Rappler internship

The press row at the PICC.
Thanks to Ate Sheila for the picture!

I've been away for most of the summer, but if most of you spent it in beaches or on trips abroad (ehem, Katz!), I took an internship with Rappler. I filed stories from the Comelec beat for Rappler's election coverage, and if you take a look at #PHVote coverage, you might see my byline on quite a few of the stories there.

Election coverage was fulfilling and humbling. I spent three years sitting in writing classes and discussions on ethics as a Journalism student. But what really put me through my paces was fighting for room during ambush interviews and trying to formulate questions that wouldn't be dismissively answered by Comelec Chairman Sixto Brillantes, Jr.

As souvenirs I have with me two IDs that share the distinction of being my first press cards: one from Rappler, and another, my media accreditation ID from the Comelec for the midterm elections. What a great way to start off.

Now it's on to grueling Senior Year, which I hope will be my last as a Journalism student. Wish me well.

UP Diliman pillbox blast

I was at Eduk yesterday afternoon when I was told about the pillbox that had exploded on the grounds of Benton Hall, which was just a minute's walk away. I rushed to the scene to report for my college paper, Tinig Ng Plaridel.

I'm proud to say we were the first to break the story correctly. News outlets were tweeting that a vintage World War II bomb had caused the explosion. The authorities that responded to the incident weren't yet sure what the explosive was when I got to the scene, but they had already speculated it was a pillbox and ruled out any chance it was a vintage bomb. The damage to the area was minor, and the two construction workers who were injured in the blast were still conscious with all limbs intact, so it probably wasn't an undetonated bomb from the 1940s. I tweeted photos of the area and quoted police officials to dispute the hearsay.

GMA News used my tweets and photos in their story. InterAksyon used my photo, too. Of course, I had few resources and little time with me and so I wasn't able to chase the story much after I broke it. DZUP and the Philippine Collegian, as well as the mainstream media outlets, followed up very well. Still, I'm glad to say I think we got all the important facts out on the first break.

Journalism is fun. Check me out in the video at the top of this post, at around the 2:10 mark!

Wag masyadong atat mag-retweet.

We've had a couple of opportunities to see and measure Twitter's potential as a communication tool—during the heavy monsoon rains the other week, for example, when the government used it to aid rescue operations.

As a news source, however, it (and the Internet in general) has a long way to go. Tonight is a case in point. News of Sec. Jesse Robredo's plane crashing into waters off Masbate spread quickly on Twitter. So did false reports that he had been rescued. Traditional media outlets were quick to deny such reports, but on Twitter, even more than in real life, rumors reach the other side of the world before the truth gets a chance to put its pants on.

Twitsperts have been navel-gazing quite a lot online lately, lauding the Internet's capacity to allow news to travel at a blinding rate. But tonight's incident should dissuade the "certified bloggers" of the world from getting together for another circlejerk. Twitter spread the news of the Robredo plane crash quickly, but it also blurred a lot of the details of the story. And it happened in part because people were all too willing to retweet without checking for accuracy, all for the sake of being a social media influencer, a person with online clout, or whatever the hell we call pretentious Internet users nowadays. That's thoroughly counterproductive for a tool we routinely refer to as the future of journalism.

So, haughty Twitter users, before you pat each other on the back for your show of love and concern for Robredo's family and scold other people for tweeting about things not related to the plane crash, please know: you're nowhere near as awesome as you think you are.

Journalism in a hurry

Note: Blog posts tagged "J117" (such as this one) are requirements for the Online Journalism class I'm taking this semester. See all of my J117-related posts.

Source

They say journalism is "history in a hurry." The profession is all about reporting stories accurately, fairly, and completely—but also very quickly.

A decade ago, printing "history in a hurry" meant a whole day of legwork—scurrying around from office to office gathering documents and talking to sources to create a comprehensive news story. When Pinatubo exploded in the 1990s, newsrooms sent out reporters, who talked to sources and wrote stories, which they sent back to their desks for broadcast or publishing.

