Mel’s translation:

Blue sea,
Blue sky,
Nothing there but the color of peace,
Just blue that embraces the earth,
Teaching us that the world is one.

Original Japanese:

青い海、
青い空、
そこには平和の色以外何もない、
地球をつつみこむ青一色、
世界は1つだと教えているのだ。

Thank you very much for translating this Mel!
Mel’s blog: Playing White Noise

Click for the original entry about this poem, where I saw it and the meaning behind it.

Almost three years in my editorial post at a business magazine, I was called into my editor-in-chief’s office. He, my publisher and a member of HR were all sitting there, looking at me with pity in their eyes. We’d received a mass email that morning about company-wide layoffs, so when I saw an HR rep with a folder in her lap and a box of tissues by her side, my face went blank. As I shut the office door behind me I sighed at my boss: “I know what this is about.”

Getting laid off didn’t take very long. In 5 minutes the deed was done. I was handed my severance agreement, told I needed to clear out. From there, the search was on. Filing unemployment in February in Massachusetts. Sitting in a cold apartment all day, culling job sites and sending resumes while it snowed. Trying to keep my spirits up during the most dismal time of year.

Somewhere in the barrage of cover letters, I caught the eye of my current employer. I hadn’t even applied for the content position I have now — I believe I was banking on an entry-level web development role based on some work I’d done in college as a freelancer — but the HR officer who saw my resume thought content marketing might be a better fit for me. After a number of really encouraging and intriguing interviews, I was hired as a Multimedia Content Producer. And more than a year later I can’t believe that I ever did anything else.

My journalism background is a perfect fit for the work I do now. Reporting skills always come in handy in content marketing, from interviewing a subject matter expert to keeping your finger on the pulse of an industry story. An inquisitive reporter’s mind guarantees fresh, timely content. It is in our blood!

I’m not the only one making the case for journalists moving into content marketing. I know a number of fellow ex-journalists have fallen on hard times. (My former magazine doesn’t even exist anymore, it folded during a massive cull by my previous publisher.) If you are an unemployed journalist looking for next career move, I implore you to look beyond reporting or editorial work — especially if you worked in trade publications. Here are two great blog posts on moving from journalism to content marketing:

• 6 Ideas B2B Content Marketers Can Take from Professional Journalists
• An open letter to journalists: You have an amazing career opportunity on the Dark Side

Have you made the transition from journalism to marketing? Are you considering the leap? Please drop me a comment, I’d be happy to hear what you have to say on this.

This photo was featured on UniversalHub on Wednesday, March 4th. Thanks Adam!

This is pretty much the worst picture ever posted on a blog in the entire history of the internet. It’s underexposed and poorly composed. I know, I know.

All my office accoutrements neatly placed in a box, with a white folder detailing my severance package resting on top.

I still haven’t been able to open that box since I brought it home.

‘Tis the season for house work–it feels like I’ve barely had a moment to sit down and think. Our apartment was de-leaded earlier this summer and since then I’ve been hard at work re-painting our kitchen with my roomate. Any weekend when I haven’t been doing housework I’ve been on the road somewhere, it feels like. So I’m behind on updates. I have about four drafts saved that I just can’t bring myself to post yet.  Instead of keeping you guys waiting, here’s a brief on what I’ve been up to.

In July, my housemate and I took a trip to Eastham on Cape Cod to visit the house of Captain Penniman.  It was such a lovely day on the Cape that we couldn’t just head back afterwards, so we ended up on the beach for a little while. And of course I forgot sunscreen and subsequently turned lobster red.

A few weeks later we were in New Bedford for the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament, the largest Portuguese heritage festival (excluding Portugal, I can only assume). Most of the Portuguese-Americans in New Bedford are specifically from Madeira, an island that I have been planning to visit in 2009. So while at the festival we dropped by the Museum of Madeiran Heritage, I got a Madeiran food cookbook (well, I do love to cook), and just kind of soaked in as much as I could from the festivities.

Wow! Those are some dresses, huh?

The festival brought back memories of when my family and I used to go to the Greek-American parades in Boston. Greek Independence Day is March 25th, which is a bit nippy up here in New England, so the parades were usually on the cold and dreary side.

So glad I got to go to this festival though. I have been dying to visit Madeira for a few years now and am now more psyched than ever to go and see it for myself. If all goes as I hope, I’ll be able to make a quick stop in Morocco on the way back from Madeira too, but we’ll see about that.  Meantime I have about a year to get ready — I hope I can squeeze in a few Portuguese lessons.

