Truth be told, I was feeling discouraged lately, what with the devastating cuts to higher education in California.  I don’t know what our future holds, but what I do know is that I work with some talented people:

• Grad student Kenya Young has landed a producer’s position with NPR’s
  

  Kookie & Claire working hard on their theses

  “Weekend  All Things Considered” in DC.

• @Lizohanesian, an alum of our MA program,  was hired this month as reporter-editor on the webside of the LA Weekly.
• Esha Momeni, our grad student who was jailed in Iran last fall, will be speaking at Amnesty International’s  Southern regional meeting in Atlanta this weekend.  Esha will also speak at CSUN Monday Nov. 9 at the Northridge Center in the student union at 5:20 p.m.
• Graduate student Seth Koury showed a roughcut of his amazing documentary, “Sound  of Beirut” to some faculty members earlier this month.  Guess this means we gotta let the guy graduate.
• Graduate student Sara Alamdar will defend her thesis in a few weeks.  She studied coverage of Iran’s religious minorities by the government-controlled Tehran Times to see if the reporting changed under a reformist president versus a  conservative president.
• Colleague Linda Bowen is serving as President of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.  We attended the First Amendment Coalition’s event at Southwestern Law last Saturday where the LAT’s lawyers scared the beejebus out of journalists wanting to use Twitter or Facebook.
• Sandra Kukla’s thesis comparing AP coverage of the Gaza crisis with Malaysia’s Bernama wire service is nearly finished.  Um, right?
• Claire Rietmann-Grout is busy editing and researching her upcoming thesis project, a documentary about her experiences as an American softball star who travels to Switzerland to play for a “club” and finds a different way of looking at the game and herself.

Anasa Sinegal

Recent CSUN grad Anasa Sinegal documents her search for a job in what may be the worst economic climate since the Depression on the wonkster employment blog, Workforce Developments, this week.   Anasa is one of our top students, an Emmy winning former television journalist, who won thesis of the year in our department last spring.  As HuffPost columnist Laura Chapin writes, the current 18-35 generation is facing a difficult economic future.   In the meantime, Anasa is continuing her public intellectual work and will join former classmates John Daquioag and Esha Momeni on a panel later this fall at Cal Poly’s Global Citizenship conference.

Sarah Rosenblum, a graduate from a few years ago, recently landed a new job as events coordinator at the G2 Gallery after an extensive search in the turbulent SoCal job market.  A very active gallery in Venice with lots of cool events,  G2 focuses on environmental issues.  Sarah’s former classmate, Treepon Kirdnak, who teaches at Bangkok University in Thailand, is the co-author of a new study, “Siam Snapped:  Uploading Thai Muslims to Flickr” (w/ me!) that I will present at a conference at UC Riverside on Saturday.  Treepon works a grueling schedule at his university and I’ve been amazed at how he’s still been able to come up with so many fresh insights.   Must be something in the Som Tom.

Another graduate of our program, Liz Ohanesian, who has been pounding LA’s streets as a freelance writer and racking up the bylines at LA Weekly, will talk about how she has built a free-lance writing career in one of my journalism classes tomorrow morning.  I am going to try to live stream with my cellphone via Qik.  Wish me luck!

Our graduate student Esha Momeni is back from Iran after spending nearly a month in Evin prison and then being under a 10-month travel ban — all for simply interviewing the courageous women in the One Million Signature Campaign for women’s rights in Iran.  Below are some of the articles documenting her return.

ABC’s Lara Setrakian, who has been one of the best reporters on the election protests and Green Movement in Iran, interviews Esha about her experiences during the election unrest this summer.  (Like a lot of other people, I became aware of Lara’s work via her Twitter posts as they appeared on iran.twazzup.)

In an interview with Fox News 11, Esha noted that her goal — bringing a new image of Iranian women to the US — was accomplished even if her thesis materials including her videos were confiscated by Iranian security forces.  Multiple reporters here and in Washington, D.C., from Fox maintained an interest in Esha’s story. While the national outlets pushed a confront-Iran frame, the local reporter, Christina Gonzalez, was quite responsible and fair in her reporting.

The Daily News’ Connie Llanos profiled Esha. Connie was one of the first reporters on the story when Esha was imprisoned and I was struck by how much attention she paid to getting it right while giving consideration to Esha’s safety.

In a second story, Connie  reported on Esha’s classmates’ relief at her return, quoting Anasa Sinegal who, along with Kara Lawton, turned their master’s thesis into a project documenting their work to free their friend.

Called the Please Free Esha Project, it won the thesis of the year award in the Journalism Department, and is intended to serve as a both an historical record (see complete text version at Oviatt Library) as well as an online resource for other human rights activists and their supporters.

The news of Esha’s freedom came first via a website for the One Million Signature Campaign in California and where you can see a photo of her being greeted at the airport. That news was followed by the Cal State Northridge’s Daily Sundial’s text and video reports. The first photos (which one journalism professor said reminded her of Abercrombie and Fitch ads!) came from CSUN’s talented Jonathan Pobre.  These appear with the Daily News story.

AP also interviewed Esha.  They assigned the story to Shaya Tayefe Mohajer who speaks Farsi.

The Los Angeles Times ran a press release quoting CSUN’s president.  Photos of Esha were initially hard to come by (unless you were willing to use Jonathan’s shots) and they choose to run one of the old photos of Esha from last fall.

For the big picture, the Department of Journalism has noted that

Esha’s imprisonment brought the department together for a common cause – the safe return of our student – and reminded us how important it is not merely to seek the truth but to support each other in our quest to bring the world news of injustices and oppression no matter where those stories take place or how difficult the pursuit of them may be.

