Wall Street Journal Asia Fellowship at NYU

Here’s a testimonial from Eva Woo, the first recipient of the award and the first from mainland China.

For the last ten months I have been following (literally) the financial crisis as it spread from West to East; from New York to Beijing—after spending two years in New York, I moved back to Beijing a week before the Olympics.

On top of that, I’ve been lucky enough to see another equally important story of our time unfolding: the changing dynamics of capital flow, political power and communication around this world.

I say that because at Caijing magazine, a leading economic and financial publication in China where I work, we cover that story every single day. More interestingly, we are a part of the story ourselves–simpl by providing a platform for communication and understanding between the two worlds.

Luckily I am equipped to tell that story and be a part of that story with what was taught at the BER program: The inverted yield curve I first learned at the macro class two years ago predicted the recession long before anyone had a sense of it. The Foundation of Finance class taught me some of the perfect models behind the current bubble, one of the biggest in financial history.

The tricks to dig out financial details of companies and the techniques to tell a compelling story on a relatively "boring" subject taught at the journalism classes all came in handy…

Some of you have asked whether your applications will be rejected if you work for a rival to Dow Jones. The answer: definitely not.

Shefali Anand tells of her experiences since applying for the WSJ Fellowship:

It seemed like a long shot to apply for the WSJ Asia fellowship back in 2003.

After all, editors at the most important business publication in the world were going to select only one journalist from Asia for this fellowship; what was the chance it would be me? I had only three years of experience working as a reporter/ copy editor at a newspaper which is well-regarded in India but hardly known globally. But I’m glad that I didn’t let my hesitation keep me from applying, because that turned out to be one of my best moves, not only career-wise, but also for my growth as a person.

I joined the NYU program in September 2004, and for the next year-and-a-half, I learned about everything from digging through court documents, to journalism ethics, to economics and investment banking. Equally important were the friendships and network of journalists I developed while studying at NYU. My class of nine students included one from Singapore, one from China, one from Italy and the rest from the U.S. Talk about a meeting of minds from around the globe!

In 2006, I was hired by the Journal in New York to write about mutual funds, and later, my beat expanded to personal finance. In my mind, my job is broadly to write about how Wall Street impacts individuals like you and me. This has been a particularly exciting year to write about that, because the recent market turbulence has unearthed many hidden problems. For instance, I wrote stories about individuals who had put their money in securities which they were told were safe, just like cash, but this year they couldn’t get their money out.

As a journalist, I’m driven to write more such stories where individuals are not being told the entire truth, and there’s no better place to do that than the Journal. I should note that winning the WSJ fellowship doesn’t automatically result in a job at the Journal. But the exposure and knowledge that I got while at NYU would have propelled my career no matter where I ended up working. That long shot for applying to the WSJ Asia fellowship was well worth taking.

More testimonials can be found here.

Some of you have asked whether you need a GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) before applying for the fellowship. While we’re looking for candidates with good English, it’s not necessary to have a GRE before applying. But you will need one to apply for NYU if you win a fellowship. There’s usually time to do that.

Details of test centers can be found here.

Here’s a testimonial from Jason Leow, another alumni:

I have been reporting from China for nearly six years now. Before I joined the Wall Street Journal, in March 2007, I was a China correspondent for a regional English-language paper, The Straits Times, where I covered social and political issues from Beijing and Shanghai. The highlight of my time at the Straits Times came in 2003, when I had a chance to lead coverage on the Sars health pandemic, a disease that originated in southern China and that eventually killed nearly 800 people worldwide.

I came on board the Journal later, after completing the fellowship-funded graduate program at New York University and a summer internship in the Journal’s New York bureau. As I write this, at the tail-end of a very eventful 2008 (it’s November), I am again in China, working at the Beijing bureau. My job scope now includes banking and finance, a beat I’m able to handle because I had business journalism training at NYU.    But my work has involved more than that. This year, I plunged into two big disaster stories: the mega-earthquake in Sichuan province and the melamine milk scandal. There was also the Beijing Olympic Games in August, a defining moment for China and the climax of a very busy year for me.

Here’s a testimonial from another alumni, Serena Ng. You can catch a video of her here.

