Korea JoongAng Daily, South Korea
This summer I had the privilege of interning at the Korea JoongAng Daily, an English language newspaper in South Korea that is affiliated with the New York Times. The Korean version of the newspaper, the JoongAng Ilbo, is one of the oldest and most read newspapers in South Korea. Over the course of nine weeks, I took on various roles including copy editing articles, translating Korean stories, writing my own sports articles, and posting daily updates on the Twitter account.
My main job at the JoongAng Daily was copy-editing, and that is all I did for the first few weeks. I mainly editing articles in the culture, sports, and art sections. The newsroom followed a systematic approach to creating and editing articles. Reporters would either translate articles that were originally published in Korean in the JoongAng Ilbo or Yonhap News (Korea’s equivalent to the Associated Press) or write their own articles in English. Then, the reporters would send the articles to the editors. There were five editors in total, and each editor would look over a specific section—national, business, culture, and sports. The editors would review the articles and write the headlines and then they would send them to the copy editors.
Traditionally, the copy editor’s job is to fact-check, check spelling, and edit style, but with many of the reporters being native Korean speakers, there are lot of awkward phrases that have to be edited. And with only five editors, mistakes easily make their way through to the copy editors. So, copy editing at the JoongAng Daily was a bit more hands on than most other newspaper. Because the JoongAng Daily is an affiliate of the New York Times, we followed the NYT style. On the first day, I was given the New York Times style guide for reference. To be honest, editing for style is incredibly tedious and the rules for the NYT style are incredibly specific. For example, the first paragraph of a story would never be indented, acronyms that have five letters or more must have the first letter in uppercase and the rest in lowercase, numbers below ten had to be spelled out and those above ten were written numerically, and so on. But even though editing for style was quite boring, over time I learned through that a level of consistency is an essential part of a newspaper’s quality, and I began to appreciate the attention to detail that copy-editing required.
So, after the copy editing process, I would send the articles to the designers who would create the layout of the newspaper. The designers would print out each page of the newspaper on A3 paper and give them to the editors and copy editors, who would look over this rough draft and make any additional changes. Once this final editing process was completed, the respective editor of each section would sign off on the page and stick it up on the wall where all the pages would be lined up numerically. Once all eleven pages were signed off, the paper was complete. By 8:15 p.m. the pages had to be finalized. Once the pages were complete, they would be uploaded onto the website, and by 5 a.m. the next morning, the physical copies of the JoongAng Daily would be delivered across the entire country.
I was in charge of posting ten of the final articles onto the newspaper’s Twitter account, which has around 11,000 followers. I used a software called Buffer which allowed me to schedule when the posts were uploaded. The general rule of thumb was that the first two posts were intended for an American audience because they were posted at around two to three in the morning, which is in the afternoon in America. Then the rest of the seven were more Korea-specific, with the last few being more culture/sports oriented.
Later on I was assigned a writing project on Korean noodles, on top of my copy-editing job. Currently, the newspaper is planning on releasing a weekly review of a Korean noodle restaurant for a year, and I was lucky enough to be able to partake in the project. I wrote an article about the history of Korean noodles, and went to three restaurants myself and reviewed their dishes. All three of the restaurants were in the Michelin guide to Seoul, so this project was one of the highlights of my internship. These articles will be published later this year.
By the end of the internship, in addition to copy-editing, I was given the opportunity to write three sports stories. One was about an American basketball player from Missouri who got a Korean passport and joined the Korean national team. Another was about an American pitcher playing in Korea, and the final article was about a young Korean soccer player playing in Valencia, Spain. The morning after my first article was published, I went down to my local convenience store and picked up a copy of the newspaper. I will never forget the feeling of seeing my name in the byline of an article for the first time.
Each role that I took on at the JoongAng Daily taught me different lessons. Copy-editing was by far the most informative task I took on during my internship. It required me to read many articles about a huge range of topics, so I was able to soak up a lot of information about Korea and current events around the world. In addition, this summer was probably one of the most eventful periods in recent history for Korea. The U.S. and North Korea summit took place in June so obviously there were many articles about that topic. I was able to witness this significant diplomatic event in the newsroom of a prominent publication and in turn stay updated on the various outcomes of the summit. Then, there was the World Cup in July, with South Korea beating Germany in the final game of the group stage. That was a great day. And besides these big news events, there was also a lot of other domestic issues like South Korea raising its minimum wage, Korean BMWs catching on fire regularly, the unusually hot summer weather, and so on. The list is endless. Reading dozens of articles everyday about various topics expanded my knowledge about Korea.
Copy-editing also seemed to have a lot of relevance to America’s current political climate. Fake news is a hot button topic nowadays, and the importance of fact-checking in copy-editing showed me how easy it can be to publish false information if journalists do not do their due diligence. This daily ritual of checking facts as a copy editor showed me how impersonal and objective reporting is crucial in a reliable newspaper. And in addition, through writing my own articles for the JoongAng Daily, I realized how hard this impartial reporting can be. For example, specific words can have connotations and nuances that the writer did not intend. If editors and reporters are not experienced and informed these mistakes can have unintended consequences. Seeing first-hand how “fake news” can be such an easy mistake was an eye opening experience.
Perhaps, this lesson about objective reporting was the biggest lesson I learned this summer. Investigative journalism uncovered the political scandal of 2016 that lead to the impeachment and imprisonment of then-president Park Geun-hye. I heard from my colleagues about the role of reporters and editors in uncovering the details of that scandal, and through hearing these stories I began to gain a lot of respect for journalists. But had these reporters been limited by the government, the President would have been able to continue her abuse of power. Through this internship, I learned that free press is, in a way, a fourth branch of government; it keeps politicians in check and allows for an informed public to vote and steer the nation properly. A characteristic of most countries without substantial political freedom is a government that controls the press and pressures journalists.
I want to express my gratitude to the ’68 Center for Career Exploration, the Class of 1972, and Mr. Anthony Spaeth ’77 for allowing me the opportunity to complete an internship in a career field that I am interested in and have the utmost respect for. This opportunity was truly a life-changing experience that taught me about the importance of proper journalism in today’s uncertain political climate.
Megamenu Social