Fellowship Application Deadline: January 17

Above is the work of Stepfanie Aguilar (UCLA, Editor-in-Chief PacificTies.org), Evonne Liew (freelance), and Liberty Zabala (CSUN, KCSN news anchor, RTDNA chapter president) at the Hollywood premiere of Kung Fu Panda 2 on May 22.

AAJA-LA board member Suzanne Joe Kai, provided equipment from her company StudioLA.TV, secured press credentials and access to the red carpet, and mentored us in the planning, shooting and production of the video, print and online stories.

Liberty Zabala (CSUN, KCSN News anchor, RTDNA chapter president) at the press screening of Kung Fu Panda 2 in Hollywood. Photo by Suzanne Joe Kai.

Evonne Liew (freelance reporter/ photographer) at the Red Carpet premiere of Kung Fu Panda 2 in Hollywood. Photo by Suzanne Joe Kai.

To see additional footage/ reporting from Aguilar, Liew, and Zabala, check out AsianConnections.com.

LIBERTY ZABALA

When I was offered the chance to cover the L.A. premiere of Kung Fu Panda 2, I immediately jumped at the opportunity. Not only do I love 3D animation, I enjoy covering movies that highlight Asian-American culture and teachings. Working with a team of other reporters, Stepfanie Aguilar and Evonne Liew along with the executive producer of StudioLA.TV, Suzanne Joe Kai, was a wonderful learning experience. Suzanne and I attended the press screening the day before the red carpet premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where we got a sneak peek of the film a week before it opened.

Stepfanie shot amazing celebrity photos/ footage on the red carpet, and Evonne shot great photos/ footage all around the red carpet area.

We even got free popcorn and soda! Ah, yes, the perks of being press, I can get used to this! After the movie, I started writing a script for my stand-up and my review of the film. Suzanne had already spotted a perfect area to shoot a stand-up right out in front of the theater with a giant Kung Fu Panda 2 poster hanging in the background.

We probably shot 2 different versions of my stand-up about twenty times. I especially liked when people would walk in front of the camera and costumed superheroes would try to get into the shot! We finally got the perfect stand-up and wrapped up for the day.  Suzanne was a great mentor throughout the shoot helping me work on my voice and energy in front of the camera. I greatly appreciated her encouragement and support.

We worked separately for most of the piece.  The team shot, narrated, and produced the feature, with Stepfanie Aguilar editing the video on Final Cut Pro . Our team was very tech-savvy. We coordinated each other’s part primarily via email and phone. I gained a new appreciation for technology and the wonders it can do for young journalists who may not have such professional equipment. My review of the film also went up on AsianConnections.com. I was very happy that I was not only able to report but also write about the film and my experience covering it.

Stepfanie Aguilar (UCLA, Editor-in-Chief PacificTies.org) with AAJA-LA board member Suzanne Joe Kai, reviewing footage from the Red Carpet event. Photo by Evonne Liew.

STEPFANIE AGUILAR I have lived in Los Angeles for three years, and I had never seen a red carpet premiere until a few weeks ago. I didn’t think I’d go to my first one as a photographer.  Suzanne Joe Kai, a board member of AAJA-LA, offered students and other young journalists a chance to cover the red carpet premiere of Kung Fu Panda 2 for AsianConnections.com.
I arrived at the Kodak Theater at 8:00 a.m., waiting for Suzanne and Evonne Liew—all of us as a crew, preparing for the event coverage.

After meeting up, it was time to check-in. Although it’s good to be in front, I learned that shooting photographs would even be better when closer to the entrance.

With two DSLR cameras around my neck, I captured shots of every actor and actress, including the director Jennifer Yuh Nelson. It was tougher taking photos of more popular celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt since they rushed down the carpet. Luckily, I did get Lucy Liu to look at my camera. I copied other photographers when they shouted out the celebrity’s name so that they could directly look at my camera also.