Before moving to New York in the fall of 2004, I was a reporter for a business newspaper in Singapore, writing two or three news stories a day about local companies plus the occasional feature or commentary. I enjoyed the work, but felt I lacked the knowledge to dig deeper into many subjects, to analyze financial transactions, and to write about complex topics in a clear and engaging way. The BER program equipped me with the skills I needed and taught me the fundamentals of corporate finance, accounting and economics. I also picked up some valuable investigative-reporting techniques.

During a 10-week summer internship at the WSJ in 2005, I learned how to develop unique story ideas and wrote features about Wall Street stock research, mergers and insider trading. I was hired by the Journal in January 2006 to cover the U.S. credit markets. It was an area I knew very little about at the time, and I spent months learning about it by meeting with dozens of money managers, bankers and other professionals and asking them to describe what they did for a living and what they thought were important issues in their space. Back then, companies and individuals were in a borrowing binge and Wall Street banks were churning out a myriad of complex financial instruments and selling them to global investors, who had a seemingly endless amount of money to invest.

That all came to a head when the subprime mortgage market turned south in 2007 and subsequently dragged the rest of the markets down with it. The credit crisis gave me the opportunity to write many stories that analyzed the causes and effects of the downturn, and to investigate what led to the excesses at some of the world’s best- known financial institutions.

If not for the fellowship, I wouldn’t have been able to help chronicle an important part of the world’s financial history. In my opinion, the WSJ fellowship isn’t a free ticket to a plum reporting job; rather, it gives reporters an opportunity to learn more about covering business, to pursue more in-depth reporting, and to work with many top-notch editors and reporters, whether they are professors in the BER program or colleagues at an internship or job. It can also open doors to new possibilities.

Here’s an example of some of the writing from Eva Woo, another WSJ NYU fellow, when she worked at The Wall Street Journal:

• “Giving Lamp a “Green” Light” June 23, 2007
• “Top podcasters: Poe, Austen and Hardy” June 30, 2007
• “That’s Quite a Rock: ‘Rough’ diamonds — some looking more like gravel than gems — edge into the jewelry market” July 28, 2007
• “$500 Phone, $1,100 Case” August 4, 2007

Eva Woo was the first mainland Chinese fellow, and is now working for Caijing magazine in Beijing.  She had been a special correspondent for the Washington Post in Shanghai.

(for more writing of BER alumni, check out this page on the course website.)

If you’re looking for an idea of what successful applicants might be in for, check out some great videos of previous alumni of the Business and Economic Reporting course. In particular watch the video of Singaporean Serena Ng (above), who was one of two winners of the first fellowship. She now works on the WSJ’s Money and Investing team.

Apologies, all: The website was down for a few hours while we tweaked the server. Everything should be working again now, but sorry to those of you trying to reach us in the meantime.

Here’s a testimonial from Sui-Lee Wee about her experience on the course. More testimonials to come:

Despite having one and a half years of experience reporting for the Associated Press and Reuters in Singapore, I still felt that I had so much more to learn, if I wanted to be among the best in business journalism. I knew I wanted to be an educated journalist — be a specialist in a particular subject and report authoritatively on most topics related to business. I wanted to be in New York City – the world’s financial capital — covering Wall Street. I wanted to be able to understand the inner workings of the financial world – how monetary and fiscal policies affect the world of equities and bonds, for example.

The Wall Street Journal fellowship gave me the opportunity to learn all that, through the Master’s in Business and Economic Reporting at NYU. Now, I know how to scour through a financial statement, I understand the major economic forces that shape this country and the world and I can write big-picture pieces about the current financial crisis.

In less than two months, I’ll be leaving NYU with more than a Masters in Business and Economic Reporting. I’ll be leaving with many great friendships, a renewed passion for business journalism and the confidence to produce good stories. For these, I am eternally grateful to both the Wall Street Journal and NYU. At a time when the global financial world is straining under rapid change, it is even more important that business journalists are equipped with the skills to understand how markets work and how the different asset classes interact with one another in the larger economy. I would encourage anyone who is eligible to apply for the Wall Street Journal fellowship to do so.

Anyone interested in applying for the fellowship should read the pages listed on the left. If you have any more questions, please contact us through the form.