Child, Day 5-Wednesday

Wednesday was possibly the longest day dedicated to our mass media seminars..  First up was Anne Swardson, a senior editor of Bloomberg News. Her lecture was entitled “Business News in Europe-covering the Economic Scene.” She started with explaining how Bloomberg was founded and moved into how it functions and who it serves. It all started up in 1985 after Mike Bloomberg had been fired from his stock holding position; before he was fired he was sent to I.T. (Information Technician) to work in the “mail room” of stock holding. He realized that brokers trade not on stocks but on information. They needed to know when to trade, when the best opportunity was.  So he created a little box-like device called a terminal and made big money off it. Since the establishment of his fine company Bloomberg News serves 130 to 150 bureaus worldwide…FYI: that’s more than any other company in the world, including the one that originally fired him. J Karma!  Love it!

 Jon Randal arrived at 10:15 to give a talk over “Foreign reporting in a dangerous world.” Mr. Randal is a former international and war correspondent for the Washington Post based out of the US. He was truly a man who enjoyed what he did, while commenting on his work he passed this piece of advice “only believe what you see, then only believe half of it.”

Eileen Bastianelli, founder of Milestone Media and former executive at BBDO Advertizing agency, introduced us to “New Media—New Horizons.” She emphasized the importance of Brand Content -- that is any form of media that in some way tells the story of a particular brand. This could be films, TV, internet or a special event. Getting results wouldn’t be just more people buying the brand product, no, even if it’s just getting the brand out to the public and getting people to talk about it is a great way to advertize and boost profits. 

The AUP was so kind as to offer us some time for lunch and provided us yummy sandwiches and cookies that are ‘da bomb!

After our tummies were full, the next lecture covered was “Reporting across the World’s Great Divides” by Celestine Bohlen. Mrs. Bohlen was the former senior correspondent for political and international affairs; she worked for Bloomberg News and was a Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post and New York Times. Her talk focused on how media and technology have altered the playing field for keeping the public in the dark.

Ann and Don Morrison, the media couple of the century, between the two of them I’d say they’ve had over at least 50 years of experience in the journaling world. Formerly both of them were co-editors of Time Magazine Europe.  Ann herself was editor for Asiaweek, Hong Kong, as well as executive editor for Fortune Magazine in New York.  While Don has been executive editor for Time Magazine Asia and assistant managing editor for Time Magazine New York. They briefly went over their life stories of how they both got into journalism and ended up in New York and Asia, competing for two different magazines. They commented that journalism as a job hasn’t changed much, the medium of how it’s transmitted has however.

The last speaker for the day was Jim Bittermann, from CNN. His talk was over “Television news and the European Scene." He mentioned new inventions that Europe has come up with to make life and interaction easier and more efficient. For example in 1980 they came out with a Mini Tell a device similar to the internet that would allow you to look up phone numbers. France mass-produced this and got rid of phonebooks in France altogether.