Tag: journalism

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Written in 2017

In 2003, Ian Urbina, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, abandoned his doctoral dissertation after completing a small journalism internship with an investigative reporter, which gave him a taste of reporting.

That taste landed him a job at one of the largest news media outlets in the US, a handful of awards, and a few investigative pieces that were turned into feature films.

That’s where his love of journalism has culminated over the past 14 years. 

A Fulbright scholar who worked and lived in Havana for three years, he was enrolled in a dual degree program with majors in cultural anthropology and history. He received a degree in history from Georgetown University in 1995. 

Urbina wasn’t expecting to find himself with the platform he has as a writer. Things just happened that way. He says his life gets weirder the deeper you go.

“I’m kind of an oddball, and so my day-to-day is pretty different than the norm,” he said.

Urbina’s typical day as an investigative journalist consists of long hours. Currently on book leave, he sDCs his days at home near The New York Times’ Washington, D.C., Bureau. 

He wakes up at the crack of dawn, around 4 in the morning, because that’s when he feels he works better. He has one main editor he works with in DC.

Urbina has his own office conveniently in the backyard. 

“I am a bit distractible, and do much better in kind of a deprivation chamber,” he said.

Urbina credits luck for his position at the Times. Little by little, he worked his way up the totem pole through freelancing. A stint with Think Tank is the moment that changed Urbina’s life, thrusting him into a mainstream career as a journalist. He learned everything there is to know about journalism “on the fly” at the DC Bureau metro desk, because he was clueless.

“I knew how to string together a sentence and make it occasionally somewhat polished, but I didn’t really know newspaper writing and all that entails,” he said.

After a year and a half at the metro desk, Urbina moved on to bureau chief. He managed an area from Kentucky to Ohio, noting that it was a challenging job because it was not a local paper — this was a paper on a national scale.

One day, Urbina asked his editor if he could take a break from the news rat race and spend a year researching documents for an article.

His editor said Go for it.

Urbina’s most recent piece, “Outlaw Ocean,” was not only his longest stint at three years, but it was also a dangerous and stressful assignment. It’s currently being turned into a book and a movie project. 

His editor was not a fan of the series, which also added to the list of obstacles surrounding the completion of his research.

Investigating overseas requires taking several precautions, including ensuring that you have a reliable translator. Without one, a journalist is entirely out of luck. No matter how good a writer you are, without a translator, nothing will be done properly, Urbina says.

Violence was a common occurrence while reporting in other countries.

The things he saw included murder on camera, sex trafficking, slavery, and arms trafficking.

Urbina says that spacing out trips, along with knowing who you hire, helps with the investigative process abroad.

“The difficulty (with reporting overseas) is the reporting itself,” he said.”You’re chasing really bleak stuff.”

His findings on fracking in 2011, in a series called “Drilling Down,” helped show the US how dangerous the government’s want for natural gas really was. Before Democrats were against the practice, fracking was seen as a gold mine, while few questioned whether it was detrimental to the government. Urbina, however, questioned it.

“That series was tough, it was aggressive, and we got really strong pushback from the (oil) industry,” he said.

Urbina felt that the documents surrounding the fracking piece were some of the craziest things he had read as an investigative journalist.

“So like, everyone knew there was radioactivity in the waste coming out of these wells,” he said. “But no one knew how much radioactivity.”

The fracking, which caused drastic leaks that seeped into sewage treatment plants, was utterly unknown to the nation until it was investigated.

 It took hours of poring over documents and piecing together each part of the puzzle little by little, but in the end, it worked out for him. That’s one of the key things to being a journalist–sifting through documents.

“If you can name the monster, you can beat the monster, and that’s true with document hunting,” he said.

Urbina had a team compile an extensive archive of the documents found, still accessible on the Times today. There have been no corrections made to the database, which contains approximately 500 pages of documents.

“Drilling Down” took at least four months to report, Urbina says. As far as requesting documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Urbina typically expects a response within at least a year. 

A beat, data, documents, and spreadsheets are the tools for any journalist’s future. It’s also essential to consider distribution afterward. A reporter’s job is to break news, not follow it. 

What is key to investigative reporting is finding a new way to tell old stories, or new stories. 