After everyone went inside the theater, I lingered around some more just in case anything would’ve popped up. I met with the rest of the crew, who were filming the event. After hours of exchanging photos and video clips, we all headed home. We weren’t done yet though. Post-production started the next day and lasted all week, mostly communicating through phone calls, e-mails, and Skype-chatting.

This whole experience was a thrill—nothing I’ve ever done before. Now knowing it’s possible to cover events like this one, I’m on the lookout.

(L-R) Evonne Liew, Stepfanie Aguilar and John Sakata working on their stories from Kung Fu Panda 2's Red Carpet premiere at a Hollywood diner. Photo by Suzanne Joe Kai.

Unlike most tech start-up founders, AAJA member Mike Kai’s story began with a foray into journalism as a teenager.

Kai, 28, is the CEO and founder of LIFEYO, a website creation platform that has been in development for the past three years. The site was launched in beta a year ago, and by word of mouth, more than 20,000 sites already have been created through LIFEYO. It just launched its latest version this month. LIFEYO aims to simplify the website-building experience, with drag-and-drop features, allowing users to customize content and create a site within minutes.

“The Internet allows people to participate in media different from traditional media,” Kai said.  “With the Internet, everything is a lot faster.  Everyone talks about how fast Twitter is, but fast to me is the ability to get a website up and running through a website like LIFEYO and focus on an idea you have.”

At first glance, it might not seem like LIFEYO, a website hosting platform and AsianConnections.com, an online magazine focusing on Asian Americans and East Asians doing interesting things, have much in common. But on the contrary, the two are very much intertwined and in fact, one might not exist without the other.

“(AsianConnnections) kind of kicked off that direction in life for me,” said Kai, who started the website in 1998. “When I was 15, the Internet was very new and the idea of blogging hadn’t come up yet, but I decided to build this website. It was basically this really cool opportunity for a kid to call up Jackie Chan’s publicist and land an interview and go on to cover really cool people.”

Kai’s mom, AAJA-LA board member Suzanne Joe Kai, one of the first Asian American women to become a broadcast television personality, got involved and mentored Kai in journalism.

Kai says he started the site to provide a broader perspective on Asian Americans.

“I felt that often Asian characters are typecast in the media and yet there are a lot of great stories that aren’t being told,” he said.

The ease of creating online content has led to more opportunities to cover angles not being told in mainstream media, particularly in regards to Asian American and minority perspectives.

“In minority journalism, there’s a lot of stories that aren’t being told in traditional media, but you have the opportunity to fill that void,” Kai said. “To me, that’s what’s really exciting—you have a choice of where to find news, not just relying on traditional sources, and also the choice to create content. The ability to participate is just getting easier and easier.”

Today, Kai is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of AsianConnections, which is still up and running and is now run by his mom, who he says it’s a “labor of love.”  The site, currently undergoing a major system upgrade, has a number of contributors since its inception, including Ben Fong-Torres, author and rock journalist who wrote for Rolling Stone, and Chef Martin Yan, author and host of PBS series “Yan Can Cook.” The site produced a live chat with action star Jet Li with Warner Bros. U.S. Astronaut Leroy Chiao blogged about his experiences while orbiting the Earth as Commander of the International Space Station.

As a teenager, the experience creating the website brought to life the power of the Internet to make unheard voices heard.

“The biggest lesson I learned is that basically when you have an idea and you’re driven by something meaningful to you, you should pursue it,” Kai said.  “For me, the mission to go out and present Asian actors or chefs or restaurant owners in a way that’s very open, that was something I cared a lot about and I was very fortunate the Internet came around the same time I was growing up where it was something I could create and people would take it seriously.”

For Kai, the venture is not just another business, but a chance to allow others to easily create content and have their voices heard, just as he did as a teen.

“Web development has changed a lot with people being able to create a persona on Facebook, yet building a site is still a pretty extensive process. If you don’t have that knowledge, you need to hire someone and once you do have a website, it’s challenging to keep the site updated,” Kai said. With technologies more available in the web browser, we had opportunity to build a product really easy to use.”

The lessons Kai learned as a teenager creating and running AsianConnections are the motivating force behind his work life today.