Early in August I was at Otakon with some friends. During the con, I was a guest at the Future of Jrock panel along with a number of industry guests and musical artists. The audience was so engaged and I took a ton of notes from it.  When I’m at liberty to speak more about events from that weekend I definitely will, but for now I’m holding off a bit.

Finally, just yesterday I went on a Boston harbor islands cruise with friends on a lovely sailboat owned by Community Boating Inc (CBI) of Boston. It was a proper sailboat–no motors here!–and I got to help out as crew when I could make myself handy, namely by being the navigator.  I’ve never done nautical navigation before so it was a crash course in reading a nautical map and learning all the different markers. What a great experience!

I now know that this thing here is called a nun:

Nuns, cans, daymarks — oh yea, and Nixes Mate. Until yesterday I had absolutely no idea what any of these things were (basically all marks to tell you where you are!), they were just funny buoys in the water. It kind of got me hooked into sailing now. I’ve always been a bit of a nerd for maps and navigating on the water is definitely a thrill.

(Our final destination for the day was Georges Island, in case you were curious.)

I’d like to note that even though I learned my lesson from the Cape trip earlier this summer and remembered to wear sunscreen AND reapplied throughout the day, I still turned lobster red by the end of yesterday. I can’t win. I’ll be in southern Pennsylvania for Labor Day to visit family, on Martha’s Vineyard the weekend after, doing the Hub on Wheels ride two weekends after and then visiting NYC the weekend after that.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

But something—okay, everything—bothered me when I read this post on Poynter.

“…But nothing journalists do will reverse the dark tides of popular cynicism. The wrecking balls destroying the credibility of the press cannot be stopped until we focus more attention on the credibility of those who are pulling the levers, including a public that has been conditioned, like rats in a Skinnerian dystopia, to hate us.”

The gist of Roy Peter Clark’s article, as I understand it anyway, is that the public has been systematically trained by Forces Unseen to despise the press and seek out supposed bias even when there is none. And instead of navel gazing, journalists should shine a mirror on the accusatory public and say, hey, maybe it’s you guys who are digging for something to complain about, searching for an agenda or bias when there is none.

I get what he’s saying. I understand his frustration. Many of the journalists chiming in on the Poynter forums can sympathize. Certainly anyone who has worked in journalism even for a day knows where he’s coming from.

There are always times when covering the news, especially political news, will attract screeching accusations of bias from partisans on every side. That’s just how it is. But let’s put that aside, as it’s not the central issue here. The problem is that journalism in America today is broken.

That sentiment runs deep in both the public and the press. We can’t brush that off as partisan politics working its spin. As a media consumer I’ve seen countless examples of the press just plain ol’ getting things wrong, more-than-too-many slanted or spun views (regurgitated talking points, often) passed off as fact.

And the public, more aware and media savvy than ever, is calling us out. Big surprise!

Of course we’re only human, and of course we make mistakes. But the fact is that bias is there, in all spheres of reporting, from all different angles. We can not and should never just brush off bias accusations—it’s exactly that kind of “we are The Media, we know better than you, let us tell you what’s best” attitude that got American journalism in the mess it’s in!

We’re journalists, aren’t we? We’re supposed to listen. We’re supposed to process information to find the nugget of truth. So we should never dismiss such a large amount of public dissent. It’s akin to plugging our ears, dancing around saying “la la la I can’t hear you~ bias doesn’t exist~ it’s all in your head!”

Of course, it’s always hardest to be honest with yourself—even when the truth is shouted at you from all directions. But journalism in America is running out of time. This industry is in trouble. If we don’t take serious, revolutionary action to acknowledge our faults, fix our newsrooms, and redeem ourselves in the eyes of the public, American journalism will die.

Here’s my profile. If you’re a journalist on the Wired Journalists community, please feel free to drop me a line or add me. I’m psyched to branch out to new people in the field. Don’t be afraid, jump on in!

While I’m on the topic of journalism and the web, I’ll conclude this little post with two links from recent issues of the Christian Science Monitor:

“Can web-based worlds teach us about the real one?”—As an ex-World of Warcraft player (recovering addict, I swear), this whole premise is fascinating. Granted you’ll get a lot of insights on the psyche of 14-year-old boys, but it’s a fun idea nonetheless.

“Newspapers thriving? Yes—in Asia.”—If this article whets your appetite for more information on Asian media stats and ethics, I highly recommend the book “A Public Betrayed” by Gamble and Watanabe. It takes a good look at Japanese popular media, especially the weekly magazine-tabloids called the shukanshi. Anyone who’s ever taken a course on American journalism history and ethics—and hopefully that’s everybody in journalism!—will get a lot out of this book, as it offers powerful case histories in Japan with salient comparisons to American events (e.g. Yoshiyuki Kono versus Richard Jewell).

