STORIES THAT MATTER

celebrating 20 years of Roxe Media Fellows and telling the stories that matter

In 1997, inaugural PiA Media Fellow Hilary Roxe (Hong Kong ‘97) embarked on a twoyear fellowship with Time Magazine in Hong Kong. Hilary’s fellowship marked the start of her successful career in journalism, international development and education, and planted the seed for what would become one of PiA’s most distinctive and impactful programs: the Roxe Media Fellowships, made possible through the tremendously generous support of The Roxe Foundation.

Over the past 20 years, 84 Fellows have cut their journalistic teeth in 10 countries, at 15 media outlets. We are immensely grateful to the Roxe Family – Mr. and Mrs. Joseph and Maureen Roxe, Ms. Hilary Roxe (Hong Kong ’97 and PiA Trustee), Mr. Jay Roxe (Singapore ’95) – for making this possible through the support of The Roxe Foundation. Please read on for reflections from our Roxe alumni and join us in toasting this incredible program. (above photo: Lydia Tomkiw (Indonesia ‘11) celebrating Chinese New Year with her friend/Indonesian tutor, Niar).

‘Wartawan,’ I responded to the man who had just asked my profession. It’s the Indonesian word for reporter. I was traveling in rural Lombok on my own and was surprised to see a smile spread across the man’s face. He told me it was good I was a journalist because Indonesia needs more of them to cover problems, especially corruption. I knew very little about Indonesia when I landed there. My year at the Jakarta Globe - from writing about the growth in female cab drivers in the traffic-choked megacity to editing numerous business and corruption-focused pieces - taught me how to adapt quickly, immerse myself in places and unfamiliar topics (some thing I’m currently doing as a financial journalist in New York covering the secretive hedge fund world), and work with and appreciate the hard work local journalists around the globe are doing every day. Since that day nearly five years ago I’ve gotten thanks, smiles, and even flowers from a displaced woman forced to flee her home due to the war in Eastern Ukraine who was grateful someone wanted to hear and record her story. But that first smile and thanks, a rarity in the US these days, will always have been in Indonesia. Lydia Tomkiw (pictured above), Jakarta Globe (Indonesia ‘11)

This post has transformed the way I think about and do writing, the manner with which I approach reading and investigative research, and has sharpened my senses of the questions that produce stories. It has blown apart my understanding of this region. It has emboldened me to think critically past the presented facts to arrive at their underlying implications. I have learned how to assess some of the consequences of grand government policies on regular people, and many of my mistaken assumptions have been corrected... For me, the Roxe family and PiA’s generosity has not simply provided an awesome professional opportunity in an up-and-coming part of the world. You have, quite literally, made the impossible happen. To say that my life is changed as a result would not be an overstatement, and I am infinitely grateful to you for the position that I am in, living dreams I wasn’t even bold enough to dream.

Emmanuella Bonga Bikele, The Wall Street Journal - Asia (Hong Kong ‘16)

My fellowship was life-changing. I wrote editorials about more than 12 Asian countries, covered the election of the first female president of Taiwan, and peeked into all strata of Hong Kong society through features on local politics and economy. I returned to the States to attend law school equipped with a more nuanced view of Asia and better writing and critical thinking skills. Now I am engaging in journalism from the legal angle. I’m writing a research paper on Chinese journalists, and last summer I interned at a legal clinic that advocates for media freedom and information access. Ellis Liang, The Wall Street Journal - Asia (Hong Kong ‘15)

I can still remember my phone interview with the JoongAng Daily’s editor-in-chief back in 2007. ‘I have the most to give to this fellowship, and the most to gain,’ I said, referring to my reporting experience in Miami and my desire to connect to my family’s culture. I may have been born Korean-American, but before my PiA fellowship, I didn’t feel Korean, couldn’t speak the language, and knew almost nothing about the country my parents left in the late 1970s.

Who knew then that I would love Seoul so intensely that my oneyear stint would become two, then six-and-a-half as I welcomed a string of PiA successors reported on an overnight stay in the DMZ and interviewed the future U.S. poet laureate. All I knew by that point, at age 21, was that PiA offered an entry-level journalist a spot at a Korean newspaper, and that spot was mine to claim. Simply put, my PiA fellowship in Korea made me who I am today: a leader in promoting newsroom diversity with Asian American Journalists Association, an alum of CNN, Newsday and the U.S. State Department, and someone crazy enough to quit my cushy, NYC newsroom job to obsess over Korean food through my writing and illustrations. Thank you, PiA, for changing my life.

Hannah Bae, The JoongAng Daily (South Korea ‘07)

Applying to PiA continues to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. With their support I was able to be on the ground reporting in Myanmar during a time of historic change and political upheaval. But the adventure didn’t stop there. In 2015 I was honored to be selected for the Carriebright award. Myself and a team of local journalism students traveled to remote villages with no written language to capture oral histories and local traditions, with the goal of preserving that knowledge for the generations to come. My students have since built on the work we did in class to establish The Chinland Herald, a local newspaper for their community. Since returning to the States, I’ve been able to parlay these amazing experiences into work with Myanmar community organizations in both Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Bill O’Toole, The Myanmar Times (Myanmar ‘12-’13), Carriebright recipient, “Save Our Stories” (Myanmar ‘15)

Perhaps the most valuable aspect of working at a local media outlet in another country is the ability to look at staid stories with a fresh perspective. My time in South Korea coincided with the ouster of the country’s first democratically elected president, and the experience of working at a local paper and being exposed to the news every day led me to a story that wasn’t as heavily covered in foreign outlets: that the events which led to the president’s impeachment began with a protest against corruption at a local women’s university. A colleague and I produced a podcast episode on this small yet crucial part of the big story surrounding President Park Geun-hye, and I credit the idea to time spent working in a newsroom that is covering Korea from a Korean perspective. The experience has helped me understand what issues matter to contemporary Koreans and broken my Western-centric view of a country I knew little about before coming here, and for that, I am grateful to Princeton in Asia. Gavin Huang, The JoongAng Daily (South Korea ‘15)

After spending two summers on Princeton in Asia’s Summer of Service program in Jishou, China, I was eager for something a little less rustic. Hong Kong seemed to fit the bill. However, despite hanging around the PiA office quite a bit during college, The Wall Street Journal post didn’t come onto my radar until it was time for the alumni interview. I talked about my love of writing, my anthropological research in China, and my desire to wade into a more corporate environment—all things that seemed a good fit for a journalism stint at Dow Jones.

What I did not expect was that a month after I arrived in Hong Kong, the Umbrella Movement would break out, bringing Asia’s World City to a standstill. The other members of the editorial page were out of town when the initial protests occurred, meaning I was the only one available to go out and interview people on the streets. A week later I had my first byline. By the end of my time at WSJ, I got to report from Jakarta, debate capital punishment with a Pulitzer Prize winner, and review China’s premier auto museum. Even now, it seems surreal that it all happened during my first year out of college. Cameron White, The Wall Street Journal - Asia (Hong Kong ‘14)