“I feel very fortunate that having that experience opened up a big world I didn’t even know existed,” Kai said. “In creating LIFEYO, we wanted to create a way for people to get an idea out there in just a few clicks whether they’re a journalist, have a business, or just want to share a family web site. It’s a very powerful thing to be able to get content online and that’s what we’re driven by right now.”

CONTACT: MIKE KAI — MIKE@LIFEYO.COM

Q&A

Why did you decide to create LIFEYO?

I basically felt there was a big need for people to have a tool that’s easy to use and that allows them to share content. We identified that there’s 500 million people using Facebook.  At the same time, a lot of these people are learning to use social media and a lot of these people are taking the next step and making websites. It lets you control your brand and take ownership. It’s great if you are looking for a job or have a hobby and want to share content.

What kind of things do people use LIFEYO for?

One of the ways people use it is to have a personal, professional page for themselves. It’s a great way to have your resume online. It lets you create an online personal persona and gives you a lot more control so you can present yourself in a professional way. Especially for someone who does creative work, having a website is great way to share selections with potential employers.

What is the goal of LIFEYO?

With the Internet, there’s literally no telling, for us. Our main priority is creating a product so easy to use that people want to share it with their friends. We find that when people are successful creating websites, they want to go share it with their friends. The need to have a website is pretty universal across multiple professions.

What makes LIFEYO different from other web platforms?

We’re really not trying to reinvent the wheel. The need for easy website creation has been around a long time. You don’t need to download any software, everything operates within the browser. When you compare LIFEYO to Tumblr or Blogger, the thing we try to focus on is making the design process of the site very streamlined and giving people a lot of flexibility in making your design your own.

We offer a blogging tool that lets people keep their site fresh and updated, but it also lets you add additional pages, so can have a photo gallery, contact form, you can easily integrate it with Facebook, embed videos from YouTube, have Google Maps, anything you can think of.

What can journalists learn from web developers?

For journalists, especially for journalists just starting off, they want to create a brand, they want to create something people feel has quality content. But sometimes what is overlooked is the experience accessing the content and how it is portrayed visually. If I’m a journalist and want to blog, I could just go to Blogspot and get the same template that everyone else has, but that doesn’t necessarily portray my hard work in the best way. From a web design standpoint, branching away from your basic Facebook or Twitter account is a big step forward in having a web presence you can manage.

How did you come up with the name?

I didn’t want to create something that dictated what people want to produce and the most all-encompassing aspect I could think of to reflect that was “life.” I just added “yo” because it added that fun aspect, it was easy to spell, short and tongue-in-cheek.

A CENTURY ON, RE-ENVISIONING A 21st CENTURY RAFU SHIMPO: Samantha Masunaga (Peter Immamura Memorial Scholarship recipient/ UCLA junior) talks to editors at the largest and oldest Japanese daily newspaper about grappling with a changing newspaper industry.

‘GRADING THE TEACHERS’: 100 interviews later…: Sonali Kohli (AAJA-LA scholarship winnner/ UCLA sophomore) interviews education reporter Jason Song about preparing the 2010 LA Times series on value-added analysis.

PATCHING UP THE JOURNALISM INDUSTRY: Natasha Zouves (Sam Chu Lin scholarship winner/ USC junior) interviews AAJA-LA members Patrick Lee (regional editor, LA) and Hazel Lodevico To’o (glendora.patch.com) about working for AOL-owned Patch.

STEFFI LAU is a senior at USC who is double majoring in East Asian Languages and Cultures & Public Relations with a minor in marketing  “Despite the fact Steffi had not worked in broadcast journalism before, she was able to rapidly transition, producing engaging, concise, well written scripts just as good as those written by our full time reporters,” — Alistair Shewring, supervisor/ Blue Ocean Network ( Beijing) “Steffi will grow to be a stellar journalist in the years ahead” — Lisa Wong Macabasco, managing editor/ Hyphen Magazine Lau carries a 3.7 GPA. She speaks Mandarin. Lau is deputy editor of US-CHINA Today from the US CHINA institute. In 2008, Lau worked for Asian Week in San Francisco where she was an intern who so impressed her bosses that they made her managing editor of a magazine supplement on the Beijing Olympics. Last summer, Lau spent the summer in Beijing—not to write for a newspaper. She was a reporter for the Blue Ocean Network which provides TV content to the west about China.

