In the midst of her four-month fellowship in the United States, Indonesian journalist Dini Djalal is learning all of what this country has to offer.
Especially on the Brackett dairy farm she has stayed at during the last few days.
“They didn’t make me milk a cow because I think they saw the terror on my face,” the 32-year-old said.
Djalal, who has been in the Chippewa Valley the last several days, is one of 10 foreign journalists chosen to tour the United States by the World Press Institute, a journalism foundation based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
Her father was a diplomat, so Djalal spent time in New York and Washington, D.C., when she was 9 years old. This is her first trip to the Midwest.
“This is a particularly good group,” WPI executive director John Ullman said.
“The main goal is to show reporters the role and responsibilities of a free press in a democracy.”
This is the 42nd group for the press institute, which sees about 80 to 150 applicants each year, Ullman said.
But it’s not just a New York-Chicago-Los Angeles trip.
“They want us to see how Americans live everywhere, not just in the big cities,” Djalal said. “They want … to shatter the myth of America being all glossy.”
Based out of Jakarta, Indonesia, the capital city of more than 10 million, Djalal reports for the Dow Jones-owned Far Eastern Economic Review weekly news magazine.
While Djalal has 10 years of experience as a journalist, Indonesia’s free press only has been in existence since 1998, when the country became a democracy.
Now she covers the news but also has to find a way to let readers and sources know what a free press means.
She explained that American journalists often have trouble getting sources because of a distrusting public. Indonesian journalists have trouble because sources are worried about getting in trouble.
“I think a lot of people are afraid if they say the wrong thing, they will end up in jail,” she said.
Many of the fellows have experienced some sort of danger in their countries because of stories they reported on, Ullman said.
That stress can pile up.
Often people apply for fellowships because they are burned out and need a break from what they are doing, Djalal said. But that’s not the case for her.
“I don’t want to be away for very long,” she said. “I’m really itching to write.”
