Tag Archives: Journalism

Thursday, 21 February, 2019
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Putting My Journalism Career Into Perspective

A Chinese woman with black medium-length hair sits on a plastic round bubble chair with pillows. She's wearing a flower bomber jacket and burgundy pants. The background has pink polka dots and shows a giant picture of Bliss skin care.

#DailyWings: “It takes courage to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.” — Brené Brown

Wow. It feels so surreal to be writing for my blog again, but here I am.

My life is vastly different now than it was a year ago. I started a new position as a video producer at HuffPost back in October — my first full-time journalism job ever — so a lot has shifted over the last few months. I’m learning an entirely new skill set, I’m navigating a different company culture, and I’m working harder than ever before. I have to pinch myself every day to remember that all of this is real. READ MORE

Friday, 02 February, 2018
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My Year In Journalism: Where I Published (And Appeared) In 2017

AmpLit Fest, writing festival, panel, journalism

#DailyWings: “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
–Robert Collier

Even though this blog post is abominably late…um, Happy New Year, everyone! January started off quite zen for me, but things quickly became a roller coaster as I took on more journalism and work projects than I’d planned to. (Already broke a New Year’s resolution, y’all.) This year, I hope to take better care of myself physically, mentally, and emotionally. That means reading novels for fun, eating lots of cheese, putting on more evening face masks, and not feeling guilty for spending an afternoon doing nothing — because sometimes, that’s exactly what we need.
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Thursday, 02 November, 2017
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How To Survive Columbia Journalism School: A Non-Exhaustive Guide

Wendy

#DailyWings: “I’m a story-teller. I tell stories. In some stories, I am the story. But the story transcends me. How? Hear my stories.” –Guy at your J-school

Happy November! It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally finished putting together this blog post about my experiences at Columbia Journalism School (as promised), along with several nuggets of advice for prospective students — brought to you by the Class of 2016. :)

For those of you who might be new to my blog, I’ve talked about my journey to New York City in previous posts. I often tell people that going to graduate school for journalism was one of the best things I’ve ever done, even though it was also one of the most difficult. I had already obtained a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which is considered an excellent program and taught me the fundamentals of professional writing, editing and reporting. Columbia Journalism School was on a whole other level — basically UNC’s j-school on steroids.
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Thursday, 21 September, 2017
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Why I Stopped Blogging For Two Years

journalism, New York Times, why I stopped blogging

#DailyWings: “Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and seeing what happens.”
-Louise L. Hay

Hi everyone. It’s taken a long time for me to come back to this website and have the courage to hit “publish” on this blog post. I’ve missed writing here. A lot has happened since I last blogged in 2015, and I feel like I owe you all — my readers — an explanation for why I stopped blogging, which was once a sacred part of my life as a writer.

Those of you who’ve been around for a while know that I started a blog for the first time on Blogspot in January 2010. It was my safe haven for many years, with a short break in the middle so that I could migrate to a new location — this website. Back then, I didn’t know things like SEO existed that could drive or inform my editorial content. My blog was simply a creative outlet for me to share my writing journey and my hobbies outside of journalism with the outside world. That was it.
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Monday, 24 August, 2015
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The Columbia Journo Diaries: Journalism Bootcamp, My First 2 Weeks in NYC

Columbia Journalism School

#DailyWings: “One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” -Tom Wolfe

The Columbia Journo Diaries is a series on my blog where I share my accounts of what it’s like to be a journalism master’s student at Columbia University in the City of New York during a time when the media landscape is relying on digital innovation to survive. 

It’s Friday night, and I’m raising a solo cup filled with red wine in my right hand. Someone sitting a few feet away whistles to get everyone’s attention.

“We made it through the first two weeks! Cheers!”

“Cheers!” I place the cup between my lips. The wine warms me from head to toe.

It’s the first night I’ve actually gone out with friends – mainly, other journalism students at Columbia who decided it would be a good idea to celebrate the end of our second week of reporting bootcamp. We have a picnic set up in Riverside Park right by the Henry Hudson Parkway, barely five minutes away from my apartment. I’ve been living here since the end of July, and not once did I notice before how beautiful the sun is when it sets over the skyline. I remind myself to do this more often. No matter how stressful journalism school gets or how many times you fail, I say to myself, never forget to appreciate what’s right in front of you.
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Monday, 15 June, 2015
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I’m Moving to New York City to Live (Not Chase) My Dreams

#DailyWings: “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” -William Faulkner

Happy June, writers and friends! Wow, has it really been a month (and some change) since my last blog post? A part of me is appalled that I took a month-long hiatus from writing, but the other part of me wants to remind myself that there is a very good reason why I haven’t been around.