Like many Filipina aunts and cousins before her, Hazel Lodevico To’o was supposed to be a nurse. So she had to explain exactly what she was doing as she sat at her local coffee shop, quickly typing up an article to post on Patch.com.

“Patch is a lifestyle, it really is,” To’o said. “It pretty much is a 24-7 type job. You’re independent, so your office is everywhere. Your office is your home, your office is at a coffee shop.”

Hazel from Patch.com 60D from natasha zouves on Vimeo.

Since becoming the local editor for Glendora.Patch.com three months ago, one of the hundreds of new AOL journalism hires introduced to a re-cast corporate view of community news, To’o’s life has changed dramatically.  AOL’s Patch initiative has received some critical attention from the media, but it’s one of the few media enterprises with ambitions of growth, allowing veteran media talent like To’o to do what they know best: report the news.

To’o's new lifestyle is definitely not the life her mother saw for her.

“Being Filipina, my mom was disappointed that I didn’t want to be a nurse,” To’o laughed. “At one point I definitely heard encouragement from my relatives saying, ‘You know, nursing school is still accepting applicants.’ But I just knew nursing wasn’t for me and my fulfillment came out of journalism.”

To’o said she has known her calling ever since she was the editor at her high school paper.

“Those were the days of actual cut and paste, with x-acto knives,” To’o said.

Since then, things have gotten considerably higher-tech for To’o. As the local editor of Glendora.Patch.com, she is in charge of covering her community along with a staff of about 11 freelance writers. It’s a job that she took three months ago, and one that she said took a lot of getting used to.

“It started off very, very hectic, very busy,” To’o said. “This is far different from any journalism job that I’ve ever had. You’re definitely more involved in this job. It’s not like you can just leave the office and then go home.”

Patrick from Patch.com 60D from natasha zouves on Vimeo.

To’o, who has a background in community and daily newspapers including the OC Register, is clearly passionate about her new job. She described the first few weeks as filled with high work demands and little sleep.

“People wonder why do you want to do this when the hours are long, when the pay is not what everyone would desire,” To’o said.

But to understand the coffee shops, the hours, the pay and the Patch.com revolution, one first has to understand where the idea of Patch.com and the idea for “hyperlocal” journalism came from.

The Birth of Patch

The birth of Patch.com started with a realization.

Tim Armstrong, the man who would eventually become chief of AOL, realized that he couldn’t find very much information online about the community in which he lived—Riverside, Connecticut. This prompted Armstrong, along with Jon Brod, to found Patch.com in 2007.

The “hyperlocal” model was new, where a paid local editor would cover his or her own community in minute detail—from decisions in local government to restaurants opening and closing—with a staff of freelancers. Within two years, the little website would be acquired by AOL. From there, Patch.com started to grow exponentially.

When AOL bought it in 2009, Patch only had six sites. But by early December 2010, Patch.com had branches in over 500 communities across the country, including To’o’s branch in Glendora, California. This makes AOL one of the largest hirers of journalists in the U.S. And last year, AOL announced that it would be investing $50 million or more in Patch.com, perhaps hoping for a big payoff in untapped local advertising. Specifically, what AOL estimates to be $20 billion in local online advertising.

It’s just the company’s first step in what Forbes Magazine called “AOL’s Plan To Own Your Neighborhood.”

Overworked and Underpaid?

For To’o, the first few weeks of working at Patch were comprised of endless days and sleepless nights.

“I’m not going to lie, it was very difficult,” said To’o, recalling the launch of the Glendora site last December. “It was tough, it was long hours, spending most of my day, trying to figure out how to manage this new thing.”

