The following are written samples for some of my journalism work.
Global City NYC (New York, NY):
News Contributor for the Korean beat, 2015.
Korean Skincare Moves Into U.S. Markets
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Pastel peach and soft yellow shelves display small vials and pots at a new shop that opened in Macy’s Queens department store last month. At first it looks like any other cosmetics display, promoting goods that “tone,””hydrate” and “treat” facial skin. But two giveaways suggest something different: the products are labeled in both Korean and English, and ads throughout the shop feature images of Asian women with immaculate skin.
Peach & Lily, an up-and-coming Korean beauty online retailer, just opened its first offline location in the heart of Macy’s, a quintessentially American department store. The opening is just the latest sign that the small country’s main export industry is now a hot new trend in America. When it comes to beauty, French cosmetics have been the global gold standard for decades. France’s international cosmetic exports are worth $11.5 billion a year, more than six times what South Korea sells to the world. But French export sales have stagnated, while the market for Korean skincare and makeup products expanded by 73 percent over the last year, according to Mintel, a global market intelligence agency. That makes Korea the world’s fastest-growing beauty marketer, says Mintel. Beauty bloggers and customers say Korean products have two major selling points: their hypoallergenic properties and their reasonable prices, compared with similar products from more traditional sources. Both qualities have helped Korean beauty products gain a foothold on the overcrowded shelves in mainstream shops such as Sephora, Target and Ulta. “I tried a few to see what it was all about, and I now I can’t go back,” said Stephanie Kuo, 24, a shopper at the new Macy’s Peach & Lily store. “My skin gets irritated easily, and the prices aren’t crazy, so this is kind of perfect for me.” Though they are new to most American consumers, Korean beauty products have enjoyed popularity in Asia for decades. But now, they “have reached market saturation in Korea” said Elena Rogow, 26, writer for the blog Pheomelanin Sufficient. Rogow says she has tracked the growth of Korean beauty products in the U.S. since they first appeared in 2006. America is an attractive target for overseas growth, she says, in part because the products are not subject to import and luxury taxes. According to Rogow, Korean cosmetics were a small niche market in the U.S. for several years. But now, “several brands are becoming well known enough to sell directly to consumers in English-language websites.” Word of mouth was the first ally to K-beauty as it started growing in the US. Many consumers were drawn to the all-natural plant, mineral or animal ingredients in most Korean products – and the absence of irritating products such as alcohol. Rogow said her severe allergies made her an early convert. 
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The New Peach & Lily store in Macy’s, Queens, in New York. The online company just moved to its first bricks-and-mortar U.S. location in November.
“My dermatologist had stopped carrying cleansers, and I was sick of using Cetaphil,” she said. She tried a face wash from DHC, one of the few Korean brands available in the U.S. in 2006. “It didn’t dry me out or cost over $50,” said Rogow. “It was amazing.” But the Korean products can be complicated, requiring a serious time commitment. For example, some Korean facial regimens call for applying up to 14 different products each night. “Beauty is crucial in Korean culture,” said Fanny Zhang, manager at ANF Cosmetics, a Canadian-based e-commerce company that sells Korean cosmetics throughout North America. “You pile on toner, moisturizer, ampoule, serum, cream, etc.” Alicia Yoon, CEO of the Korean brand Peach & Lily, acknowledges that multi-layering of Korean skincare products can be a challenge to explain to new American buyers. “Some customers may be overwhelmed, “ she said, “but we’ve found that they’re not unwilling to put in the work.” Perhaps a bigger hurdle for some newcomers to K-beauty are the more exotic “all natural” contents – like snail mucus, the main ingredient in a cream that beauty blogger Renee Khuong remembers buying from Nature Republic in early 2014. “My skin is supple, glowy, firm and soft after a month of use” concludes her review in Beauty & the Cat. Not everyone is fascinated by unusual animal products, though. “A lot of those are made with stuff I’m not comfortable with,” said Sara Forester, 27, who was shopping at a Sephora store in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Forester prefers to trust a select few brands she’s known for years — and none of them are Korean. “It’s unbelievable; I spend $200 a month on those creams!” Forester said, picking up $72 Dior Capture Totale eye serum. She didn’t look twice at the store pamphlet describing some of the Korean cosmetics available: “I just stick with brands I know.” Forester’s brand loyalty is good news for long-established Western manufacturers like Dior, Clarins and Guerlain. But will it last? When it comes to cosmetics, many consumers seem to be in a constant search for the next new skin miracle. Unless they can convert enough customers to survive on their own, Korean beauty companies should enjoy the momentum while it lasts. |
The Ink (New York, NY)
News Contributor for the Transportation beat, 2015.
