Wall Street Journal Asia Fellowship at NYU

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 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.