That’s the space that Urbina lives in.

“You’re not done when you finish the story,” he said. “Don’t just put it in your paper.”

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Social media is an unlikely strong asset to the elements of journalism. Photo by me | 2013

I met a small group of like-minded women that lived near San Francisco when I was maybe ten-years-old, living eight hours away. My parents didn’t particularly enjoy it, but they were like older sisters to me at the time.

We messaged through AIM chat like we were buddies that went to different schools. I can’t sit here and recall a conversation today, but I can discuss the impact it had to meet other creative people at that age.

To date, I don’t meet many other writers in my small town. When you’re a journalist, the circle gets even smaller. Therefore any support you get matters; remote support is so much more than one can think.

So here’s part of the inspiration I drew from–something that social media gave me and continues to give to so many others around the world: interactive engagement and consistent communication.

Also, thanks to Wikipedia for existing during those long nights with lonely, angry insomnia. Which actually was a little bit of asthma and sleep apnea too. But I digress.

Eventually I celebrated my 18th birthday at Bubba Gump Shrimp with my parents and two of my internet friends there. We all happen to follow each other on social media today. They do not know that I still have my gift from that day, almost a decade ago. A black, minimal yet strongly bound and empty notebook for me to write in.

That was the first push I had to follow a dream that seemed to be fading with the dying print media industry.

My internet friends and I are not close anymore but I get the comfort of knowing when I open my Instagram, I’ll see a post from up north or in South Korea. One of them got married in the past year and the pictures were breathtaking. In times like these, those thoughts are comforting.

The midpoint for a random but empowering kinship? A simple Linkin Park message board attached to the official website in 2001.

Next came designing Xangas, one of the first [and many] underground blogging platforms. And then, Myspace. I knew HTML, simple website design, blogging and photo manipulation before I left high school in 2010.

At such a young age, I never realized that I was a part of a prolific moment meant to change the way that humans interact forever. For so long, we were bound by our physical capabilities to move, to see, to feel.

Now, you can connect with someone hundreds of miles away. All of this with the touch of a button. In an era where internet bullying had just become a tangible pain [that now 59 percent of teenagers endure], I found solace from the bullying I experienced in public online.

This was unheard of at the time.

And the internet is still a very toxic place to inhabit. In fact, over three quarters of high school students two years ago did not understand the concept of media literacy, a Stanford University study found. People cannot tell between advertisements and the latter.

Since social media is mixed with all facets of communications, it’s clear that e-commerce is stepping on the toes of the press. Implementing a strong strategy to bring in various consumers through the means of education is imperative for survival.

That’s why I enjoy the career path I chose and the learning that comes with it. I am interested in how human interaction changes through the various modes of engagement over this particular modern age.

Since digital interaction is blowing up right now, it’s clear that addressing the digital divide was going to have to happen sometime. Media and digital convergence will continue to rise and the wealth gap will follow along with it.

Especially with the struggles we’re facing with COVID-19, also known as the Coronavirus. The digital divide is a staggering problem grown wildly out of control since the loss of net neutrality. COVID-19 makes it worse.

It’s clear that the use of internet and the products aligned with it [smartphones, laptops, etc.] has gone up, according to Pew Research Center and other internet study trends.

But the amount of unique consumers isn’t going up at all. Only half of the world has internet access. Why is that?

That means that our internet is designed for those who are privileged enough to afford it. That’s not right. The digital divide is real and it’s going to cause problems in an era where a pandemic changed the course of history.

Studying what these statistics mean for us is how those in the communications field can assist in helping businesses stay afloat.

I have gained a lot already from this program about what it takes to use the skills I enjoy, such as writing, and use them to better the lives of both small and big business. I hope to find out more about why social media works in the ways that it does. What does this mean for our future, especially while we are all stuck in self-isolation?

What does the rise of social media engagement reliance mean for the way we process physical emotions in reality? Can social media be a saving grace or is it wrapped up in a wealth disparity gap that we might never break down?

Whatever the case is, it’s 3 am on the west coast so I’m going to wrap this up, add in some outbound links and pictures later. This is the first thing that I’ve really finished since I started my own quarantine a month ago. It’s moments like this where I don’t feel as defeated.

