Mika Hentunen

Multimedia reporting is an increasingly demanding discipline. Print journalists need to master the art of podcasts and live video reporting while broadcast reporters are honing their online writing and infographics skills. With advances in artificial intelligence and data journalism, everyone could use more technical savvy.

Amid the growing demands, it is essential to have a trained eye for news judgment. This is true for the newsroom as well as for individual reporters.

The students of the Global Business Journalism program will have a chance to deepen their skills next spring when veteran foreign correspondent Mika Hentunen, a native of Finland, joins the program as a lecturer and guest scholar for the spring of 2022 semester.

Hentunen, who is completing his second tour of duty as a Washington-based correspondent for Finnish broadcaster YLE, will conduct workshops on multimedia journalism skills, taking advantage of his experience as a television and radio journalist. He also will deliver lectures on hot topics in international economics and politics.

Hentunen will be available to consult with Global Business Journalism students and faculty on research projects, and he will offer career advice to GBJ students and alumni.

“I really look forward to working with the students and program faculty,” Hentunen said. “I’m eager to plug into the cutting edge of journalism and continue to broaden my perspective on world affairs.”

Hentunen has three decades of reporting experience from Helsinki, Paris, Brussels, Munich, Seoul and Washington. He has covered historical events including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, war-torn Sarajevo, and Donald Trump’s summits with Kim Jong Un.  He also is the author of two popular thriller novels and three non-fiction works, including a recently published book on the legacy of Donald Trump.

The Global Business Journalism program, founded in 2007, is an elite English language master’s degree program based at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The program’s founding partners are the International Center for Journalists and Bloomberg News.

Students from about 70 nations have participated in the two-year program over the past 14 years, and about a dozen countries are currently represented in the program.

Hentunen has a wide range of academic and journalism credentials. He has reported from three continents and earned a master’s degree in International Trade and Marketing from the Turku School of Economics at Turku University.

GBJ co-director Rick Dunham said Hentunen would add to the diversity of voices in the multicultural program and would bring “exceptional journalism expertise and invaluable professional experience” to his lectures and workshops.

Those programs will cover topics including the transformation of the media industry, news judgment in multimedia reporting, content selection in the journalism process, voice-over product, access to an international network of media influencers, and covering a foreign capital for an international news outlet.

The spring semester is scheduled to begin on Feb. 21.