Internship Report
Cheng Kai Wu, S3613178
Planet Eight Studio, Taiwan
Supervisor: Robert Chesal, RUG
Co-Ordinator: Chi-Fe Fan
Date: 2019/12/16-2020/02/07
Table of contents
The internship ... 3 My tasks ... 5 Supervision ... 7 Evaluation ... 8 Conclusion(s) & Recommendations ... 10 Attachments ... 11The internship
Motivation: Before I was chosen to fill the internship vacancy in Planet Eight Studio, I had applied for two jobs. Each job contains different expectations from the company’s perspective. The first one belongs to a newly created news company that mainly focuses on technology and business news. Because technology is the niche I always want to dive into, I prepared all the materials within hours and uploaded them onto a platform that is designed to gather and distribute resumes and application forms. However, the company did not reply. Therefore, plan A faded away within two weeks. Simultaneously, I was about to begin my thesis writing career which means I could not spare too much time on finding a vacancy which would lead me to neglect my thesis. However, writing my thesis has been my priority, because rule has it that students of RUG journalism could only start their internship after their thesis is passed. In order to realize a seamless transition between the thesis and the internship, it is vital to occupy an internship vacancy as soon as possible. That is why I reached out to my classmate from the National Taiwan University. In mid-August, I received a call from her. She told me that my would-be coordinator- Chi-Fe Fan is recruiting an international news editor for her counterpart in another media. Within minutes I wrote a letter to establish contact to Mrs. Fan. I think although technology is my main focus, international news is the category I would hone. That is because of my previous performance in the international reporting class that represented my competence and skills well. They expected me to work as an editor that would process textual and visual elements of international news on a daily basis. The only concern was whether in the future this editorial vacancy could be recognized as the official internship by the RUG. Therefore, I passed my concern to Mrs. Fan.Few days later, my future boss told me that she is willing to provide an internship vacancy of her studio, instead of the international news editor job. It wouldn’t pay as much, but in light of the opportunity of my future career and a smoother graduation process, I have accepted this one. I did not understand what my tasks are/were because she only told me I need to work as her personal research assistant and a journalist. Forging these two characteristics into one model sounds reasonable because I thought I could start applying my knowledge-processing skills to my job, while training myself in a different environment that the main language is Mandarin, not English. Mitigating the gap between my English and
Mandarin proficiency was my main concern. Planet Eight Studio Planet Eight Studio is located in the city center of Taipei. Cooperating with other news agencies is the main feature of the studio’s business model. That is why the studio is split into three subdivisions that each of them corresponds with different journalistic institutions. Each one is given a specific task.
The first group deals with the main show, which is called “Navigating the universe”(寰宇漫遊). An estimated eight people involved in this subdivision, including the hosts, assistants and producers. This group produces and broadcasts the week ly? show on the “Universe TV channel” (寰宇電視台). The second subdivision comprises of only two people: my boss and me. The task of this group is to gather, select and share three pieces of news every day. We made a program named “Three international lines” (國際三條線) on Facebook to present those pieces. The third subdivision, with six people in it, produces a show called “Worldview today”(Today 看世界). It is a show broadcasting on the biggest social media application “Line”, which is similar to WhatsApp.
Show Frequency Members
Navigating the universe Weekly (Thu) Me, my boss, and other senior members
Three international lines Daily (Mon to Fri) My boss and me
Worldview today Daily (Mon to Fri) Me, my boss, and the production team
I contacted my boss every day because both of us have to participate in all three tasks mentioned above. The first task for the “Navigating the universe” show holds an editorial meeting every week (Sunday). The second one does not have an editorial meeting while the third one holds the meeting almost every weekday in order to decide the topic.
My roles in those editorial meetings were very different: I cannot participate in the first one because it is only for my boss, other senior hosts and members. For the third one, I am an active contributor of opinions in the meeting. The mechanism of this one is that “Three international lines” is the foundation of topics for the “Worldview line” show.
The vision of the studio can be concluded in one concept: amiability. My boss often told me my writing style, despite being saturated with knowledge, does not serve the people without academic background regarding the subject. It is important to
note that one has to reset the style in order to make people understand the issue better.
