Go on another journey!
Life is Lost and Found and now I know it’s okay
I’m Yoshie, a TV producer based in Tokyo.
For the Japanese, the most important holiday is the New Year’s celebration. Family members gather and spend time together over traditional dishes. This year, however, I was alone in my apartment. Even my husband, who lives in Hokkaido because of his job, couldn’t fly back to me because of Covid. So, instead of joyful reunions or events, I had time for reflection. In 2020, the pandemic hit women especially hard. As a journalist, I couldn’t help feeling I could have done something more than just broadcasting what was happening and addressing problems. But I didn’t know what to do.
Immediately after the holidays, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY announced that it was recruiting the second cohort of its Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program. Although I was not sure I was qualified, I took a breath and started writing an application, hoping I could find a way to change my professional life.
Now, remembering myself at that time, I feel like a completely different person. Almost nothing has changed outside, but I feel totally transformed inside: less insecure, with no fear of being judged, and equipped with methods and mindsets.
I am creating “Lost and Found,” a newsletter and a small website to help Japanese women facing midlife challenges. It will be free of gender-bias and stereotypes, and filled with empathy and honesty. I’m also planning to host events and ultimately create an online space for members. Creating a safe space is critically important for us Japanese women, and the key will be a sense of belonging and feeling connected with one another. Although I haven’t launched my media outlet yet, I am very clear with what I’m going to do. I’d like to share how what I’ve learned over the course has shaped my idea.
#1 Identify and understand your community
My first eye-opening takeaway was about the relationship between journalism and a community. In the first lecture of the course, Prof. Jeff Jarvis told students that journalism serves a community, which strongly resonated with me. My community is women — Japanese women who are uncomfortable with stereotypes or gender bias. How might I serve them?
Then came Anita Li’s insightful lessons, which equipped me with useful methods that embedded fundamental points: 1) Identify and understand your target community. 2) Analyze the surrounding environment and draw a business canvas. 3) By serving specific needs, convert community members into your audience. Following her instructions, I created a draft of my community survey, tested it on a few women around me and interviewed them to improve it. I wrote my first business canvas, which helped me connect my product’s mission with the business.
All this taught me that if I define my niche audience correctly, it’s not necessary that everyone likes my product — a huge difference from the way mass communication works. Therefore, I can start small and fly solo. If you who are reading this come from a large media organization like me, I strongly recommend that you unlearn what “audience” means in your industry.
#2 Readers are not just receivers or consumers
Another big takeaway was how to make my project sustainable financially. In my country, people seem to have no will to pay for information online, particularly when it is a project by an individual rather than major media. Neither donation nor volunteer work is popular in our culture. I had no idea how to monetize my journalism. But Ariel Zirulnick’s lectures on the Membership Puzzle Project showed me another possibility. When I see my audience not as consumers but as members, the relationship between the product and readers will change; it is no longer transactional. Members will pay for something they are part of. Surprisingly, there could be various ways of participation, from answering surveys to becoming involved in reporting. I saw hope in a membership model because it could produce a sense of belonging.
Spending time with the cohort, I personally experienced how it feels to be part of a membership project. My classmate Irene runs her own weekly newsletter, The First 1000 Days, in which she talks about becoming a parent and early childhood. Soon after I got to know her product, I became a member and enjoyed her articles. One day, she was inspired by an article reporting harsh attitudes toward pregnant women in Japan and asked me for help; I wrote for her newsletter. Then, after it was published, a reader asked me a question and I answered. This was more than a sender-receiver relationship. By exchanging information and opinions with members, I felt I was part of this community and really enjoyed participating. It was then I realized a sense of belonging was missing from existing women’s media in Japan.
#3 A safe space is part of journalism
When I shared my product’s first value proposition in Ariel’s class, she introduced me to the case study of Black Ballad, a newsletter for Black women in the UK. What is unique about it is that Black Ballad has a member-exclusive Slack channel where members talk about topics and exchange thoughts without fear of being attacked. In fact, it had a sad history: its comment section shut down after being attacked with abusive words. As an alternative, Black Ballad created its Slack channels. This story made sense to me. Being judged or criticized, women are more likely to lose their voices. Although I had never thought that “a space can be in the field of journalism,” given that helping marginalized people raise their voices is an important role of journalism, creating a safe space for them seemed to me a crucial part of my journalism.
Since that day, I have switched my focus from sending information to helping raise voices, a change of mindset that is deeply connected to what I have learned about serving a community.
I’d like to add one personal experience that reinforces the preciousness of a safe space. The cohort of the program itself was my safe space online. Whenever I was with my cohort, I felt safe and encouraged to express my thoughts and opinions. I never feared being criticized. I found myself empowered, more courageous, more willing to try something new than before. As a woman working in a male-dominated traditional media organization, I’ve had to be very careful whenever I expressed my opinion, for fear of being dismissed or rejected. Feeling safe makes a great difference, which is a huge learning beyond words.
#4 Test your product
Now I’m about to take off. I’ll start by publishing pre-launch articles (the very first one here!), posting on some blog platforms before I formally launch, not just to introduce myself to my possible audience, but also to test my product. (The articles are going to appear in August.) To a journalist from a public news organization like me, the concepts of Product Market Fit (PMF) and Minimum Viable Test (MVT) were totally new, and eye-opening: don’t assume; ask the audience; develop a product as a business. I can’t start my business without knowing the market. I can’t sell goods without knowing what consumers need. Another takeaway was that I can pivot if my product doesn’t do well and give it another try. The MVT concept has changed my perception of a test. It is not the final judgment; it is okay to make mistakes. So I’ll do it over and over again until I register my first 100 readers. I estimate it will take several months — quite long! But I think this incubation period is necessary because I’m creating my product literally from scratch. I can be patient.
Finally, I’d like to describe what happened at the end of the course — one of life’s surprises. I happened to team up with a prospective partner, a community organizer who has been my friend for 30 years. Around the time I joined the cohort to develop my own project, she lost her job because of Covid and decided to take over a soon-to-be-closed cafe. Now the cafe is under renovation. She wants to make it not just a cafe, but also a space for women who are aspirational and curious inside, which made her ask me to help. With this physical space, we are planning to co-host events and promote each other’s projects starting in late summer.
My own journalism is still on the way. But I’m thrilled about what comes next.
