BYE BYE COLUMBIA!

Kansas City:

It's another rainy day here. Hey! We're back in Kansas City just a while ago.

There's a lot that I take home from my stay in Columbia, the education hub of Missouri. One, a quick crash course in journalism. Two, new friends. Three, fond memories of spending a great time in this small buy lovely town that has some of the most fabulous food joints. Four, I could catch some sleep, with no ringing mobile, though new food did in my tummy. Thank God! I'm carrying lots of Pudin Hara tablets!

But what's more important is that I could overcome the initial nervousness that had taken over me as a journalist. Confidence, that's what I gained in two weeks. That I'm better prepared for my five-month assignment ahead at Sen Sentinel, Florida.

Just to recapitulate on what we did at Columbia, and why, I feel, the two weeks of orientation seminar is an important new feature to Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship program.

We spent much of the first week in the class going back to basics: The why, where, how, when and what next of journalism, basically reporting. We got an opportunity of interacting with faculty members and former journalists at MU School of Journalism, though I must confess, not all of that is of use back home. Some of it is.

We had our evening readings, which I, frankly, could never complete since I was still to overcome my jet-lag. And no one really objective to that.

The second week focused on some practical aspects. We spent time in the newsroom of Missourian, the newspaper that caters to Columbia community but is brought out by the student reporters and faculty editors.

The Missourian, we learnt through the last ten days, is one of the most interesting places of media experimentation. It's a laboratory, you may say.

It has a print edition, five days a week, a good web-edition that is updated almost every hour, a convergence website and so many other features, bringing together the audio-visual forms of news on the web. We could participate in the business meetings at the newsroom: scheduled at 11 am every day.

Students come and go through the semesters; work their stories the way they want, but in a conversational tone and enjoy their stuff. Evenings, they cross the road, go to a joint called Tin Can and enjoy beer with their friends and editors.

By the way we did get to enjoy our evenings with the guys out there, which convinced me that journalists are the same everywhere. Here though, the topic that remains the pulse of the moment is job market. "What happens when we graduate out of the school; who takes us in? What happens? Who's hiring? Who's firing?" Students are shit scared but hopefully be in the game within a year's time. I pray, they land the jobs.

Some of us got an opportunity to do stories and get published. As I wrote in my previous post, I got a byline this past Sunday. So much relief! For almost three weeks now, I missed getting my name in black and white from the day I left India. Back in India, the action continues as political parties struggle it out in the soaring Sun. Honestly, it's an event that is a training in itself for journalists. And I sorely miss that to a large extent, though the training here would make me a better and more thorough journalist, hopefully, when I get back to my home paper.

Anyways, we spent the last two days wrapping up our sessions and meeting people we worked with for past three weeks.

As we bade good-bye to the school staff this afternoon, it was an emotional moment.

We had nice lunch, distribution of certificates and souvenirs in Upper Crust, another lovely joint in Columbia.

Next three days we'll spend time discussing day-to-day affairs; banking, dealing with American culture, budgeting etc, and meeting our mentors from host newspapers who are arriving here in just about a day. Sunday, we fly to our respective places from Kansas City. I'll to South Florida. That's when the action begins.

Three weeks into our stay here though, we are feeling a bit settled with the systems in the Distant Land. We've travelled some distance after all!