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  • Writer's pictureMosaic 2018

Day 6: June 16, 2018 - Valerie Wu



Today was our sixth day of Mosaic! We spent breakfast reading obituaries and learning what makes them work. What resonated most about this was that for me, obituaries are a way of conveying empathy and creating awareness. By developing a kind of sensitivity to how others are perceived, we begin to understand their roles in their respective communities and the lives they led.


After breakfast, we spent the morning discussing what makes “good” journalistic writing as opposed to “good” essay writing, which I found especially meaningful. As someone who mainly writes personal essays, I thought it was really enlightening to participate in exercises on how to write concisely rather than beautifully, and really get to the “meat” of the information. I often struggle with finding a balance between brevity and flow, so reconstructing sentences to fit both of these criteria was extremely important, and a significant way to start off a morning of more writing and editing.


After the lecture, I worked on the final revisions on my Japantown article, which has been an immense privilege to write. I was initially very intimidated by the prospect of going out to interview individuals whom I only heard about during taiko practice, but I absolutely loved speaking with all of my interviewees, all of whom had some sort of greater connection to the Japantown community than just the organizations they’re a part of.


One of my previous journalism teachers once told me that it was important to have a personal connection to the story you were writing about, and examining the arts in Japantown really embodied that; I learned not only about gentrification and the housing crisis in Silicon Valley, but also about the people themselves. Through conversations with my interviewees, I learned their backgrounds, their perspectives and their motivations going forward — all of which are incredibly important to not only being a journalist, but to living as a citizen in a global society.


I spent lunch having a full cultural immersion by going out to get nearby Korean food as well as starting my article about the significance of K-Pop in America as a form of representation for Asian Americans. This is a topic I’m really passionate about. During my junior year, I spent several months working on an article about the subject, only to have it shot down by the New York Times. I’m excited to both write it and receive feedback since I often find it difficult to articulate my interests in a way for others to understand. With this article, I really hope I can create meaningful content for not only the Mosaic audience, but for the Asian American community as a whole.


In the afternoon, we listened to a lecture about the different components of journalism, including attribution and sourcing. This really brought us into dialogue with the roles of people in stories; though journalism includes research, it’s much more than research, which is very much independent. Journalism is, at its core, a form of conversation. I feel incredibly appreciative of the fact that I’m able to have a role in that conversation, even if only for a little while.

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