Start from journalism but go beyond it-Reflective essay for Emerging Journalism module
Written in June, 2020.
If we go back to three months ago, when we were still able to sit in the same room and had a drink in pubs after work, my homeland, China, was having a hard time because of Coronavirus. Suddenly, stories came out more than ever: A whole team of frontline nurses was tested positive; Restaurants sold stored goods on the street due to their closure; Residents in Wuhan volunteered to deliver food and medicine to patients who were in self-isolation; Asian students were punched in Germany because they wore face masks…
My colleague Anita said: “Any of these stories can be made into a movie and I’m sure they will be someday.”
She said this on the second session of Emerging Journalism module, an optional module in the last semester of my International Journalism course in Cardiff University. By the end of that day, her words became our first project idea for this module.
Cinematic News: A confusing trail run
To me, the beginning was more confusing rather than difficult: We spent the first session playing ice-breaking games. We spent half of the second session doing personality quiz and being matched up into teams by the results of the quiz. We were asked to come up with an idea, but no rules or boundaries were given to us.
This is what made me confused, and what made me realized weeks later that how much we were being limited by asking for boundaries. Ideas are not generated under rules or boundaries, they are results of spontaneous events and some thinking put into the events. Rules and boundaries will come in naturally afterwards, when we investigate, develop and form the idea.
Inspired by Anita’s assumption, we decided to find out how film industry can help deliver news content in order to be more engaging and attractive. After some research, we realized the current situation is, however, on the opposite: Movie industry is trying to make profit and to earn attention with the help of journalism.
Film Roma, which is heavily based on childhood stories of director Alfonso Cuarón, won 3 Oscars in 2019. Film 1917, a story happened in the First World War, has an amazing box office of $368 million worldwide. Chinese film The Captain achieved a ¥2 billion box office in China within the first 9 days of release. The true story behind happened a year ago: Aforce landing made by Sichuan Airlines crew without human injury or death.
Real stories that once appeared on news are now helping the movie industry make huge profits, because visual images have a greater impact on the audience, because the label “Based on true story” on a poster adds a sense of reality to the film- a production of art.
As a result, less and less people, especially young people, will read news. They would rather pay for a film based on real event, which could give them a better visual experience.
As journalism students, we wanted to turn the situation around. We decided to deliver news in movie format.
With this guidance, Anita and I analyzed the system of film production, compared the difference between our idea and the form of documentary, which existed in journalism as a good example of mixing movie skills and journalistic content. From then on, the lecture room turned into a lab: Brainstorming went on between groups. Mind map went onto the wall.
As we were busy moving this idea forward, Dr David Dunkley Gyimah, our lecturer, pointed out a problem: We lacked of storytelling element, our strong suit as a journalist.
How to tell a story to grab people’s attention is important in business. As professionally trained journalists, we have better skills in idea presenting.
Time rushes when you prepare but but it goes slow when you step onto the stage and present. The trial run ended quickly after my first, awkward presentation.
However, the mist in front of me at week 1 was faded when I looked back to the past few weeks. I guess this is the worth and beauty of a trail run.
Language speaking+3D technology: A proper restart
Standing on a clearer position, but this time all by myself, I was going to continue the cinematic news project, until my friend Alex told me on a Sunday tea break, that I pronounced “apple” in a funny way.
“The tongue should be rolled at the end of this word,” he said, “it’s the same with ‘people’ ”.
To figure out if it’s only my problem or a general issue that exists in language learning, I had a talk with Ms ITing Kao, lecturer in Chinese Studies, Modern Language School of Cardiff University, who is very experienced in Chinese and English teaching.
Through the talked we found out several phonemes that are particularly difficult for foreigners, because they don’t have the same or similar phonemes in their mother languages. If they can’t be aware of this, There will always be a difference between their pronunciation and the local, standard one. Some differences are so small that non-native speakers can hardly tell only by listening. But to native speakers, the difference is usually very obvious.
My four-year of German study experience told me that this small difference in pronunciation were covered in phonetics, an academic subject which studies the physical properties of speech. In China, only professional universities with a strong language school will offer phonetics session to students. Others practise with English movies, songs and native speakers hired by private language training companies.
My friend Alex could identify my problem because he is a professional English teacher with many years of teaching experience in the UK and Vietnam. But not everyone is qualified to teach pronunciation like he is, although they are doing it.
So this is the birth story of my second project. I decided to use 3D modeling technology to visualize the physical movement of speech, so that people with no understanding of phonetics are also able to easily get access to the “secret” of a standard pronunciation.
With the previous lesson in mind, I separated my plan into two different directions: Analyse both academic theory and current language teaching system, storytelling by interviewing, rehearsing and collecting feedback.
Then with the help of Dr David Dunkley Gyimah, I was teamed up with my mentor Lee Robertson, the founder and CEO of an online community for UK financial services professionals called Octo Members. He showed me a third direction to make my project stable like a triangle.
With the vast experience in finance and business, Mr Lee Robertson suggested me to look at the cost, an element sometimes comes first to customers’ minds while making their decisions.
When I started doing the research, I realized it’s not only about looking at the prices labeled on different language teaching app. It depends exactly on who my target customers are. This research pushed me to re-identify my potential market, and to research with different approaches when it came to different target groups.
As a result, I collected course fees from different language institutions, which included online and offline formats. I researched how much a company need to spend on offering language training to employees. I am sure there are still many things I need to investigate in the future.
Review: Society is making progress, so is journalism
Finishing my 8-minute long final presentation which seemed impossible to me at week 1, I asked myself those questions again:
What is emerging journalism?
To me, it involves creative thinking, project developing and storytelling. If we put creativity, business and journalism at three points of a triangle, emerging journalism stands inside. It taught me how to brainstorm an idea without boundaries, how to develop this idea systematically, and how to use storytelling skills to make this idea more attractive.
How will it help me as a journalist?
To be honest, it helps me in any position of any field. I would rather consider the purpose of this module as to offer me a different angle to see journalism: Newspaper and magazine are no longer the only formats of journalism. Instead, it exists everywhere. Charity has their own photo journalist, companies are collecting stories from the customers as branding strategy. Storytelling is everywhere, so journalism is everywhere.
Some people said modern life predicts the struggling circumstance journalism will face in the future as an industry. High speed internet, AI technology, news based films…every invention is weaken the unique features of journalism.
After this module, I think every progress we made is providing journalism with a new possibility.