My tasks
My daily tasks included fact-checking, writing small pieces as additional materials, selecting story ideas and looking for footage of “Worldview today”. Those tasks could be found in the second and the third group, while there would be extra tasks on Monday that deals with the first group. I will start with explaining my daily routine. The first task in the morning involves editing and compiling three pieces of news: international, Asian and Taiwanese. Therefore, this unit is called “Three international lines”. After the editing and writing introductory paragraphs, my boss would conduct the final check and paraphrasing, and later notify me whether everything is good go. I would then publish the content on Facebook.The first and the second task in the morning was interrelated and connected. Topics that had been chosen in the “Three international lines” will be vetted again by three members of the editorial board of the second task: “Worldview today”. My boss, Kylie Wang and I would have a very brief meeting on which topics should constitute the backbone story of the day. Once we settled on a topic, it was time for Kylie Wang, our chief writer and I, researcher and fact-checker to do our job. It would roughly take two hours to work on the first draft. Then my boss would start editing on the first draft: shortening the paragraph, cutting out the inconsequential part and polishing the article. To be more specific, the wording of the article has to be as “colloquial” as possible”. There are two reasons for this change: firstly, the article is a transcript for the online show “Worldview today”, so it has to be in plain and spoken language; the second reason for this change is that my boss needs to spice up the transcript. She has to make sure the language; is colorful enough to accommodate footage. This links to my final task in the morning: video footage. This step required some experience in video making, which I had already obtained partially from the courses at the RUG. While I checked the paragraphs one by one, I also looked for video footage that would serve the purpose of filling the gap of her speech and information-presenting. Together with the outside sources as video footage, the “Worldview today” would later be taken care of by my boss and the production team. On Monday, there would be three more tasks regarding the show “Navigating the
universe”. The first task was again, fact-checking and researching the link between news and analysis. What I enjoy when doing this part was that everything in the news is pretty much concrete and colorful. The fact-checking, however, required more techniques, because I had to separate facts from opinions first, and then browsed the internet (in two languages) looking for clues that could confirm or contradict the opinion made by the news characters. It is worth noting that I did not have to deal with the transcript of “Navigating the universe” every week. During the first few months of my internship, I had to do it almost every week. However, it was dismissed gradually from my schedule due to the presence of “Worldview today” show which my boss wants to make the flagship show, instead of the traditional “Navigating the universe”.
The second task popped up occasionally, like the first task. This one, again, required some skills in video-making. I have to edit some clips and footage downloaded from YouTube and other platforms. For example, once my boss wanted to discuss the topic of “inverted yield curve and economic recession” and asked me to compile ten clips discussing the same topic with graphs and infographics. I edited the clip into a thirty-seconds long footage based on the timecode and content. After this, the production team compiled everything, including my clips together into the show.
The third task on Monday was a sub-unit in the program of “Navigating the universe”. It is called “which one did you miss”(漏網東西軍). It discussed the topic chosen by the audience. The procedure is the following: first, the editorial team came up with two ideas from the meeting on Sunday, and then put those ideas into a vote. All the Facebook fans could cast their vote on which topic they would like to tune in the most. The result comes out in the afternoon on Monday afternoon. This was when I have to step in and edit the transcript based on the result chosen. After the initial editing and compiling all the talking points, this draft would be passed onto the editorial team. They would then edit it into the final version which will be used as the transcript in the show. There were some challenges. The first one was learning how to write about any topics, in different styles and for different purposes. For example, in the past, I was trained to write English reports and academic papers. The challenge, however, lies in this journalistic internship conducted in Mandarin. The colloquial focus, as well as rhetoric elements that will draw people’s eyes, were the two most daunting ones. The second challenge, however, was smaller than the previous one: the ability to select to choose three daily pieces of news. According to my boss’ words, it is important to cultivate “news instinct” which I interpreted it as a combination
of taste and newsworthiness. Cultivating the skill of identifying newsworthiness takes a long time. However, I am glad that my internship began in August, which means I would be able to acquire a certain level of skill long before the official start date of my internship.
Supervision
1. Chi-fei Fan/Planet Eight Studio The fact that my boss is usually not talkative does not impede the supervision I received. The communication channel is always open. As far as I could recall, she gave me twice or three times of feedback during the internship. However, barely any differences exist between those feedback sessions. To be specific, the content of the feedback was mixed with the same blessings and complaints. For the latter, an excessive number of English elements, particularly grammar and structures, pollute my Mandarin writing style. She said my English proficiency is better than that of my native language. Therefore, there is still a long way to go in order to become an independent Mandarin writer; for the former, I have a strong sense of team-working, and a sharp and professional mind. Knowledge accumulated during college and post-graduate life proves to be useful when fact-checking and writing script. To sum up, I am satisfied with the quality and the frequency of the feedback. However, I must point out that there is one minor issue between me and my boss. The issue is that while we were working on a script about Puerto Rico, there has been a minor mistake in the script about tax law and its application to the territory. Facts regarding this topic were much more complicated than the script had presented. I reported this mistake to my boss, but she had completely ignored it. This kind of neglection happens from time to time. I still have to figure out how to deal with this problem. 2. Robert/The RUG I only contacted Robert once. It was at the beginning of my internship. In an email sent by Robert, he said there is no need to send him journals every week during the internship. He then set up the condition of contacting him: when there is a problem or issue that is impossible to be solved only by me. Luckily, during the internship, I did not call for help because the feedback from my boss is sufficient to let me understand my own problems. I keep telling myself that instead of seeking assistance from Robert, it is better to solve the problem as independently as possible.Evaluation
In this section, I will raise some examples regarding the appliance of knowledge and skills from the master program to the internship. First, in the program of “International three lines”, my job was to select three pieces of news every weekday and extract one or two key paragraphs that point out the importance of the news pieces. The skills I learned from the master program help me deal with it because I am able to identify the key paragraph within seconds. To be specific, numerous lecturers from the skill courses taught the importance of identifying and following the principle that a news piece should be as crystal clear as possible. Second, I participated in preparing an interview. The whole interview with Dan Fuss, a Wall Street financial guru, was conducted by my boss. I was informed about this by my boss several weeks earlier, in order to prepare the questions that the team wants to ask about his investment career and observation of business, finance and politics. The most crucial part of this interview was to connect his investment tenure to the outside environment. For example, whether the Brexit or Greek financial crisis will affect his investment or how will the Federal Reserve’s shrinking interest rates damage his asset portfolio. By preparing the right question, questioning skills I learned from the RUG program assist my boss with getting into the situations fairly quickly. Third, almost 60% of my time was dedicated to the show “Worldview Today”. In this case, again, the skills from the video journalism and internet researching classes proved to be very helpful. Compared to a few weeks ago, the time I spend on looking for the right footage has reduced from one hour to twenty minutes. The quality and the relevance of the footage is also rising, so that I received zero complaints now compared to few months ago, an average of one complaint per five shows. In addition to that, the fact-checking skills taught by the internet courses can be applied to the crafting of the script as well.
