Jero's Rise to Fame in Japan

Soooo, my friend, Jerome White, was featured in the Style section of the Washington Post as a new up and coming singer in Japan! He is African-American with a Japanese grandmother and sings "enka" music, a traditional style of Japanese music. Read the article for more on "Jero" (his Japanese stage name).

Communications and Journalism Delegation to Australia

(Photo: Sydney Opera House)

From May 18 - 26, 2008 (minus a day in transit crossing the international date line), I went to Australia as a faculty advisor for the International Scholar Laureate Program's Delegation on Communications and Journalism with my co-FA, Vesna Jaksic. Vesna and I accompanied 72 college students majoring in the aforementioned fields to appointments to meet representatives of major media organizations in Melbourne and Sydney. We were responsible for creating lesson plans relating to journalism and/or communications.

First, we arrived in Melbourne and went to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) to listen to academics talk about media in Australia. Some differences to note between Australia and the U.S.: Australia has "cross media laws," which prohibits people like Rupert Murdoch (an Australian that owns a large percentage of the media in the U.S. and Australia) from owning more than two types of media (i.e. TV and Radio and no print) at any given time. I also learned that the Australian government completely funds its public broadcasting outlet, ABC (ABC = Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Some of the highlights of the trip was going to advertising agency, J Walter Thomas, where the students competed to create ads for something called the "buzz box." Also, while in Melbourne, Vesna and I staged a press conference where all of the communications and journalism students stepped into their respective roles as ad agency creative talent (graphic designers, etc.), PR specialists (spin doctors and PR students) and print and television/radio journalists. It was so amazing to see them do their thing. The scenario was that a famous Kangaroo soccer player died from an energy drink that the ad agency folks were advertising for (they didn't know this when they created it), so the PR people had to call a press conference to address the situation. The journalists showed up with their cameras and questions to drill the PR folks. It was so amazing to see how great the students performed under pressure (we only gave them 10 minutes to work).

On a side note, I went to a session on Political Spin where we met with one of the media advisors for a Labor Party politician. It was interesting to hear the same information that I learned from my former boss, who was a former Information Officer for the State Department at various embassies around the world, about managing the media.

In Sydney, we visited the ABC studios. We met with an environmental science reporter, a radio journalist and took a tour of the various areas of the studio. Here, I learned that they have a variety of news outlets similar to our PBS and NPR, but again, it was totally funded by their
government. The guy in this photo was telling us that when Bush came to visit Australia, one of their comedy show performers dressed up in an Osama bin Laden outfit and heckled him. I thought that that was sort of funny.

At the end of that day, we all went to the famous Bondi Beach for a great lunch near the water. It was pretty cold, because it's Fall right now, but we took a few photos. You can find more photos on my Facebook page.

The next day, we had a panel of DJs from various youth-oriented radio stations (Triple J, just to name one) representing Aboriginal, female and ethnic radio stations. Perhaps the most interesting speaker was, Grant Leigh Saunders, who was half Aboriginal and half white. He identified himself as black, but he looked "white." Anyways, he created a short film called, "B.L.A.C.K" which talked about Aboriginal youth and the influence of hip-hop. The students were SO interested in what he had to say. After the panel, he was bombarded with requests to have pictures taken with him. I suspect that it was because our schedule lacked any scheduled visits to learn about Aboriginals and their culture and because these were journalism students, curious by nature. I found out on my own (too late) that we were in Sydney during "Reconciliation Week." Which brings me to my next topic, Sorry Day.

Sorry Day was in February 2008 and it was the day that the new Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, publicly apologized for "The Stolen Generation," when Aboriginal children were taken from their parents and stripped of their culture (watch "Rabbit-Proof Fence"). I watched a documentary about the Stolen Generation and then watched the images of PM Rudd apologizing. He was surrounded by Parliament members in the background. There were also images of Aboriginals and Australians holding hands, hugging and apologizing for the horrors of something that happened only a few decades ago. I think that this would be an amazing thing to happen in the U.S. in order to begin reconcilation on slavery. I think that a simple apology would heal so many wounds. I hope that it happens in my lifetime, but most importantly before those that lived for The Cause die off.

I can write so much more about this amazing trip, but it would take up pages and pages on this blog. For more information, please contact me directly or click on the links above. I highly recommend Australia and I hope to go back and see more of the "Bush" sometime soon.

(Photo: Me on the steps of the Sydney Opera House)