And for the many people who have worried on Esha’s behalf about the loss of her thesis project, not to worry.  She already has a new one in the works — a photography exhibition.  Not surprisingly, it’s about human rights in Iran, it’s creative, it’s original, it’s surprising, in short, it’s Esha.

My graduate student Esha Momeni who was held for nearly a month in solitary confinement at the notorious Evin prison in Tehran and then banned from leaving Iran for almost 10 months has returned home to Los Angeles.

Esha retained her indomitable spirit even in prison, where she sang in her cell despite the admonitions of prison guards.  You can hear her talk about this, the Iranian

election and more in an

amazing interview at the Daily Sundial.

Since her arrest last October, the very message Esha hoped to bring to the world — that Iranian women are strong and courageous instead of weak and passive as they are often stereotypically depicted — has been upended by the images spilling out of Iran: Women as a key element of the massive protests.

The Campaign for Equality, the women’s rights organization Esha was studying in Iran when she was arrested, provides an update on her return.

The LA Daily News has the story.

Probably not.  At least that’s what I would conclude based on the results of a project  my international news students worked on last spring.

They studied reactions to news about Africa by audiences ages 14-29 (average age 22), asking friends and family members to watch and compare news reports from

1. the frisky VBS.tv online channel inspired by the Canadian lad’s magazine Vice (audiences watched either a documentary about mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo or the Darfur genocide in Sudan);
2. a video report (also about DRC focusing on the refugee crisis) created by Amnesty International, the global human rights non-profit organization which especially focuses on recruiting student members;
3. an ABC news segment about actor Ben Affleck’s visit to DRC to investigate the on-going war there.

A total of 80 people were interviewed.  Ethnicity, age and a brief bio were collected in addition to gathering their responses to the videos (specific ethnic breakdown in table below reflects the diverse nature of Los Angeles).  Many were college students attending Los Angeles universities including Cal State Northridge, Cal State Los Angeles, USC, UCLA, and Mt. Saint Mary’s.  Participants often said they spent their spare time hanging out with friends, watching movies, working out or engaging in creative projects such as sewing or “making things with friends.”

Nearly every person interviewed said they got their news online, supplemented sometimes by television, often mentioning CNN as a main source. An handful used print media. 

The interviews suggest the following might help news organizations engage younger news audiences with international news:

• use “real” people as sources and reporters, meaning fewer government officials and guys in suits and more of the ordinary folks who are experiencing whatever the topic of the story is.  Lucy, 22, who gets all of her international news from CNN, said “unscripted” shows such as VBS were more appealing because the people being interviewed didn’t seem to perform for the camera and the reporters were not famous but instead “risking their lives to let the viewers know of the issue.”  Others thought viewers would find Ben Affleck more real because he was not a professional journalist.  Kathleen, 25, who enjoys traveling and is interested in “world culture news” said, “Ben seemed like he was trying to reach out to a lot of people, saying, ‘he is just trying to share his story,’ like a normal person.”
• don’t make it too slick. Some participants found the VBS reports more authentic because they appeared to be “independent” of corporate producers and their “raw” quality made them more trustworthy. Mya, 18, who has no interest in international news, liked the VBS report on the gorillas because “it didn’t feel like you were watching news, but rather listening to a story being told.” Zachary, 25, didn’t like the Amnesty video because the narrator “talked like a newscaster.”
• keep it brief. Viewers complained that the complete VBS show on mountain gorillas was much too long to hold their attention. Patrick, 25, who plays video games for fun and is a fan of the WSJ, said this made the VBS video  “boring and I like National Geographic!”
• make it easy to understand. Lack of personal experience with Africa makes stories about the continent difficult to follow or to care about.   Cindy, 22, one of the few participants who relies on newspapers (LAT, NYT) for news, said a more informal style that is not “condescending” would appeal to young audiences.  Many of those interviewed said the use of music and a documentary style of reporting made the VBS stories more accessible.  Kate, 23, noted that

“I find international news overwhelming at times because of the many outlets that are offered. Each story or article can have conflicting opinions and it is sometimes difficult to learn the underlining story.”

• bring the story to the audience. The people interviewed here said they would most likely only pay attention to a report about Africa if they came across it within their own social networking sites such as Facebook.  They would not visit CNN or the NYT to specifically look for such reporting.  Trevor, a 22-year-old student, said he would watch more international news but that it was  “hard to find.”
• connect stories to existing interests. If the story could bring in sports or music or some topic the young news consumer was already connected to, it would make it easier to get them to pay attention.
• use celebrities? Maybe. Christine, a 23-year-old college grad working in marketing, said she preferred the Affleck report because of its “Hollywood” connection.  In fact, many reported a third-person effect with their interview subjects certain that other people (not necessarily themselves) would trust Ben Affleck because he is a famous actor.  Yet others scorned the idea that Affleck was a serious conveyer of international news and said they would specifically avoid reporting if it was delivered by celebs. Mike, 22, who gets much of his news from blogs and spends his spare time biking, sewing and watching movies, said of the Affleck DRC report,

“This video was a joke for me. It took an issue that needs to be addressed and made a mockery of it.”

So, has news coverage of  US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Africa this week made use of any of these suggestions?  Not that I’ve seen.  And for all the reasons noted above, we can expect younger audiences haven’t paid much attention.  While they may not have been the intended audience anyway, without news media laying the groundwork for interesting younger audiences early on, the likelihood of them developing a yen for global stories later on seems pretty slim.