A note to anyone attending AX: I’ll be wandering around booths and movie showings with friends in addition to hopefully scoring a few artist interviews. Drop me a comment or an email if you’ll be there too and want to say hello, I’m always psyched to meet new folks.

One of the take-aways I got from speaking with Audrey was an overall attitude towards the American idea of “feminism” versus women’s attitudes elsewhere. Social academics, especially in the Japanese studies circles, have been discussing women’s roles in Japanese society for years. What some American scholars wonder is why the American interpretation of “feminism” never really caught on in Japan. (I’m citing this anecdotally at the moment, but I can’t tell you how many hours in college I heard students and professors going back and forth on this very topic.)

The gigs Audrey signs have an interesting if not slightly befuddling response to all that. Their music is not political. They are not railing against “the man.” I can’t think of the Japanese equivalent of Ani DiFranco, though perhaps there is one.

Instead, Audrey says the motto for these groups is as simple as Cindy Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” That’s it. Across all genres, from punk to ska to rock to hip-hop, these artists perform because they enjoy entertaining. They’re not vehicles for a Big Message, nor are they putting themselves in some bigger broader sociopolitical context. Either they’re already well beyond issues of gender struggles or such problems never bothered them in the first place.

Depending on your worldview, this is either refreshing or distressing. Interpret it as you like.

I just realized that WordPress has a “nofollow” policy on links left in comments. As I’m somewhat new to WordPress, forgive me for not realizing this earlier. The moment I have access to FTP, I’ll install a “dofollow” plugin for links in my blog to make things equitable for people kind enough to comment here. (And if you have no idea what I just said, my apologies for that as well!)

Tonight the Social Media Club of Boston hosts its June event: Making the business case for social media. I’m fascinated by this topic so I’m hoping I can attend. If you need to prove ROI for investing in social media at work, it sounds like this panel will be a great guide for doing just that.

And finally, a big thank you to the people who emailed me in the past week. Jake Wark sent me two photos in response to my post and photo about Faces, Cambridge’s magnificent eyesore. Unfortunately, I was slow in posting these pictures so Universal Hub beat me to it—but I’m happy to be beat by such a great resource. Jake’s pictures are at that link, do check them out and read the responses. That abandoned building definitely has a … “special place” in the hearts of us locals who, in typical Cambridge-logic fashion, are sick to death of looking at the ugly thing but also worry how new development might impact the surrounding nature reserve.

I also got a few emails from Greek and Greek diaspora who are J-rock fans. I’m tickled! Yes, Japanese rock is somewhat obscure outside of Japan, and in Greece even more so; however, I recall seeing a flyer for a J-rock party at a club in Thessaloniki of all places. So certainly the global Greek diaspora population, by pure statistical probability alone, has a J-rock-adoring fanbase. We just need to find each other! :) Rock on, παιδιά!

Now, let me brief you on my background and let me know what you think.

If you read my bio, you’ll notice I spent two years at Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. I was a very frazzled Fu Fighter. My major was computer science, I took intensive Java classes on top of an engineering curriculum of physics labs and high-level math like 3rd level calculus (which I flunked), discrete math (which I passed and loved), and ordinary differential equations (which convinced me to leave computer science).

So, yes, I have some programming and math under my belt. Before college I took a few classes in high school on C++, BASIC and Pascal, even. I tinkered on my own with HTML and was designing sites in Notepad by the time I was 12 or so—back when almost everyone used Geocities or Tripod. I still code HTML, CSS and PHP fluently, and now that I have access to my own SQL database, I’m tinkering with that as well. Javascript makes sense to me, I play with it, but I can’t really code it beyond the very basics.

So the on-going discussions about reporters coding confuse the hell out of me. I’m not sure where I fit, or where I should.
I love doing production-side work for fun and work—website tinkering and video editing are labors of love for me—and I’ve always wanted to learn more PHP and SQL so I can do neat applications. That’s why I get DigiDave’s post about coding for journalists. It’s grand that there will be programs on journalism for programmers, but seriously, what about the other way around? Should we just fend for ourselves?

There are a lot of geeky journalists. Way more than I thought there were at least a year ago, at least. And I’m glad to know that I’m not alone in my confusion about the future of geekery in journalism (i.e. journalism in general).

What’s next? I’ll keep plugging along, learning as much as I can about reporting—and I do have a lot to learn there—but there are a lot of conflicting messages out there about what freshly-minted journos should or shouldn’t be doing.

So that’s my long, boring, confusing story. Advice is always welcome and appreciated.