Covering the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul
Earlier this year, I decided to take a hiatus from daily journalism for a while and took a job teaching English language skills in Seoul, South Korea.
But for this week, I’ve found myself right back in the thick of daily news coverage for the 10th anniversary of the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul.
My employer – ChungDahm Learning – has a partnership with Maeil Business News, one of South Korea’s leading financial publications. Two years ago, ChungDahm approached the newspaper to offer help with covering the World Knowledge Forum (WKF) for its English-language web site. This is the third year for the partnership.
A teaching colleague and I both have journalism backgrounds, so we helped train several “temporary” reporters for the week-and-a-half leading up to the WKF. We conducted simulations by covering speeches on YouTube and then writing reports on a 40 minute deadline. We then provided feedback on the writing and got them up to speed on some of journalism’s professional expectations and practices.
There are 16 of us serving as reporters and editors this week, and I’m one of the editors. We’re covering more than 50 speeches and roundtable discussions for Maeil Business News (which organizes the WKF). Our reports will be featured on the newspaper’s web site as supplements to its primary coverage.
I plan to submit a few posts about our experiences covering the World Knowledge Forum. I’m sitting in the press room as I write this, awaiting my first editing session (it’s Tuesday morning here in Seoul). I’m especially interested to hear from my colleagues as they start to feel some real deadline pressure.
Butler Cain