I just want future generations, or even older generations to realize the good behind the internet and why we need to understand the impact of social media–mentally and culturally.

Every bit matters right now. And we’ve all got the time to read.

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I’ve went from print journalism to marketing, public relations, advertising and back again. For now, I’m trying to stay in the social media manager realm because it allows me to write blogs.

Meaning I get to exercise my journalistic creativity on the regular. But seriously though, I cannot express enough how underpaid and undervalued I am as a content creator. I’m marketing a brand to retain clients and often I’m still stuck cleaning a break room.

How can I continue to create an organic outreach that reaches real customers when I’m not taken seriously?

This is why I’m in school. I’m kind of hoping that with the next tier of degree in my life, I’ll get taken a little more seriously. I want to help companies grow and I’m generally not given the resources or time to make that genuine connection happen.

Unfortunately living in the metropolitan area that would see my value in Southern California is a six-figure endeavor. I’m talking like, almost a quarter of a million dollars a year just spent on living comfortably.

And I’m not at that point in my life yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be close. It seems like my generation really got the short end of the stick and somehow it was so bad that the impact has trickled down to literally everyone except the 1 percent.

Connecting to an audience in a prolific way is something that I crave. I constantly find myself reading these feel good stories but the problem here is that they’re all bandaids for some kind of poor practice. There’s better ways to connect to an audience.

I like to do it in writing because I have social anxiety. But then that anxiety took over my words too. Being in this program has really changed me. It’s caused me to become more humble but to also see that I’m worth more than minimum wage.

Journalism is the core of the communications field. The digital convergence that happens with public relations, marketing and advertising is propelled by media convergence. I have always felt like journalists are held to a higher standard than anyone else. This is because the public trusting us is vital to democracy.

We need to strive to do better. I will never not express how important it is to keep going for the optimum outcome. I know that not everyone in the Newhouse School is there for a journalism degree. Some might hate writing entirely. But when we all work together and pay mind to the ethics behind our careers, our lives are a little bit easier.

I hope I can take the inspiration I draw from this program and really make a difference in the world through telling news via different mediums. I’ve always been a writer. A poet too. But there’s an urgency I feel regarding closing the gap that is the digital divide by exposing misinformation and promoting social awareness as our whole world inches further into the future.

I feel like I really understand why good marketing, advertising, PR and journalism will always go hand in hand with each other. One cannot function without the other in our realm.

The amount of mediums is way too many to count and hard to keep track. Right now I’m loving podcasts because it’s a really old idea with a modern twist attached to it.

Multimedia is this whole different ballgame that really gives writers new and creative ways to tell the stories that they write. If journalists like myself can’t keep up with that, we’re going to slowly lose the media literacy we’ve grown to have.

Digital convergence isn’t going to stop, so we need to hop on the bandwagon and ensure that what does come out is used to the fullest extent of the product or service’s capabilities.

Having a free press is my everything. It’s a gift unlike any other. It’s used as a curse, in some situations. I respect it above all else though, always. If more people lose their respect towards this profession, we’re going to see more open hatred across the board.

I feel like so many demographics have been looked over until recently. And this new wave of marketing towards the younger generations through the likes of big data collection is super creepy. Highly intriguing to watch change happen so quickly though.

Who would’ve known that AARPANET would turn into this massive worldwide conglomerate that corporations are fighting to control the access to? A social awakening is happening that is only going to continue to grow.

As human behavior continues to change, we’re currently seeing something unlike anything that’s been recorded by historians before. It’s not Ancient Aliens or anything, but it’s still pretty great.

The ways culture is portrayed across the world is solely because the internet is here to allow for mass sharing. I’m all here for it. Let’s keep sending memes.

It’s so hard to say what else lies in the future. I’m kind of hoping that eventually I’ll have some brain implant that’ll allow a laptop to type my thoughts for me since my carpal tunnel will probably eventually take my hands out.

Other than that, all I can do is hope that there will be some regulations that will keep customization convenient and 75 percent less invasive. Wait no, maybe like 95 percent less invasive. I’m hoping for the best.

Kind of seems like we’re living in a dystopian universe already though. At least we’re all in this together, right?