Volunteer Ambulances At The Ready For Pope Visit
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BY MARGAUX MOORES-TANVIER SEP 24, 2015
Emergency Medical Services in New York dispatch an average 6,000 ambulance runs each day. For the Pope’s visit on Friday, medical services expect more calls due to the 2 million pilgrims expected to follow His Holiness to the city. However, only 14 FDNY ambulances will be added unevenly to the city’s hospitals and no public emergency vehicle has received clearance to enter closed off streets. Help will come to the thinly spread public EMS resources partially through another emergency service: volunteer ambulances and EMTs. At 5pm on Friday, Sept 25th, Pope Francis is scheduled to lead a procession in Central Park from 72nd to 60th Street. The event will gather 80,000 ticketholders, carefully screened by the NYPD starting noon. Anyone missing proper authorization and identification will be refused access. Amidst the increased park attendance and security, the Central Park Medical Unit ready for medical emergencies. “All our units will be functioning during for the procession,” said Raphael I. Castellanos, 55, volunteer EMT and president of CPMU. The 4 ambulances, 2 response vehicles, and 4 medic bicycles CPMU has access to will be operated by a fraction of its 100 volunteers, all of which had to receive prior authorization by the city authorities to work on Friday. Under normal conditions, FDNY’s public ambulances reach patients under 7 minutes. Garrett McCarthy, 25, paramedic for the Lennox Hill and New York Presbyterian hospitals, recalls his most recent experience falling far from that goal: “We just hit three or four cross streets that were in complete gridlock,” McCarthy said. “Eventually we found ourselves manoeuvring down a one-way road, sirens blaring, to make it.” |
In this rare instance from last April, McCarthy reached his patient in 20 minutes. “Of course, every call is unique, but during large events it’s very different,” said Raphael Z. Castellanos, 24, son of the CPMU president and volunteer EMT. “If you can’t get closer to the caller, you have to march through the crowd and tell people to get out of the way.” Once a patient is retrieved, CMPU ambulances bring them to the closest hospital. “EMS gets overloaded with calls, so volunteer ambulances help provide quality care to people,” said Stevie Hipp, EMT at Bedford Stuyvesant Volunteer Ambulance Corps for over 20 years. “All volunteers pass the EMT state exam, and our ambulances are spotless,” Hipp said. “But more important; our service to the community comes from the heart.” Volunteers get no pay for their services, and equipment is funded through donations. Volunteer EMS organizations provide their services for free to patients who would otherwise be billed an average $840 and boast average response rates of 4 minutes. “40 years ago, the CPMU first started because if somebody got hurt in Central Park, it would take 30, 40 minutes for an ambulance to get to them,” said the older Castellanos. Today the difference isn’t as stark, but 3 minutes can make a difference between life and death. Overall, Friday is considered a good day to volunteer at CPMU. The sign up sheet filled up fast: “I wasn’t picked!” Castellanos junior said with a laugh. “It’s probably because I tried to sign up too late. [The volunteers] are excited to see the Pope.” |
Daily Bruin (Los Angeles, CA):
News Contributor for the localization beat, 2013-2014.
