Malte Kollenberg (@koreareporter)
Jessica Lee
Youkyung Lee (@_ylee)
Sean Lim
Jing Luo
Soobin Park
Devin Whiting
Audrey Yoo (@AudreyDYoo)
Cynthia SK Yoo
Joanne Yoon
Rob York

As a member, you’ll not only be supporting the goals and values of the Asian American Journalists Association, you’ll also be getting some great discounts on future events.(Joining is as easy as filling out an online form. See here.) So what’s the bottom line?

1. The first reason is the East-West Center’s International Media Conference in Seoul from June 22 to 24.

AAJA-Asia is working with the group to help put together the big conference, which will look at “How New Media is Shaping Stories in Asia and the Pacific.”

2. Discounted registration to the second annual journalism conference in Hong Kong in the spring.

The  regional conference was a big hit in 2011, with several exciting speakers (see last year’s program).

3. AAJA members in Beijing, Seoul, Hong Kong and Tokyo host regular networking events

where old friends can meet new faces (see here for some of last year’s events).

4. Be the first to know about job openings.

AAJA-Asia members are well-connected and always keep an eye out for postings that could help fellow AAJA-ers. Alerts include openings for scholarships, fellowships and training programs too (see last year’s listings).

5. Students get 60% off the full membership price – that’s only US$25.

But really, you can’t put a price on networking and mentoring opportunities – not to mention all the student programs that AAJA offers.

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The Japanese website Blogos has published an article about AAJA-Tokyo’s special lecture by Twitter journalist Daisuke Tsuda last week. Check it out if you read Japanese. Or visit our recaps:

• Japan quake changed social media’s role, Twitter journalist @tsuda says
• Storify recap: Tweets from AAJA-Tokyo’s Tsuda lecture

Daisuke Tsuda, left, with Ayako Mie as interpreter

Daisuke Tsuda’s lecture in Tokyo received a warm reception on Friday night. About 3o people came to hear the Twitter journalist talk about the increasingly important role of social media, said  AAJA-Tokyo member Yuri Kageyama, correspondent for the Associated Press who organized the event.

Tsuda (@tsuda), who has more than 190,000 followers on Twitter, says he is the first Japanese to use Twitter for journalism.

Yuri recaps the lecture:

We learned so much from Daisuke Tsuda. One of his many upbeat messages: Twitter journalism complements mainstream media.

Tsuda said his view of using social media changed after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

“Net media give people the chance to turn an emotion into action with a click,” he said. “I see my role as analyzing policy, using new media, and leading Japanese politics in the right direction.”

But all journalists can recognize the role of social media in giving a voice to a minority, helping the mainstream listen to varied views and functioning as a fantastic tool for investigative reporting and other journalism, he said.

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Allen Cheng, AAJA-Asia vice president for Beijing (pictured below in checkered shirt), rounds up AAJA members and friends in the Chinese capital for pre-Christmas, pre-New Year drinks while they plan next year’s events.

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The Associated Press is seeking a business reporter to cover consumer technology in South Korea. Fluency in English is a must and fluency in Korean is a plus.

The successful candidate will join AP’s cross-formats team in Seoul and be expected to develop deep sourcing, break news and produce distinctive enterprise stories on the growing technology industry in South Korea and other parts of Asia.

See the full job posting here.