Xiiao Mii's

People change, come and go, cross path with each other's life. Countless sad and happy things  from breaking up with my long-term 'almost-perfect' boyfriend to living my life like a spoiled-brat at the age of 24 all happened through these few fast-paced months. My thoughts have grown from being a college student with a resting bitch face to working like a 'dead dog' sales associate for the world-famous luxury brand to taking baby-steps working while learning in a logistics company. The world is weird/funny (or EVIL, depends on how you think about it) that things don't usually turn out as how we expected it to be. I never thought that one day I would work in a logistic company when what I have studied was mass communication. What is the one thing that had happened to you that you never ever thought of before? Fascinating isn't it. So since we know that we have walked a different path than what we have planned, should we turn back into what we wanted in th...

Investigative journalism is when a reporter investigates and focuses on a single topic of interest such as crimes, scandals, political corruptions and corporate wrongdoinggs. Investigative journalism make worth-while contribution to society by drawing attention to failures within society's systems of regulation and to the ways in which those systems can be circumvented by the rich, the powerful and the corrupt (Burgh, 2008). But in Malaysia, the freedom of press or 'the fourth estate' merely existed as most of the media outlets are under strict control of the ruling party. However, some dare-devils braved themselves to expose some sizzling stories. The second challenge in being a watchdog in Malaysia is the difficulty in getting detailed information to support your points as officials here are so afraid in exposing information to the media outlets be it positive or negative data and when nothing much can be retrived from the officials, journalists tend to dig inform...

When reporting for a global audience, the biggest challenge is to report what interest your audience. The largest challenge here is that global audience means the people who read your news could be from anywhere of the globe and here is where proximity matters. When the scope of audience is so broad, it is very difficult to produce a news that fits everyone as one men's meat is another men's poison. Lets take the former Hurricane-turned-Tropical storm Harvey that was catastrophic and has caused damage to tens of thousands of people in Texas. It was a havoc for people who is affected especially for Americans but it has nothing directly to do with Malaysians other than being symphathy. The nearer the audience to the incident place, the more impact it has towards them. Another challenge when reporting for global audience is the issue of currency. A particular topic might be in trend for this country but it might not be the same in another country at the same time. For instance, ...

Connecting news stories to an online audience during this digital era is exasperating but not impossible. This is especially when the internet holds an increasingly wide range of fussy and time poor audience. However,  writing news that contains the who, what, when, where, why, how and 'what's in it for me' is the crucial step to drawing the line to the audience. Having time-poor audience means the journalist have to draw the facts fast and accurate. This having said, adding pictures and videos with shorter body text will enable audience to get to the point faster. Another way is to direct the newstories to social media platforms so that the online audience have access to news even when they are scrolling Facebook as with roughly 500 million users worldwide, Facebook's audience is vastly larger than any single news organisation . Putting news on social media also make news more interactive with audience as they can 'like' and share the news piece. Lastly, kn...

A source without credibility is like a gun without bullets. An unloaded gun is enough to petrify people but it doesn't have the ability to kill; A source without credibility are able to distribute information but it will not be reliable and trusted by active audiences. Credibility of a source is made up of verification and independence of the author, currency and relevancy, and the aim of the author for producing the piece of information.  Verification is a process of collecting evidence that confirms the accuracy of something. In this process, the author should be identified in order to be held accountable of its product. If the product is of scholarly information, it shall then has evidence to what it says, peer-reviewed, contains bibliography and published by an established publisher. Transparency is also important to show that the author is unbiased and fair while producing the information. Currency relates to the date of information being published. When was the i...

Whilst journalism or better known as news writing is not an easy process, the presence of internet which enables news to be available online exacerbated everything. With the availability of multimedia (such as video clips, audio recordings and footage), news writers tend to be distracted into getting something extra to compliment the news story, losing focus in writing news story the best possible way. Technology shall not get in the way of producing the best journalistic piece. Furthermore, the news story do not need to be all things to all people even though people from Alaska are able to find and read the story online. What would it be of interest to them if Kuala Lumpur has a new MRT line which connects Kajang to Cheras? Focus on one's region (the importance of proximity) is what best one journalist can do.  Time is the biggest enemy of all. It has been hectic enough for journalists to catch, attend and produce a write-up for tomorrow's edition, and now, news ar...