ASIA MEDIA (and later ASIA PACIFIC ARTS) arose in 1998 from the nonprofit Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN) at the University of California, Los Angeles. It was created by founder Tom Plate, then a fulltime Adjunct Professor in Communication Studies and in Policy Studies, and by his UCLA students.
APMN was a consortium of the interests and visions of its partners, notably including the South China Morning Post, The Straits Times of Singapore, the Japan Times, the Age, the Los Angeles Times and the Getty Museum and Trust. Years later, both websites came under the capable management of UCLA’s Asia Institute, headed by Prof. Bin Wong. But in Sept. 2009 both were defunded by UCLA, reeling from state budget cutbacks, as were so many other UCLA programs.
Quickly, ASIA PACIFIC ARTS found a new home at the University of Southern California’s U.S.-China Institute. Then, in the fall of 2011, ASIA MEDIA found a home at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, staffed by students under the general supervision of Tom Plate, currently LMU’s Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies. This site is the new ASIA MEDIA.
The new ASIA MEDIA proposes to retain the former ASIA MEDIA’s scholarly standards while incorporating a contemporary format. The integration of innovative concepts to the new website serves to re-emphasize its mission: the examination of Asian countries through the lens of their distinct media systems.
This is Asia’s century. As the world’s center of gravity is inevitably shifting to the East, this site seeks to place its spotlight on the media of Asia as a method of focusing on trends within its society and politics.
The mission of the new ASIA MEDIA also aims to help deepen LMU’s overall institutional understanding of – and relationship with – Asia. To this end, this weekly news site, launched in November 2011, will also serve as a real-world media lab for Professor Plate’s courses as well as students at LMU. This innovation is inspired by the philosophy of internationalized education that is pursued with such great spirit at LMU’s Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts.
Today, Asia Media International is a student-driven publication of Loyola Marymount University’s Asia Media Center, under the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, Dept. of Asian and Asian American Studies and the Dept. of Political Science — in alliance with the independent Pacific Century Institute, a non-profit 501(c) organization based in Los Angeles, California that focuses on building bridges between countries and peoples. Many AMI student staffers continue their studies at such institutions of higher learning as the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, the University of Chicago School of Public Policy, the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the Institut d’études politics de Paris (Sciences Po) and other internationally acclaimed graduate schools.
— The Editors and Staff of ASIA MEDIA
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