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Henry Miller and Gertrude Stein did it. David Sedaris and Adam Gopnik do it. Have you ever dreamed of living abroad as a writer? This seminar will tell you how to carve out a niche as a freelancer writer for Western media while you live or travel overseas. You'll find out how to sell writing from afar, how to budget your money to sustain the journey, and how to thrive even if you don't speak the language.
Through first-hand examples and practical advice, you'll see how to make the courageous move and how to ensure sustainability once you land. You'll leave this seminar with an honest understanding of the pros and cons of freelancing overseas.
In this seminar, you will learn:
* How newspapers and magazines obtain international news
* How to get overseas for free and get your expenses covered
* How to conceive marketable story ideas from a foreign country
* Which foreign stories sell, and which don't
* How to craft a convincing query to an American editor
* How to capitalize on continental rights
* How to find local fixers and translators (and how to hire them)
* How to write about international topics for an American audience
A smashing success in Indonesia, this workshop uses examples to introduce students or staffers to narrative journalism and the art of storytelling. Part I introduces the audience to narrative journalism, a style that uproots traditional journalism, supplementing the "who, what where, why and why" with narrative elements like character development, scene, tension, delay, consequence, and chronology over time. In Part II, the classroom transforms into a newsroom. Students are now journalists and I'm the editor. Students must pitch their story ideas to the class, a process that hones their vision to conceive plausible story ideas. Then, students report and write their stories, and file final drafts before an imposed deadline. During the reporting phase, students must check-in with me daily. Upon filing the stories, they are translated (if necessary) and I edit them over several days. Then, the group reconvenes to read and critically discuss all the stories. Students are encouraged to polish their stories and then publish them. This workshop requires the participants to have sufficient time to complete the demanding project. It also requires translation. It's a big task and should not be underestimated in its administrative burden. Passive students need not apply. When the dedication exists, the workshop is amazingly rewarding.
By using examples from developing media in Eastern Europe and Indonesia, this lecture details media literacy, skepticism and the art of analysis. This lecture defines critical thinking, emphasizes its importance, and teaches journalists how they can improve their critical thinking skills. For example, it tackles questions such as how to gauge the credibility of sources, statistics and surveys, and how easily journalists are deceived by public relations officials and other incredible but often obligatory contacts. Media literacy, which teaches consumers how to critically absorb news, as oppose to blind digestion, is also detailed.
This popular lecture explains an oft-ignored topic: 60 years on, what is happening in Holocaust education and commemoration in the land where the horror occurred? The answers are nearly as troubling as the events that transpired. For example, in Estonia, where Nazis and local collaborators murdered Jews, only three sentences describe the Holocaust in State textbooks.
For all the attention, money and energy poured into Holocaust education in the United States, there is a serious dearth of attention in the land where the Holocaust occurred. This lecture covers how trans-Atlantic alliances and the US State Department prod Eastern European nations to look back at their tragic history. It covers five specific areas that these infant democracies have proved less than willing to tackle with sincerity: Holocaust education, property restitution, Holocaust commemoration, prosecution of Nazi War criminals, and anti-Semitism. Ellick covered the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania in Spring 2001, where international Jewish leaders raised their concerns to the 11 prime ministers of then-NATO aspirant nations.
This lecture always leaves the audience in a state of disbelief. No prior knowledge of international politics is required. For more information, read my opinion piece in the Jerusalem Report.
This presentation is a form of living history, told through the Jews who I encountered during my two-month winter journey through Russia in 2003. I visited 19 Jewish communities along the Trans Siberian Railway and produced a 17-part series on Siberian Jewry from Moscow to Vladivostok for the international newswire Jewish Telegraph Agency.
The lecture includes anecdotal, personal stories of exile, torture under Nazi and Stalinist rule, faith and survival. It also includes an analysis of the prevailing societal issues including corruption and the international funding of these Jewish communities. This lecture can be delivered in a hip, vibrant style for younger groups, or more formally for Jewish professionals who seek to better understand the organizational issues facing Russian Jewry, a topic that has fallen off international Jewry's radar screen since the mid-1990s, but still merits attention today.
In 2003, I reported extensively on Birobidzhan, the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Republic - a region in Russia's Far East that Joseph Stalin vowed to create as a Jewish socialist homeland in the 1920s. Today, it's best known as one of humanity's most failed social experiments. However, Jewish life exists in today's Birobidzhan, and it is the only place in the world where Yiddish remains an official language. This lecture provides a historical summary covering the establishment of this Jewish historical oddity. It also details the existing Jewish life, including the Yiddish newspaper, radio station, Jewish community and non-Jewish interest in preserving the Jewish remnants. Personal stories told to me by original pioneers highlight this presentation.