We're finding that today's journalists don't even have the luxury of one workday. In the era of online news, journalism isn't just journalism anymore—it's journalism in a hurry. In 2009, when Ondoy hit Manila, reporters were tweeting what their sources were telling them and uploading photos taken from their phones on Facebook.

Paul Bradshaw's diagram on how digitization has changed the news production cycle is very interesting. In a matter of years, the three stages in the news production process, once distinct, now occur simultaneously. They've become layers, and not stages, of the cycle.

Bradshaw adds that because so many newsrooms have switched to this model, the new process has become formalized. Post-Web news organizations now have the same important editorial process and responsibilities as pre-Web ones, which is very important for the integrity of the profession.

The ground is shaking underneath the feet of the world's journalism educators. J schools should catch up with this in the next year or two if they don't want to lag behind in the long run. We should definitely keep teaching students the long-held tenets of journalism.

But we should start teaching them how to perform their job in a fast-moving world. I don't think that's being done enough right now. It's harder than you might think to be fair, balanced, accurate and ethical in a world of Twitter, Facebook and an audience whose appetite for news seems insatiable. I think that requires a wider skill set than the ones we're currently teaching.

There isn't much difference between what journalism schools teach and what the industry expects. There is, however, an inadequacy—the methods taught in school are for an era bygone. They've outlived the context in which they were taught. What we need to start working on is how we can teach the same quality journalism in an entirely different paradigm. And we better hurry. The Web won't wait.

Journalism as practice informed by theory

Note: Blog posts tagged "J117" (such as this one) are requirements for the Online Journalism class I'm taking this semester. See all of my J117-related posts.

Journalism education is a funny thing: it attempts to teach what can be learned only on the field. I know this from personal experience. Even in classroom discussions, I learn the most not from PowerPoint presentations, but from the anecdotes my professors share in between slides.

Jeff Jarvis is right when he says that the industry is extremely disruptive. But it's wrong to conclude from this that Journalism schools should be teaching the "journalism of the future." That's an entirely different boat. The reason is simple: because of the rate of acceleration of technologies, what we think of today as "the future" may be part of the past tomorrow.

Bradshaw's right: now's a good time to change the paradigm of journalism education and start teaching the art of journalism more than "how to be journalists." I personally think it should have been done this way from the start, and not just because of the rapid changes we have been experiencing. At any rate, now's a good time as any.

I think what Bradley means is that journalism isn't a question of how to use certain tools or how to write in this medium or that. Amidst rapidly changing technologies, only the core values of journalism will be worth retaining in the future, which is why, as Jarvis suggests, J-schools should focus on teaching the value of persistent legwork, strict verification, and ethics.

But even then, these core values of journalism are merely theoretical. How do we give them meaning? Through more rigorous practice. In UP, for example, just one internship course isn't enough. The Journalism department could be organized as a massive newsroom that produces news for the college's media outlets. Practice should be at the root of our curriculum, not just a single course number to be taken during our last summer term in college.

Journalism, after all, is a practice, and theory is only supposed to serve as a guide towards an excellent practice of journalism, no matter the technology or medium.

Online journalism and the changing face of media

Note: Blog posts tagged "J117" (such as this one) are requirements for the Online Journalism class I'm taking this semester. See all of my J117-related posts.

Online journalism is changing the media because it easily subsumes the tri-media. Conventions of print, television, and radio can be used to complement each other in a common environment online. ABS-CBN, a TV giant, now publishes print stories, in addition to an online stream of its radio station and videos on news reports—all in one website.

The emerging online medium is also opening up the newsmaking process and making it much more participatory. Audiences now have a greater hand in what makes it to the news, as evidenced by CNN's iReport and ABS-CBN's Bayan Mo Ipatrol Mo. People who would never have a chance in the tri-media are now popular political bloggers, YouTube stars, and prominent podcasters. My friend Jeric Peña runs a very impressive backpack journalism site. He does all his own writing, recording, and editing. Leave it to bloggers to accomplish what news networks do with a three-man crew and a news van.

The real test for online journalism will be its adherence to the profession's ethical standards. The medium has made it all too easy for people to claim to be journalists while evading the strict ethical considerations that define the profession. For my Journalism Ethics class, for example, I looked at BlogWatch, which, in my opinion, presents itself as a "citizen media" effort but seems to fall short of journalistic standards.