According to Patch, editors make between $38K-$45K a year and are given a weekly freelance budget of around $500. It’s the paycheck and long hours that prompted one Patch editor to submit a widely-circulated anonymous e-mail to a Northeastern University journalism professor. In it, she described 70-hour work weeks with no vacation time.

To’o said that an 80-hour-week is not uncommon at Patch.

“Yes, it is a demanding job, and, yes, you may find yourself working very, very long hours,” To’o said. “Some journalists at Patch would say that, ‘I don’t get a day off.’ So do I feel like I’m overworked? I mean yeah, it’s very demanding. But I think back to the days when I was a beginning reporter at a small community newspaper where I was spending a lot of hours. And, yes, an 80 hour week wasn’t unusual back then either.”

Patrick Lee, the regional editor for Los Angeles, says that long hours just come with the territory. He is responsible for 11 Patch sites throughout the San Gabriel Valley and northeast Los Angeles.

“I think any journalist will tell you that they’re overworked,” Lee said. “It’s not a nine-to-five job. It’s partly because we love what we do and it’s really hard to walk away from it. And it’s partly the nature of the beast. Things happen all hours of the day and night and you need to be available to cover them and write about them.”

Patch has responded to the allegations of “sweatshop” pay by saying that they’re just plain false. Janine Iamunno, senior communications director for Patch, told Business 2 Community, a business publication, that three out of four Patch employees make more money, or the same amount, that they made in their previous positions.

Regardless of money, both To’o and Lee were quick to describe their jobs with Patch as the most fulfilling jobs they’ve had so far.

“I’ve been able to do more things in this job than I have been able to do in almost any other job,” said Lee. “I’ll just say that it’s a tough job, but it’s a great job, and I think if you ask any of the editors working for [Patch] they’ll tell you that they’ve never had a better journalism experience.”

Competition in the Local Media Market

In many ways, Glendora is a typical Patch community.

In 2006, Glendora’s population was around 51,608, right in Patch’s bracket of serving communities of 15,000 to 70,000 people. It’s also typical in that, now that Patch has come to town, Glendora is finding itself in a struggle between traditional local media and the new online model.

It’s a fight in which some perceive Patch to be the Goliath–LA Weekly called Patch “The WalMart of news.”

“We studied [the business] of daily newspapers of the towns we were going into, and found that if we stripped out costs like paper or broadcast towers, we can operate at 4.1% of cost of a daily newspaper,” said Warren Webster, the president of Patch.com, in an interview with Forbes Magazine last year.

It’s this competitive edge that Patch is banking on, and one that To’o sees as healthy.

“If we continue to let local journalism just be the way it is now, without trying to figure out something new and something to progress the state of local journalism, it would just pretty much cease to exist,” said To’o. “What we’re trying to do is help local journalism. We’re not there to kill what’s out there.”

But it’s not only friendly competition. In some circles Patch has developed a reputation for “stealing” away journalists from local papers, earning it the nickname “Poach.”

Timothy Rutt, the publisher of a Los Angeles neighborhood blog AltadenaBlog.com, wrote about how he was approached by Patch to leave the website and open up a Patch site in the same neighborhood.

Rutt wrote: “What would we be if we shut this down to create a second rate version of ourselves at the behest of a corporation that has no real interest in this community, except to extract dollars from it?…We thank Poach on one hand for basically telling us to step up our game.”

To’o insists that the so-called battle line is not usually this nasty in her town. There are two newspapers, one magazine and one blog that all cover the Glendora area, and she said that if there is any hostility, she’s not aware of it.

“Whenever we see each other at the same events or functions, it’s not like, ‘Oh, there’s that person from that place.’ Sometimes they’ll tip me off on things that they won’t cover as a weekly publication but I might since I’m daily,” said To’o.

What Patch Does (Really) Well

In an industry that many classify as flailing, Patch may be a welcome way out.

The State of the News Media reported that in 2002 there were 1,457 newspapers being published in the U.S., which is a 17% decrease from 22 years prior.

To’o explained that many of her Patch colleagues have long resumes in the journalism industry and came to Patch after being laid off.