Four days ago, I was finally able to make an announcement that I’ve been waiting to make for months. It’s the kind of announcement that is usually made right after a college graduation, when people are moving to new places, taking on summer internships and full-time jobs, and traveling to other countries. Honestly, it was hard for me to keep blogging without being able to share this announcement with you; I felt like keeping it inside was more difficult than not blogging at all.

Thankfully, I’m finally in a good place both emotionally and professionally now where I can share this publicly with you and my friends here on social media.
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Tuesday, 13 January, 2015
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Charlie Hebdo and Journalism in the Marketplace of Ideas

#DailyWings: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” –Eduardo Galeano

I was at work when I learned about what had happened in Paris on January 7. At the office, we have about seven or eight television screens, all of which display breaking news from CNN or sports on a daily basis. I walked past the largest TV during lunch, a napkin and utensils in my hand, when I saw the headline about terrorists on the loose in Paris. People were wounded, even dead.

“Why would anyone want to attack the French?” was my initial reaction. Admittedly, I don’t know much about France outside of the stereotypes revealed to me through movies and other media growing up, and unfortunately I don’t follow French news the way I follow Chinese, American and UK news. Even with the underlying knowledge that French people aren’t all alike, I’d always viewed them as being romantic, chic and peaceful foodies.

It wasn’t until later that I learned three masked individuals — later discovered to be Islamists — had attacked the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical Parisian weekly newspaper known for publishing crude, controversial material (mainly about religion and politics). The attacks didn’t stop there. Two days later, terrorists related to the first incident attacked people in a supermarket where many Jewish Parisians live and congregate.
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Monday, 01 July, 2013
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Meeting Khaled Hosseini: “And The Mountains Echoed” Book Tour (and My 21st Birthday + The Great Flood of 2013!)

#DailyWings: “When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll be the pope.’ Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.” -Pablo Picasso

A couple weeks ago, I read John Green‘s “The Fault in Our Stars,” one of the best Young Adult novels I’ve read in a long time. (If you haven’t done so already, I highly encourage you to read one or all of John’s books and/or check out the awesome vlogbrothers, a YouTube video project he coordinates with his brother Hank.) One of the book’s subplots involves the characters traveling to Amsterdam to meet the writer of their favorite book in person.After I finished reading the book, I Skyped my boyfriend — who shares my passion for good literature and was the one who introduced me to John’s work — and said to him, “Wouldn’t it be so cool if we could just meet our favorite authors like Augustus and Hazel do?”
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Thursday, 02 May, 2013
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Observations of an Editorial Intern: Here’s to Punchy Ledes (& Other Farewell Stories)

#DailyWings: “We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.” -Vladimir Nabokov

This post is a part of my blog series, “Observations of an Editorial Intern” (as inspired by the CAFME Summer Intern Diaries). This series focuses on my experiences of interning as a journalism student for a news publication. Any viewpoints expressed on my blog are not reflective of the publication I work for. 

This semester, I completed an editorial internship at The WEEKLY, the town newspaper published by Chapel Hill Magazine.

Last Monday, I wrapped up my last few assignments for The WEEKLY and concluded the spring editorial internship. Walking out of that office for my last time this semester was bittersweet, as the end of most valuable experiences — ones that are both challenging and rewarding — tend to be. 

I like to think of the past — in this case, the “past” few months — as one huge timeline. Placing a finger at any point on the timeline, I remember where I was in the internship process at that point and how much there was still ahead of me. 
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Monday, 01 April, 2013
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Observations of an Editorial Intern: On Being Deadline-Driven

#DailyWings: “Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.” -Charlotte Brontë, Villette

This post is a part of my blog series, “Observations of an Editorial Intern” (as inspired by the CAFME Summer Intern Diaries). This series focuses on my experiences of interning as a journalism student for a news publication. Any viewpoints expressed on my blog are not reflective of the publication I work for. 

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It’s been a while since I updated my blog series for this semester, Observations of an Editorial Intern. Juggling classes, multiple school organizations and an editorial internship has been both a challenge and a rewarding experience. I’ve become much more attentive to news values, email communication, deadlines and interviewing tactics; at the same time, I am still learning new things every week. 

For anyone who is hoping to gain a better sense of a particular field, there is a lot of value in learning from experts — essentially, others who have been working in the industry for much longer. You can ask them about trends they’ve seen over the years, impact on the public and the micro-level details of working in that field on a daily basis. These people can include long-term employees, graduates who have gotten their feet through the door and are navigating the waters, even your mentors or bosses. 

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