UCLA Honors Veterans with Ceremony in Wilson PlazaNovember 12, 2013, 12:20 am
BY MARGAUX MOORES-TANVIER Being the only woman in a platoon of men in the Afghan desert had its challenges. And, being the sergeant responsible for keeping those men alive in an area of conflict was, at times, life-threatening. “It wasn’t about dying myself, but planning to try and not get my soldiers killed,” said Yun Hee Kim, now a law student at UCLA. Kim, who is a member of the distribution company in the California Army National Guard, was one of the guest speakers for UCLA’s Veterans Day ceremony on Friday. The ceremony is an annual event held by the university to honor UCLA students, alumni, faculty and staff who have defended the nation through their military service. The event took place in Wilson Plaza with about 100 attendees. Recalling her undergraduate years at UCLA in her late-twenties, Kim said she had more trouble acclimating to life as a student than she did to life as a soldier. “After having been trained to think about others, it was really difficult to do everything for myself,” Kim said. “It was hard to find what my motivation was.” Kim first enlisted in the military at the age of 18, looking for new experiences. “At the time, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just wanted to jump out of airplanes,” she said. Serving in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 near the city of Khost, Kim’s platoon’s mission was to clear the roads leading to the Pakistan border of planted bombs. “We were the first ones (on those roads), so the first ones to find the bombs,” Kim said. Taliban ambushes could follow these planted bombs, Kim said. According to Kim, platoons of American soldiers such as herself would leave the military base in the cold morning before the sun rose, work during daylight in the blistering desert, and return after the sun set. “I see the military not as an institution, but as a group of people. I think about my soldiers, my battle buddies,” Kim said. That kind of camaraderie is not uncommon for veterans, Kim added. “(Members of the military) put themselves out there to represent and defend our country,” said Victoria Sanelli, military science’s department manager at UCLA. Veterans Day is important because it remembers the efforts and the sacrifices that it takes to work in the military, said Air Force Capt. Eric Moore, the host of the Veterans Day ceremony, U.S. Air Force operations flight commander and assistant professor in aerospace studies at UCLA. |
But for veteran James Klain, UCLA alumnus, staff retiree and guest of honor in Friday’s ceremony, Veterans Day does not have a particularly special meaning.
“I, in fact, have trouble remembering (the holiday),” Klain said with a laugh. Klain, however, has several vivid memories of his time in the military – including one moment during the invasion of Guam, when he saw a U.S. officer lay on a nearby ship with his chest ripped open by a Japanese bombshell. “That image stuck with me for a long time, even up until today,” Klain said. Klain is a 92-year-old grandfather to 12 and great-grandfather to 6. He could not attend his own graduation from UCLA because he had to leave to train in the Navy in April 1933. “I felt saved – I absolutely despised analytic geometry,” Klain said, laughing. Klain served for 12 years in the military, three of which he served during World War II as a communications officer of the USS Egeria repair ship as the U.S. fought to recapture five Pacific Islands from the Japanese. Apart from occasional reminders of the risks of their mission, Klain said his time working on the repair ships was fairly uneventful. Each day, if the ships survived without explosives being planted on their underwater layers, the ships would exchange movie reels with each other and screen them each night as entertainment for the crew, Klain said. At the end of his service in 1945, Klain left for a civilian life running backstages in New York City theaters. After a year in New York, Klain was offered a job from UCLA as Royce Hall’s events manager. He remained at that position for 38 years. For Kim, the nationwide celebration of Veterans Day distracts from what else can be done for veterans today, such as the quicker provision of soldiers’ benefits by the government after they leave service. “I am grateful for the celebration and recognition, but it would be better to actively do something about the situation,” Kim said. She added that she wishes that people would view and help veterans as regular people instead of just offering praise. “At the base, we’re just people, ordinary people,” Kim said. |
Dance Marathon 2014 (Blog Entry)
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April 5, 2014, 7:00p.m
Brad Delson, lead guitarist of the Grammy Award-winning band Linkin Park and a UCLA alumnus, stopped by UCLA to support students raising awareness for pediatric AIDS. Delson stepped onto stage at 6:30 p.m. in front of a screaming audience to host part of the event’s “Color Wars.” “It’s my first time in Dance Marathon, and I’m not quite sure of what my role as host will be,” Delson said in an interview. “I’ll have to be quick on my feet!” Delson graduated from UCLA in 1999 and established the Delson Scholarship Fund at UCLA with his wife in 2004. Each year, the fund awards four-year scholarships to students from Bell High School or Huntington Park High School in East Los Angeles. Delson also returned to campus in June 2009 to speak at the UCLA Letters of College and Science commencement ceremony. “I want to be here to show my support to the students here who have worked so hard to raise money and awareness for the (pediatric AIDS) cause,” Delson said. “I am very appreciative of what they have done.” Compiled by Margaux Moores-Tanvier, Bruin contributor. |