However, some skills and knowledge, for example, the “magazine week”, was not so useful because we were taught to practice a style that we are not familiar with. To be specific, principles of this style contradicts what Robert has told us is important - clarity. Luckily, the internship also told me that sentences should not be overly decorated with adjectives and adverbs. Those dos and don’ts are far more helpful than theoretical courses.
Theory classes did provide a platform for reviewing and reflecting the way we produce and consume news. But, in terms of applying those principles and knowledge to the practice, only one training scheme from the theory courses
stands out: the methodology class. The skills and methods can be contributed to break down analyze the news. Some methods can be helpful when dealing with ideology and hidden biases. Therefore, detecting and identifying the exact hidden ideology is a crucial skill when writing, producing or reading the news. I utilized this method in my thesis which took me several months to complete. I think it is fair to say that I was able to translate this method into one of my journalistic skill.
Skills, goals and future development
Crafting my Mandarin writing skills and knowing the dos and don’ts are two main pillars of this internship. At the beginning of my college, I thought English is not only the language of the Pax Britannica and Pax Americana era, but also the future language of an ever-globalizing world. Based on this concept, I very much gave up on polishing my oriental language-training program, which includes Mandarin and Japanese, since the end of my exchange program in Japan. Right now, I realized that I must not abandon my Mandarin writing skills. The only way moving forward is to have at least two language skills, especially for a news worker or a journalist. Right now, I believe the goals I listed in the internship plan become even more important. For example, as I have mentioned in the plan, “telling a story with deep meanings from a folkish angle” ( 深 入 淺 出 ) and “accuracy, fluency and elegance”(信達雅) are two main embodiments of the aforementioned two pillars. It outlines the basic and ideal principles of Mandarin writing. I definitely did not achieve those goals in the eight-weeks long internship. However, I did find a way to develop myself as much as possible.Undergoing the bilingual, or even trilingual approach, while emphasizing the importance of Mandarin writing is the key to develop oneself. For example, if I want to know more about Italy, I can contact my Italian classmates and talk to them in English. There is also another opportunity - my bookshelf. I bought two books: one about the right-wing political forces in Italy, and one about the general history after the Second World War. Mobilizing all the resources around me, extracting knowledge from those resources, and applying those knowledges to fact-checking, writing and interviewing are ways to broaden my horizons.
The second way is more challenging. It requires to go outside and absorb experience directly from the people. It ranges from using devices, interviewing people directly, and understanding how edit all the clips and fragments together. Pushing myself out of my comfort zone is two-sided: it will cost more mental energy but considering how deep the learning curve will become, I am sure it is the right way to do.
Conclusion(s) & Recommendations
I was very satisfied with the organization of the internship. reasons for that can be broken down into several parts. First, workplace experience is essential for employers to see that you can translate skills you learn at university into the workplace. Given the examples I outlined in the previous paragraphs, writing, interviewing. and video-editing are three most crucial skills. Due to personal and structural reasons, there are some courses that are not useful enough to meet the standard of practice, I still manage to apply as many skills as I can to the internship. Second, the quality and the quantity of supervision is sufficient, but there are some issues, such as neglecting, should be ironed out by putting more effort into communication in the future. Third, based on the new contract my boss had signed, both “Navigating the universe” and “Worldview today” will “expand” in the upcoming weeks and months. The main targets of this expansion are the content and the length. In this process, there will be more missions for me to fulfill. I am thrilled to take on more challenges in the future and to realize the goals I set out in the past.
In terms of recommendations, I hope there will be more assistance from the school to help us lock down an internship opportunity. This recommendation is built based on my job-seeking experience. I was lucky enough to find this internship opportunity because my former classmate introduced me, and a resume of double major - a bachelor’s degree for international relations and politics, and media studies master program student. Before the introduction, I was not able to find anything in Taipei or across the country, even for those who wanted to expand their new start-ups. Therefore, I think the school might need to hire more people to deal with the connection between the media enterprises, school faculties and students. I want to express my gratitude to my classmate, my boss Chi-fei Fan and Robert. I would not finish my internship program in time without them. There is still so much to do, realize and fulfill. From the longitude point of view, I am only getting started.
