Wall Street Journal Asia Fellowship at NYU

Shefali Anand, the first recipient of the "Wall Street Journal Journalism in Asia Fellowship", has just launched her own column in the Wall Street Journal Online’s Indian subsection. Shefali Anand is a staff reporter with the Wall Street Journal in New Delhi, writing about personal finance for an Indian audience. Prior to that, she was based in the Journal’s New York bureau, where she covered America’s $11 trillion-mutual fund industry and contributed to personal finance and stock market coverage. Previously, she worked with The Indian Express newspaper in Mumbai, as a business reporter and sub-editor.

Here’s a snippet from her column, “Maximum Money”:

Do you hate losing money?

I’m not just talking about a time when you might have lost your wallet. Rather, I’m referring to the times when you overpaid for something, or worse, were forced to buy something that you didn’t need.

Perhaps that doesn’t happen when you’re buying toothpaste or a television because you are careful on how and what you spend. But the fact is, in many simple financial products that we own, such as life insurance or mutual funds or credit cards, we are rarely informed of all the costs involved. Many of these products are not even suited to each one of us. With incomplete information, the result is that we often end up losing money without realizing it.

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 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.

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.