Washington Post Publishes Students’ Okinawa Multimedia Project

The Washington Post has published a series of multimedia, interactive features produced by students trained in Digital TV and the World classes. “OKINAWA: Video Reports from Japan and America,” documents the lives of ordinary people in Okinawa , California and Hawaii.

The multimedia project features the works of J-Schoolers Noah Buhayar (’10), Ayako Mie (’10), Tyler Sipe (’10), Diana Jou (’11), Laurel Moorhead (’11), Jake Schoneker (’11) and Jun Stinson (’11). At Berkeley, the students took Digital TV and the World classes and produced video profiles of Okinawan Americans in the Bay Area and Hawaii. They also enrolled in a Reporting on Japan class taught by Yomiuri Shimbun reporter Kyoichi Sasazawa. Some of the reporters participated in the Center for Digital TV and the World/Tides Center’s month-long professional reporting practicum in Okinawa.

The video reports examine a range of experiences on both sides of the Pacific — from tensions in Okinawa over a liberation that’s turned into an endless American military occupation, to the struggle to find work and meaning in Japan’s poorest prefecture, to the triumphs and woes of a family of pig farmers on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

The interactive flash presentations were designed by multimedia producer Noah Buhayar, with still photography by Tyler Sipe and infographics by Diana Jou.

The Digital TV and the World class is offered each spring. Past reporting projects covered Tokyo and its neighborhoods, Beijing, Guangzhou, Phnom Penh, India, Latin America and other points around the globe. The class is taught by instructor Todd Carrel, with Samantha Grant and other special mentors, and technical advisor Milt Wallace.

The Center for Digital TV and the World, a project of the Tides Center, is supported by gifts from The Skirball Foundation, The Henry Luce Foundation, The Japan-United States Friendship Commission, The United States-Japan Foundation, ANA and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Center for Japanese Studies and Institute of East Asian Studies.

Students interested in enrolling in Digital TV and the World next spring should contact Todd Carrel.

All are invited to attend a special screening of the videos at North Gate Hall in the fall.