Saturday, May 1, 2010

One Post, One Nation = ?

When I was a part of  H!P Non-Pro Hour , there were times ,when we broke away from music coverage to just write what was on our minds .This trend will continue with Pure Idol Heart.

When I was thinking about returning to blogging  ,one of the questions that I had was  should this blog be written  in English or Japanese . I decided on English  because working with H!P Non-Pro Hour was such an enjoyable time ,having visitors  and comments from all over the world and not just Japan .

 Because I decided on English a series of events happened the other day that is a mix of ,funny ,odd and other things .

The other day ,several local Japanese media outlets decided  to reprint   , my post  on AKB48 going to America. They did this without asking me first .   Who the outlets are is not as important as the reason why they did it.

The outlets were looking for any information in English about AKB48 going to America and the Western fan reaction. Because I decided to have this blog in English and not Japanese  , and with the editors belief that I was a foreigner , they decided to  reprint the entire post as part of a much larger story and included the blog's address in the story along with comments from the Expo's CEO.

I guess the editors who ran the reprints have never heard of  Utada Hikaru ?  Unless something has changed in the last 15 minutes ,Utada Hikaru  can speak fluent English , yet she is Japanese . Just because someone can speak or write a blog in English   ,doesn’t make them a foreigner . As they never contacted me in advance ,it was easy for them to make that mistake.

As a result of their belief that the author  was a foreigner, pockets of interest  have broken out across Japan ,leading back to this site . As happy and grateful as I was for the interest ,this event was a lot like being a fan of Idols , sometimes we only like something because of what we think it is  and not what it really is.

For a  time ,this new found fame and excitement left me questioning if  returning to blogging in English and not Japanese was the right  choice.


So that is the behind the scenes drama for at least one post,lol . Next Behind the scenes drama ?



Next Topic : Where in the ---- is Pure Idol Heart Co-Owner  Jinryuichi ?

4 comments:

  1. Though I'm almost done with my first year of journalism, I do know some ethic codes journalists must follow. When I relate that to how Taiwanese, Korean, and now this.... I really think the codes are good in theory... but hard to put into practice.

    I don't think it was the right thing for the media outlet not to contact you when they decided to use your blog post as a source....

    In a way, it's taking the information without asking permission first... which... is plagiarism? I suppose? I'm still new to these journalism code of ethics, so yeah...:P

    The overgeneralisation of the media about certain issues is one big problem... Huge debate still, among scholars and such. :P

    To be honest, I thought you were a foreigner at first too... lol

    It's still cool that your blog post got published though! :D (the behind the scenes drama aside)

    I'm indeed curious as to where Jinryuichi is... Haha

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  2. Wait... Just remembered I read that they had the blog post address and such, so cross that plagiarism part out...:P

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  3. If I sound like I am mad, then I want to say , that I am not , it`s funny to me in a way.
    They followed everything the way they should have ,all credit was given to the site and I was really happy and grateful .


    It was more about how it made me feel about this site and my choice of language . The reprint drew a lot of traffic to the site only because it was in English and not for what I said.

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  4. Where Jin is a much longer story :-)

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