Planes, trains, and DSLR cameras
At home and abroad, Medill Explores revealed stories, alumni, and ideas that clarified what it means to innovate
For this year’s “Medill Explores” program, MSJ students in Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship scattered to Washington, D.C., Chicago, Japan, Puerto Rico and New York City. While these trips weren’t directly focused on media technology, they reflected the diversity of interests in our group.
This was the second year for Medill Explores, which gives MSJ’s a week off from classes to immerse themselves in a subject and locale outside the classroom. It’s kind of like a one-week study-abroad trip.
Some of the trips involved on-the-ground reporting, depending on whether the group was associated with a class. (For instance, business reporting students produced stories in Japan, while social justice reporters told stories of people they met in Cuba.)
Henry Miller once wrote, “One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.”
Here’s where the 10 of us went, and what we did.
Henry Keyser
Location: Washington, D.C.
Trip: An Inside View of the Military and Conflict Reporting
There’s a noble valiance to the journalists who deliver stories from the front lines of conflict zones, where danger threatens their lives and their subjects. Henry joined other politics and national security students for two days of class at the National War College, followed by three days of hostile environment training for reporters.
“I thought we’d get just a tour, but we were expected to read the 150 pages per night that these students do, then contribute in class debates,” Henry says. The Medill students discussed the global energy landscape with the likes of a CIA analyst and Air Force colonel. Although he was drawn to the hostile environment training, “war college debates were what I’ll remember.”
For three days in the field, the students learned how to navigate the fog of war: keeping composure amid gunfire and booms (orchestrated by a sound engineer), spotting mines, treating wounded—all while getting the story.
“Not to sound literal, but I understand the pain points reporters experience in a conflict zone,” Henry says. “If we’re sending reporters to these environments, we might be able to send them with better or newly developed tools not only to keep them safe, but improve the quality of their reporting.”
Jenny Sun & Ashley Zhang
Location: Chicago, IL
Trip: Medill Explores through the Lens
Jenny and Ashley didn’t hop on a plane for their “Through the Lens” week. Rather, they stayed local and honed their DSLR chops by intimately photographing the same people each day, documenting every moment from morning routine to bedtime. Led by instructor Craig Duff and documentary photographer Danny Wilcox Frazier, the students learned how to evoke an emotional story in ways words can’t capture. At the end of the week, the students exhibited the best of their photos. Their audience included Chicago-based photographers Nancy Scott and Joshua Lott.
Jenny photographed Shawn Sturges (above), a 30-year-old blind climber. A genetic disease left him blind when he turned 18, but that hasn’t kept him from ascending the walls at Brooklyn Boulders.
“To understand people you need to get into their lives,” Jenny says. “Follow them the entire day until the moment they go to bed, which to us might be rude, but we learn how to overcome that.” Jenny credits her editors with encouraging her to get up on the wall with Shawn for photos, rather than shoot from the ground. “I’m proud of pushing myself just for taking that picture.”
And Jenny has the added bonus of finally learning her way around her DSLR camera, which she’s owned for two years.
Ashley says she didn’t have many chances to report this quarter, and wanted to learn photography. She captured the day-to-day of Dr. Kamran Hussain, an optometrist from Skokie, Illinois, as well as his wife, Safoorah Khan, and three children (twin 4-year-old daughters, and a 7-year-old son).
“Within one week you can see the relationship growing,” Ashley says. “I enjoyed every minute with the family.”
Throughout the week, Ashley had dinner with the Hussains, visited Kamran at his practice, stayed at home with Safoorah as she cared for one of her daughters who was sick, and accompanied the children to school, MCC Academy in Skokie. She photographed every moment.
“I was with the son first. He had math, English, then recited the Quran, then studied Arabic. For the girls, girls it was more relaxing. They spent more time playing in general,” she says.
After Medill Explores ended, Ashley and the Hussains attended the Northwestern vs. University of Michigan men’s basketball game. (Kamran attended Northwestern; Ashley attended Michigan as an undergrad.)
Vivian Zhang
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Trip: Business, Money & Markets
Vivian joined the business reporting trip to Tokyo (and also traveled the farthest of anyone in the media innovation cohort).
“What strikes me the most is the growth and entrepreneurship in Japan,” she says.
The trip took Vivian & Co. to the Tokyo bureaus of The New York Times and Bloomberg, as well as the Tokyo Stock Exchange, robotics firm Cyberdene and the Asahi Beer Factory.
