I have done my work attachment at two different work places.
1. Contributor at SBS radio Korean program, which was broadcasted every sunday 3pm-4pm at AM1224.
2. Reporter at Melbourne Journal – (the largest Korean community based weekly magazine)
Both of these were run by Stella Kim whom I got to know through a friend who worked at the Melbourne journal as a designer.
I worked 3~4 hours every Sunday for the radio show and spent equivalent to 10 hours for the magazine each week. Since the attachment I’m still working at both places.
1. SBS Radio
I was already familiar with many of the sound editing programs and since I have voluntarily worked in SYN fm as the presenter/engineer for a year so I had at least basic knowledge about radio stations. Having the experience at two different radio stations taught me many things.
SBS used a program called netia to edit and record the voices to use in the show. It wasn’t hard to learn the program because it was similar to pro-tools, which I have learnt to use in the first year of uni.
SBS Korean program was mostly filled with pre-recorded contents so it minimizes the chance of making mistakes on air. Since there was many more contributors who have just began without any experiences on radio, pre-recorded system have slowly taught everyone how to become professionals of radio presenting.
For the first two weeks I printed out the scripts for the day and watched what everyone was doing and see how the show’s flowing each week. In the third week I have managed to write up a proposal for my own segment for the show, which was called “Guerrilla interview” the plan was to meet people on the street and interview them with the set of questions I had. Stella like the idea and I could be on air from week 3. What I had to do was each week go out to the street interview people and on Sunday come back with the recorded voice and use netia to edit it so it fits into the time frame that’s given to my segment. To fill in 5 minutes segment I had to plan the questions/go out meet people/edit it/prepare intro and ending script. It was a good chance to learn both sound editing program skills and interviewing skills.
The hardest thing was approaching people on the street. Because some people didn’t like to be interviewed and even acted rude.
After about three months of Guerrilla interview segment I felt that it needs some kind of change, because it started follow a similar pattern each week. Because it was also too time consuming for me I thought of changing it.
Then I started a new segment called “Hot music time” which was to introduce Korea’s newest songs including the hidden stories of the artists. It required me to research about the singer and also I had to source all of my friends to get the brand new songs. It was much easier in terms of preparation so I’m quite satisfied.
There are certain rules for SBS Korean program unlike SYN radio where there were only few rules. SBS radio had to start with the recent news and there were things have to be delivered each week. To be honest when I heard this radio show for the first time I thought it was too boring. Obviously because it had to cover all different age groups with various genres in one hour. In fact this is the only nationwide Korean radio program so it must be a pressure for the show to be representing the country Korea. Non-Korean listeners would relate the show with the country so the role of the show doesn’t solely remain to “entertain Korean people”. The show has all different segments including news. Sports news, children’s segment story telling, introducing Melbourne’s culture and events, hot music time with brand new Korean music and so on. It only plays little amount of music but it’s very informative.
2. Melbourne journal.
It’s been about 4 months since I have worked in Melbourne journal.
Each week I had to interview someone or some event to be the cover of the magazine called “Cover story”. The job also involved photo taking, which I enjoyed very much.
Each week I had to look for someone who’s done something significant for the Korean community or for themselves. It was not an easy thing to find someone special every week since the size of the Korean community was very small.
Sources came from the people i knew and mostly from Stella, If there was a special events such as thanks giving day event, Korean soccer league, Korean community parties I went and wrote the event sketch.
I have learnt a lot on interviewing skills and also how to write a magazine article. I have made millions of mistakes when I first wrote the article even though I was aware of some of the taboos or do-nots. The habit of writing took me a long time to change. but Stella as the editor of the magazine she has corrected my article and edited into the form which is publishable level which I think I was lucky to be able to work when the standard of the work was yet met.
People I have met starts from the president of the Korean community to the first Korean woman magician, little boy who went to Eton college from Australia and so on. It was precious moments getting to know people that i wouldn’t have known if I had not been a interviewer. Some has even prepared presents and wanted to keep in touch.
I sometimes disliked the fact that I had to write as “if the interviewee was the most wonderful person in the world”. It wasnot always writing and telling what I saw and what I wanted to write, it was to write what readers would want. I learnt it was importnat to follow the editor’s direction because it’s her publication and I work for her. I guess it always need some kind of compromises from both sides to write for the public.
For each interview i had to write about 4 pages in font 12 which took me many hours. every week the article was due by tuesday midnight. Meeting deadlines each week was a hard one because you never know when your interview is going to be held. straight after one article and interview done I had to find another interviewee and write another article it was obviously very hard but I enjoyed meeting new people and that’s what kept me doing this job.
when I first started I wrote the article by viewing what I heard from the person. but soon after I was asking the questions to fill my article form that I already had in mind. The basic structure of the article came up on my head after knowing about the topic so it took me less and less time to write. it was good practice.
Since I have not had many chances to write things in Korean language, I lacked on expressing differently so I tried to read articles from other people so I could learn how others are using the language to express things.
Through out the time I spent with the SBS radio and Melbourne journal it taught me how my potential work place could be. I learnt more about how to get along with people at the work especially with the boss rather than the skills. The most significant thing that I’ve learnt would be interviewing skills and interpreting that into an article. And It was a good experience because I could learnt to interview, write article, and present it. I’m still working at these two places and I hope it will lead me to the future job opportunity.
