| WORK IN JAPAN Breaking into
radio
Jocelyn Ford' daily news
reports and features on Japan can be heard on public radio stations in the US. The Tokyo
Bureau Chief for Marketplace Radio told Hilary Hinds Kitasei what it
takes to get on the air.
 |
Jocelyn Ford,
jmarketplace Radio's Tokyo Bureau Chief
Photo by Mitchell Coster |
Where are the
opportunities in English language radio here?
There are news jobs, and then there are DJ jobs. On the news side, there are only a few
full-time foreign correspondent positions offered by the usual suspects: the BBC,
Australian broadcasting, US public radio and Voice of America. NHK's international
services hire native speakers, and there are other opportunities for stringers, people who
can file the occasional story. On the domestic side, InterFM hires DJs and hosts, and
there are jobs for bilingual broadcasters on other stations.
If you are just starting out, it's probably easiest to break in by getting a job at a
college or community radio station or an internship. If you discover you have the right
stuff, it's pretty easy to contact stations around the world and offer them news stories.
I, for one, am always looking for people who can substitute when I'm out of town, or even
do feature stories. (We pay JY10,800 for a news story, which may be anywhere between 45
seconds and 1 1/2 minutes. We pay JY40,000 for a 4 1/2 feature. I know of other places
that pay stringers as little as US$35 and as much as US$75.)
Naturally, I'm delighted when someone contacts me who has experience, and is able to grasp
Marketplace's approach to news, writing style, and voicing.
What is the Marketplace approach to news?
Unlike business programs on CNN or CNBC, our target audience is people who would not
normally tune in to business shows. We try to put a human face on business stories. We
make the extra effort to put the world of economics into perspective for "ordinary
people." For example, one of my best received contributions this year is a series I'm
doing, "Tokyo from a Ginza Barstool." To capture the pulse of economic change, I
hang out at a swanky Ginza club and collect stories of the lives of Japan's business
elite. Those real-life stories tell Americans a lot more about where Japan is coming from
and going to than, say, yet another story on the GDP.
Is there such a thing as a radio voice and can it be acquired?
Unless your friends tell you "you oughta be on the radio!" you probably won't
know whether you have a radio voice. If you were good at delivering lines in school plays,
and have an ear for rhythm, you may be able to develop a radio voice. Just as newspapers
have different writing styles, radio programs seek different types of voices and delivery.
A first step is being able to detect which voices are successful on the radio, and to
understand why they sound good. Then go into a closet and start reading radio copy aloud
to practice. Of course, if you want to do news, you also have to know journalism. Writing
for broadcast is different, however, from writing for publication.
To learn more, check out www.marketplace.org and tune in to Usen Radio. Think you have it?
Then email Jocelyn Ford at jocelynford@bigfoot.com
|