“A lot of our colleagues come from the LA Times, from the OC Register, they’ve been journalists for decades,” To’o said.

Patch’s role may be to catch talented journalists who would otherwise fall through the cracks. LA Regional Editor Patrick Lee is one of these people. After years of working at newspapers like the LA Times, he came to Patch in 2009.

“I think we’re offering a new model for journalism that I think is very exciting for people who are mid-career and are looking for a new way to do what they do in a venue that is more creative and more open to what they have to offer,” Lee said.

Patch also allows communities to interact with its news. User-generated content, listings of weekend activities, and contact information for city officials can all be found on the local sites.

The company encourages employees to give back to the communities in which they work. Warren told Forbes Magazine that Patch donates five paid employees per year to a volunteer organization. Patch takes it so seriously that a reported 15% of a journalist’s performance evaluation is based on their volunteer work. And the community sites make it easy to find volunteering opportunities close by.

Filling a void in the journalism industry, promoting community involvement, and helping others, all good things according to To’o and Lee. And just the beginning for Patch.

It seems that before the public’s eyes, what once was a little patch is growing into a great, big, giant, Super-Bowl-sized field. What that exactly means for local journalists, community dwellers, executives, advertisers and indeed for journalism as a whole remains to be seen.

As for To’o, the stability of her Patch job has caused her relatives to finally drop the nursing campaign.

“They’ve eased off now,” said To’o with a smile, “Especially with what they’re seeing I’m doing with Patch. We’re working together as a team to create something that could be the biggest thing to happen to journalism in a long time. So they’re much more supportive now.”

FOR MORE MEMBERSHIP COVERAGE:

A CENTURY ON, RE-ENVISIONING A 21st CENTURY RAFU SHIMPO: Samantha Masunaga (Peter Immamura Memorial Scholarship recipient/ UCLA junior) talks to editors at the largest and oldest Japanese daily newspaper about grappling with a changing newspaper industry.

‘GRADING THE TEACHERS’: 100 interviews later…: Sonali Kohli (AAJA-LA scholarship winnner/ UCLA sophomore) interviews education reporter Jason Song about preparing the 2010 LA Times series on value-added analysis.

LIFEYO: Blogging made Simple(r): Steffi Lau (scholarship recipient/ USC senior) interviews Lifeyo CEO Mike Kai, 28, who founded a website hosting platform that aims to simplify the website-building experience with drag-and-drop features, allowing users to customize content and create a site within minutes.

BY SAMANTHA MASUNAGA/ 2010-2011 Peter Imamura Memorial Scholarship recipient, UCLA junior

Walk into the Little Tokyo office of the Rafu Shimpo and it is clear that this community newspaper is

unlike many other news outlets.

For nearly 110 years, the Rafu has maintained a presence in the Japanese-American community, covering everything from the internment redress movement to honorary college degrees for internees during WWII. But the venerable Rafu is suffering, just like other newspapers, in establishing a news distribution model that will attract young readers outside of its elderly audience, embracing industry trends like multi-media  made difficult on a short-staffed team.

The Rafu staff knows, like other newspaper executives, that establishing a social media account won’t beckon waves of young adults and fix an industry-wide downturn.

Eyes on the Sansei and Yonsei generation

“For any Japanese-American publication, it’s about how we can get beyond the Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans) and get to the Sansei (third-generation) and Yonsei (fourth-generation),” said Gwen Muranaka, English editor.

The Rafu newsroom, Los Angeles’ only daily Japanese-English newspaper, is a collection of small cubicles. Photos of significant cultural events and figures taken by longtime Rafu photo editor Mario Reyes adorn the walls. Talk in the office centers around Asian-American politicians, upcoming pilgrimages to internment camps and young Japanese-American athletes.

“A lot of what goes into the Rafu Shimpo would simply not make it in mainstream media,” said Michael Hirano-Culross, sports editor and arts and entertainment editor at the Rafu.

