#BeritaBaruNakUp S01E08: tell me why, Taufik

Salam everyone! Did you miss these BBNU weekly wraps? Well, I did miss writing them too.

Suffice to say, this past month has been exhausting, physically and mentally. I am not sure myself what contributed for this, but it was perhaps a mix of me having a burn-out by working night shifts for a couple of months straight, the never-ending lockdown and a country that is arguably a dumpster fire right now, and a string of Covid-related cases that were too close to home.

It was hard on me, but I figured I needed to take some time off these free wraps to focus on the subscriber-only essays on Mondays (and even then there were some weeks that I was not well enough to write one)...and also to focus on my Product Immersion Training Programme with CUNY Craig Newmark J-School, News Catalyst and Google News Intiative [previously covered in S01E05].

Updates on #ProductImmersion

It has been a month since my last update, and boy have my view of the news industry turned upside down!

Since we last spoke, I have learnt how to assemble my own product team, how to overcome cultural resistance in newsrooms, how to design for equity among the readership...and ways to tackle the ever-present problem in news: making money!

To hammer these points home, I now plan to take another free course on a similar topic later this month, this time by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. You can also join the four-week course "Product strategies for journalism: How to align editorial, audience, business and technology" by going here.

Since we last left him, JoJo has now had his left eye healed – but I swear he spends most of his days just napping.

Now, on to this week's round-up after the jump, also available for free members! 👇

(Just register here, and choose the "Free" plan)