Time will tell whether online journalism can reliably live up to these industry-defining standards.

Tabloidal

My family has always been partial to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, but recently I began buying tabloids instead (either Bandera, which is the Inquirer's tabloid, or Pilipino Star Ngayon), mainly because they're half the price of broadsheets, but also for the following secondary reasons:

• They're much easier to handle than broadsheets. Great for reading the news on the train, or while stuck in traffic in a standing-room city bus.
  
• Smaller news section, so the editors only put in the most important news and leave out the insignificant.
• Broadsheets are the province of the middle class, but the tabloid is the working man's news source. It's what the Philippines is really thinking.

How would you write a news story on a fairy tale?

Here's how esteemed British news outfit The Guardian would cover the story of the three little pigs. In my Introduction to Journalism class, we were made to write a story on a fairy tale or children's story of our choice. I wrote about "The Emperor's New Clothes." It was a simple crime story, so we didn't really do any news analysis, but what The Guardian did in the above video is really, really interesting.

I passed the Bar!

Literally.

Ever wonder why they're called the bar exams? The part of the courtroom from the seats for the legal counsels up to the judge's bench is separated from the rest of the room by a partition called the bar. Only lawyers are allowed to pass the bar from the seating area for spectating citizens, thus the term.

It's not every day you get a chance to cross the bar in a normal courtroom, much less the en banc session hall of the Supreme Court of the Philippines. So when my Journalism class went there on Wednesday to learn about court reporting, I jumped at the chance.

We also got to ask Midas Marquez, spokesperson of the Supreme Court, a few questions. Apparently the Philippines is one of the few highest courts in the world that have a public information arm. Unlike the two other branches of government, the judiciary is supposed to be very reclusive and silent, perhaps to prevent accusations of prejudice and bias.

Photos of me at the podium that counsels use during hearings:

For as long as I remember I've always wanted to become a lawyer, and that's what my dad wants for me, too. Is it weird to be what your father wants you to be? I reckon it is, but then again, my knowledge of the matter is informed mostly by Hollywood movies and TV series whose plots revolve around the son struggling to succeed in life as his dad hounds him by saying, "You should have listened to me and gone into this or that; you would have been better off then."

One day, middle seat, one day.

Deantastic Fashenz 03: Khaki pants

Until last Monday I'd never worn khaki pants in my life.

I had to go to Congress to do the legwork for a Journalism class assignment. My classmates and I decided to go in "smart casual."

God, the loafers made my feet chafe like hell.

Book Find: Full Disclosure

At the ongoing book sale at the College of Education.

Seems very interesting. I came back the day after I took these photos to find that the book wasn't there anymore.

Wutevs. I still haven't gotten around to finishing Ilustrado for my Lit & Soc class yet, anyway.

Forgotten Photo 02: Kuma-crime story

We went to the Batasan Police Station last year to find a crime worth writing a story on for my Intro to Journ class. Upperclassmen had suggested Batasan to us, as they said that was where all the action was. Getting our stories wasn't so hard, but we did have to wait for the red tape to do its thing, and it took a letterhead to give us access to records that are supposed to be public in the first place.

This year we had to do another crime story, this time for our News Reporting class. We went to the UP Diliman Police, and the kind officer at the desk allowed us to look at the blotter (mostly just thefts and vehicular accidents) without fussing.

Overhead projection is the shizz.

The last time I remember seeing overhead projection (OHP) in use was in grade school, at a journalism workshop. It's no less cool four years later.

Most accurate photo ever

Personally, I question the lack of a "Stupid statement by geriatric bishop" headline, but I digress. Click to embiggen.

Photo from mosquitopress.net.

Chit Estella writes 30

UP College of Mass Communication professor and journalist Lourdes Estella Simbulan died yesterday in a crash along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. She was 54.

I never had the honor of being Prof. Simbulan's student, but as a Journalism major I join the department, the college, the university and the industry in mourning her demise.

Ma'am Simbulan, requiescat in pace.