Historically, according to Vivian, the environment for startups in Japan has been tough. With a business culture traditionally averse to risk and government regulation that kept private capital from finding its way to startups, conditions have changed. Relationships between universities and entrepreneurs are blooming. Clout-worthy companies like Fuji Startup Ventures are leading the charge to incubate new companies.
Vivian, a China native, noticed the sharp contrast between Japan and the rest of East Asia. “It’s like a western country in Asia,” she says.
She also noticed that the Japanese are reliant and trusting of local media, making it challenging for foreign media, like Bloomberg and the Times, to scoop a story. “Companies are likely to trust local newspapers, making the foreigners put in more effort,” Vivian adds.
One surprise takeaway for her lies in the country’s overall mission to support its aging population, whether it’s with technology, corporate policies or cultural attitudes.
Wynona Latham, Reedhima Mandlik, Vijeta Ojha, Nikolas Wright
Location: New York City
Trip: NYC Magazine Tour
Although Medill Explores is two years old, this year marks the first for the NYC Magazine trip. Medill alumni seemed to be everywhere. Students talked and networked with staff at legacy household names like Time Inc., Conde Nast, Hearst, and brands that have proven viability in the digital space, like Vice, Refinery29, and New York magazine.
“I had never been to a magazine publishing house before,” says Vijeta. “It was totally opposite what I had imagined, like a traditional workplace and cubicles. But it they were fancier, modern and tech driven.”
With a daily jam-packed schedule of visiting alumni at these companies punctuated by subway rides in between, the magazine students had front-row, candid access to Medill alums.
“It was great to see that there are places like Time where they’re experimenting with creating interesting media products,” Wynona says. “There’s a place within magazines to build interesting things.”
Time Inc., for example, opened The Foundry in 2015. It’s a high-tech studio in Brooklyn aimed at creating innovative content for advertisers. Conde Nast opened a digital innovation center in Austin, Texas, earlier this year to generate more digital media firepower.
Aside from editorial staff, the media innovation folks talked with digital strategy managers such as Michael Silberman at New York Magazine, to discuss the role of product, engineering, audience development and social media. “The trip taught me that we’re needed because it’s a tumultuous time for media,” says Reedhima. “With the advent of new ways to use media, many people don’t know how to implement them, and that’s where we come in.”
On Tuesday, Feb. 7, the entire magazine trip attended the National Magazine Awards, known as the Ellies. Think of it like the Oscars for magazines. A fair amount of gawking at big-name editors inevitably drew attention, but also it showcased the best of online (and don’t forget print) media in one place.
Devin Emory
Location: New York City
Trip: Sports in New York City
Devin came to Medill with the early pieces of a fan-driven online sports startup in place, making the NYC sports trip an easy pick. The sports reporting group visited editorial operations at ESPN, Bleacher Report, Players Tribune, Sports Illustrated, and the New York Times, and met with companies who work on the business side, including Houlihan Lokey’s Chris Russo, a sports media consultant, and Korn Ferry, an executive search firm that finds new front office personnel for Your Favorite Sports Team.
“Everywhere we went, I looked at the culture, as well as the hierarchy and history of the companies,” Devin says. “I wanted to know all of it because I’m very much interested in having a successful startup.”
Devin points to the media innovation track for inspiring many of the business-related questions he posed in New York.
In San Francisco last quarter, Devin interned in product management at public radio station KQED. There, he learned at the core of anything a publication does, like deploys a new website, app, interactive or feature, is keeping the audience engaged. On the NYC trip, he noticed that even a legacy title like Sports Illustrated “is still transformative with the times and keeping up with the digital age.”
Jessica Buchleitner
Location: Puerto Rico
Trip: Medill Explores Puerto Rico
Jessica has always been drawn to social justice reporting—in both her previous career and her current one at Medill. As a part of a social justice and investigative reporting course, Jessica reported on a story describing how the financial crisis is impacting organizations that provide that syringe exchange services to injection drug users (often heroin) in Puerto Rico. The goal is to reduce infectious diseases spread by reusing needles, namely Hepatitis C.
“In some communities 80 percent of people are infected with it,” she says.
She spent most of her time in Fajardo, a town on the eastern end of Puerto Rico, where she’d go out at night on a ronda. Those are late-night rounds where local groups deliver food, clothes, and syringes to homeless. She’d listen to their stories, as well as those of who she accompanied on the rondas.
“This trip for me was something close to what I care about, and that is reporting on the state of society,” she says.
Click here to learn more about Medill Explores.
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