At the moment, the four-person editorial staff is working to develop an online subscription system where readers can view color PDFs of the daily paper on the Rafu website. The newspaper has also established accounts on Facebook and Twitter to reach a younger audience, not included in the 11,000 subscribers of the print paper.

This age disparity is great, as the average age of a print subscriber is 55, according to preliminary survey results of Rafu readers.

There are communitywide demographic changes underway withering away at the Rafu’s long-time support base. The migration of Japanese-Americans away from Little Tokyo and the high rates of marriage with other ethnicities have diluted the community’s connection to their heritage, leading to decreased support for entities like the Japanese-American National Museum, Muranaka said.

Sports coverage a Rafu ‘hit’

In spite of these changes, the glue that has encouraged ties between Japanese-Americans is sports.

Each year, Japanese-American sports leagues in basketball, volleyball and baseball draw hundreds of Asian athletes and have led to high school and even college careers for some of its younger players.

After the Rafu began posting online scores from these various leagues, the stories got thousands of hits. As a result, the staff is planning to run game results as often as possible and has encouraged league scorekeepers and parents to send score sheets to the newspaper.

“We need to play to our strengths,” said publisher Mickey Komai, whose family has managed the Rafu for three generations

Nevertheless, the idea of increased online content presents both opportunities and challenges.

The Rafu’s online presence has led to greater community feedback through comments on the website and Facebook, said Cari Yasuno, graphic designer who updates the website and social media.

Short on News hands

But while the web allows for more immediate updates, increased space for photos and eliminates the unreliability of the U.S. Postal Service, which delivers the newspaper daily, it is also a source of more work for a small editorial team.

“There’s a lot of things we want to do, but can’t,” Hirano-Culross said. “It’s about manpower.”

He mentioned the videos of community events that he and former sports editor Jordan Ikeda used to shoot and post on the website. While these multimedia components were extremely popular, the editing and uploading process took considerable time to complete.

While stories are regularly uploaded to the website, there are few editors free to focus on more frequent updates.

Muranaka attributed the difficult transition to the largely print mentality of the newspaper staff.

But in spite of the complications of online journalism, the newspaper seems to have a solid base of community support, and boasts a much larger readership than the number of print subscribers, Komai said.

“When I cover events, people always ask, “How are you guys doing?,” Reyes said. “I always tell them, ‘We need your support.’”

Muranaka echoed this statement.

“People really want this newspaper to succeed,” she said. “There’s a loyal, loyal audience.”

FOR MORE MEMBERSHIP COVERAGE:

PATCHING UP THE JOURNALISM INDUSTRY: Natasha Zouves (Sam Chu Lin scholarship winner/ USC junior) interviews AAJA-LA members Patrick Lee (regional editor, LA) and Hazel Lodevico-To’o (glendora.patch.com) about working for AOL-owned Patch.

‘GRADING THE TEACHERS’: 100 interviews later…: Sonali Kohli (AAJA-LA scholarship winnner/ UCLA sophomore) interviews education reporter Jason Song about preparing the 2010 LA Times series on value-added analysis.

LIFEYO: Blogging made Simple(r): Steffi Lau (scholarship recipient/ USC senior) interviews Lifeyo CEO Mike Kai, who founded a website hosting platform that aims to simplify the website-building experience with drag-and-drop features, allowing users to customize content and create a site within minutes.

SAMANTHA MASUNAGA is a junior at UCLA majoring in English.  She is the 2010-2011 Peter Imamura Memorial Scholarship recipient.  “Sam’s performance was truly exceptional, indeed at the very top of the class.” – Jonathan F.S. Post, professor of English, head of UCLA’s Summer Overseas Shakespeare Program. “Tenacious, thorough and a highly skilled writer.” – Gwen Muranaka, English editor in chief/ Rafu Shimpo Masunaga has a GPA of 3.859. She’s the Science and Health Editor at The Daily Bruin. She has interned at The Rafu Shimpo. In Masunaga’s scholarship essay, she talked about the impact of working at the Rafu on her feelings about ethnicity, saying: “I have learned that cultural knowledge is more than just eating traditional foods and writing kanji.”