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Voting for 2014-2015 GSA Officers to Begin Tuesday
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April 8, 2014 1:17 am
BY MARGAUX MOORES-TANVIER Graduate students can start voting for next year’s graduate student government officers starting Tuesday at noon. The Graduate Students Association, the governing organization for UCLA’s graduate and professional schools, is holding its elections throughout this week and until noon on Monday. All current graduate and professional students will be able to cast their votes online through their MyUCLA accounts. The election will decide which graduate students take over the four GSA officers for the next academic year. The positions are president, vice president of internal affairs, vice president of external affairs and vice president of academic affairs. Elected officials are responsible for a variety of tasks, such as allocating GSA funds and advocating on behalf of graduate students in the Academic Senate. Two of the four positions are contested, making the elections more competitive than they have been in several years. Michael Hirshman of the Moving Forward slate and current GSA president Nicole Robinson of the Diversity in Action slate are competing for president. |
If he wins the election, Hirshman hopes to increase social and professional interaction between schools, reduce class sizes to benefit teaching assistants and ensure more benefits to graduate researchers, among other goals. Robinson said she aims to serve as a liaison between graduate students, administrators and different organizations across the University of California, as well as increase financial and programmatic support for graduate students. The two candidates competing for the vice president of external affairs position are Andrés Schneider of the Moving Forward slate and doctoral candidate Vaheh Shirvanian, a member of the Diversity in Action slate. GSA’s current vice president of external affairs, Hope McCoy, is running for vice president of internal affairs as a member of the Diversity in Action slate. And Ivy Onyeador, also on the Diversity in Action slate, is the only candidate for vice president of academic affairs. GSA will hold an Elections Grad Bar on Thursday at the Los Angeles Tennis Center. Election information tables will also be on campus on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, where voters can ask for more information about the election. Read here for more information about the candidates. |
Modern ViewPoint (Washington, DC):
Breaking News & LGBT Rights Columnist Intern, Winter 2014.
Due to the website undergoing renewal at the moment, the articles are unaccessible online for now.
Due to the website undergoing renewal at the moment, the articles are unaccessible online for now.
Russian Prime Minister Exhorts Gay Athletes to Stay Away from the Children at Sochi Games (Opinion)
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Published on Friday, 7 February 2014 19:55
By Margaux Moores-Tanvier In Sochi, Russia, on the after the Opening Ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games, the world assists to one of the appalling demonstration of human rights violations as countless reports on homophobia leak through to the media and social networks. A video now gone viral published by Buzzfeed compiles tapings of beatings and sexual violence outbreaks against allegedly gay people throughout Russia. In one video, a group of attackers burn a man’s clothes and ask the victim to rape himself with a bottle. The clips, all originally filmed and uploaded online by the attackers themselves, have appalled the entire gay community and human right defenders. If those instances have been widely shared and reported, what we would not expect is that cases of vague tolerance from the Russian government itself not cause much indignation from some American news channels. On Thursday, February 6th, following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s message last month asking that gays “"leave the children in peace”, the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Kozak made an announcement confirming that gay athletes would be allowed to compete. However, if the announcement no doubt was meant to reassure the athletic community and silence a little LGBT and human rights activists, the statement concluded with the following words: “Please do not touch kids. That’s the only thing.” Now, was I the only one to have a beat of stunned silence at this statement? It seems like this final point successfully managed to clear out any pretense of tolerance and reveals the true mentality of the Russian government on this issue. However, following the announcement, news corporations such as NBC, NY Daily News, or USA Today quickly reported the prime minister’s message, but when it wasn’t relegated into a subpar section of the article as a second thought after the poor Sochi infrastructure topic, these articles made no particular comments on what this statement means on a larger scale. They did not develop upon what kinds of treatments or attitudes gay athletes or the general Russian gay community may have to face despite these official words. If pointed out, the “Please do not touch kids” part of the discourse meets no counterpart, or no allegations or evidence on how misguided and insulting the phrase may be. |
