We had three journalists come speak at our online journalism class. First was Nathan Olivarez, with curly black hair and his Mexican and Indian Arizona looks. assistant editor at WSJ, and helped co-create the blog. He is mostly a writer, but does a lot of other stuff at WSJ. He grew up in Phoenix, AZ and hung out at the ASU campus a lot because his mom went to school at the same time he did. Then his family moved to West Phoenix, which was considered the working class “hood.” He was inspired by a article by Chris Farnsworth called, “Crackdown,” which gave him a good perspective on journalism, which made him want to peruse it. He began by interviewing rappers in a hip-hop Zine. Then he lived in Mexico in Zaeatecas, where he worked daily on his blog, deciding to to peruse journalism full-time. He wrote his college paper, “The Daily Wildcat.” He hoped to be one of the many contributing to journalism , where he was able to land a internship at the Arizona Daily Star. He covered cops and the south-side of Tucson. He learned to do everything and covered many different beats. He started the chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists because he wanted to bring people together and promote diversity. He went to NYT, the Institute of Student Journalist, which was open to any college students. A group of his friends created their own "boot camps" to learn video. ""Youtube is a ton of noise." Nathan prefers Vimeo to create great content. "If there's something you want to learn, just go for it." Nathan got shot down for every internship that he applied to, until he got accepted to NYT for video in New York finally. It was the James Restan fellowship and it was all-paid for. Nathan recommends this internship; plenty of opportunities for journalists. The CCNMA,, a journalism conference in LA, run by Randy Hagihaa, developed a relationship with him to get his foot in the door at the Metpro LA Times. He covered tech on his "Tech-news" blog. Nathan worked at Wired in SF, then the Verge, now he's at WSJ. He wrote articles on Google Glass, Samsung Galaxy 5's. He showed us a Google glass video he had made; one of his early video's. "Some of my friends are making fun of me for being a glass hole." Nathan grew up playing with old computers, grew up into sports and cars, "The fun of journalism is that you don't know everything." Sharing and digesting information and presenting it in the best possible way is what he described journalism as; i think its a pretty great definition. His biggest mistake was saying someone in his story was dead when he wasn't and he stressed fact-checking. On Twitter: try to mix it up on twitter as a reflection of who they are as a person to make it more interesting. Weird way to think of as branding yourself, but it's a reality now." Journalism is a reflection of yourself and your interests. There's always going to be someone that knows more then you, but you don't have to be an expert in journalism. On finding a new story for an article, "holy shit, there's something really cool there. Get to know people, find out what their interests are, or call people on their bullshit. If its out on the streets, its in public" Nathan made a joke before they left for the night. “Were all tech people and we can't figure this projector out.”
Then we had Mark Millian, a James Franco look-alike in the movie, “Howl,” complete with round rimmed wire glasses and a sports-coat. He writes for Business Week and landed "Global tech" on Bloomberg-he covers stuff outside of Silicon Valley. He covered articles on virtual reality googles hooked up to computers. He went to the University of Maryland and had an internship at the LA Times after that. Mark likes tech because there's no violent subjects; he didn't like working on the Homicide Report at the LA Times. Video and online are the most important avenues now-media is going digital across the board. You use metrics and stats to target readers. Mark wrote about tech for CNN.com, and moved on to Bloomberg after. He reported for Global Teen in Israel, where there are some of the best journalism schools. He interviewed Hugh Heifner, his hearing is pretty bad so it was difficult. He was surrounded by women talking about woman. He traveled to Europe an Asia to do stories "Were in a digital business." On start-ups. "Money makes people do bad things and that's the best time to be a journalist." Brazil is ahead in tech. Think global. He wants to work in Latin America, loves tech and wants to have time to write more if he could. About Twitter, "Its like the Yankees."
Last but not least, we had Brian Chen. He wore a dark dress shirt and a blue undershirt. He He is a reporter for NYT, and works in the SF office. He's a reporter who writes about Apple and mobile companies. He writes for their paper and "Bits" blog, where he post several articles and posts a week. He talked about the rebranding of International NYT, now reporters need to have more international coverage. There are a lot of sub divisions in New York Times. Trying to expand globally Brian started reporting 10 years ago at UC Davis, and wrote for the school's magazine,"Aggie" which just got shutdown-now it is only online and publishes once a week. He wanted to move to SF, and the only jobs available were in tech reporting. He wrote, "Always On," a book about ramifications of the iphone. A documentary on Netflix shows the average day in their news room called, Page One. "It's about a platonic ideal of a newsroom. Everybody there is proud of what they do. They are not supposed to share their opinions of companies that get covered, more opinions get on Twitter as a result. He tweets only few times a day. "It leaves less room for me to leave my opinion open about things." He uses tweets to link to his stories and opinions mostly. "When I was at at Wired I was more of an unfiltered person. Wired is more Geeky and fun. ""When's dinner?" Food is everybody's good opinion after a long day.