It is truly sad to report that such news articles coming from influential American medias can miss the point so much. Additionally, in response to Kozak and Putin, we want to provide our readers with the following statistics from a study by social scientists published in Pediatrics.org so that they may draw their own conclusions concerning the danger represented by homosexual men and women: for 269 cases of child sex abuse, only “two offenders were identified as being gay or lesbian”. This is much less than the 1 to 3% which we would expect if homosexuals were as likely to commit child abuse than heterosexuals. Another study published in Child Welfare.gov also found that of the cases involving molestation of a boy by a man, 74% of the men were or had been in a heterosexual relationship with the boy’s mother or another female relative. The conclusion was found that "a child's risk of being molested by his or her relative's heterosexual partner is over one hundred times greater than by someone who might be identifiable as being homosexual." This is how this overseas incident can be taken as a lesson to take a bolder stance here in America, and teach our own misguided portion of the nation that, no matter what an individual’s own stance on homosexuality is, it is never okay to make fake stereotypical assumptions due to fear or hate. With this in mind, Putin, Kozak, please get your numbers right. That way, if you must hate, at least you won’t be spreading the wrong idea to your people and to the rest of the world. Sources: Buzzfeed, NBC, NYDailyNews, Pediatrics, and ChildWelfare |
Islam Militants Threaten Egypt's Tourist Population (Breaking News)
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Published on Tuesday, 18 February 2014 14:51
By Margaux Moores-Tanvier An Islamist militant group threatened tourists to leave Egypt by February 20th to avoid getting killed. The militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis released a statement to the press today and tweeted in English its warnings: "We recommend tourists to get out safely before the expiry of the deadline.” Needless to say, these menaces should not be taken lightly. The militant group already claimed responsibility for killing two South Korean tourists and an Egyptian as well as seriously injuring twelve passers-by in a suicide bombing last Sunday, effectively causing the first assault on tourists since the retrieval of President Muhammed Morsi last summer. According to Reuters, Egypt's Prime Minister Hazem Al Beblawi, these threats “aimed to undermine the political process begun after an army takeover in July.” This takeover of former president Mohammed Morsi led Mosri-supporting Islamist militant groups to kill hundreds of policemen and soldiers in Egypt in the months following the removal. Today, the tourist attacks restates the group’s intent on following through with its agenda: |
“With God’s will we will be watching this treacherous gang of infiltrators and we will target their economic interests in all places in order to paralyse their hands from (hurting) Muslims,” the Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis statement said. Today, Egypt still has no president, and the country relies heavily on tourist influx to support the economy. However, according to an article from The Globe and Mail, “Egypt’s vital tourism industry has already been hit hard by three years of political turmoil and street protests.” These attacks will not help reverse this trend. Why this matters: Beyond killing hundreds of policemen and soldiers, this new streak of violence from Islamist militants targeting innocent, non-political international tourists effectively turns the attacks into terrorism. If that poses clearly a danger to anyone intending on visiting Egypt this Spring Break (and summer?), this matters also because the increasing insurgencies in the Arab world only slows down efforts of democratization in this region by installing fear and instability. It only takes a few militant and terrorist groups to change the international reputation of a country. Sources: Reuters, and The Globe and Mail |
Yahoo Buys Sparq & Joins the “Big Brother” Game (Breaking News)
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Published on Wednesday, 22 January 2014 01:40
By Margaux Moores-Tanvier Tuesday, Yahoo bought back the mobile marketing start-up company Sparq. According to a Yahoo spokesperson, the technology available in Sparq should allow Yahoo to “jump from app to app to discover, consume and engage with content”, meaning that it will be able to develop more engaging content based on mobile device information. This kind of marketing strategy can prove itself crucial to keeping Yahoo relevant into the multimedia world. Why this matters: Indeed, Google has been using mobile marketing information for tracking user information for years, and this has been one of its most successful means of integrative marketing. Many Google users have been sidetracked by this “Big Brother” approach, notably by moving back to Yahoo for their Internet use, but most Google users have either ignored or found useful the seemingly personalized advertising in their sidebars. Today, according to The Crunch online magazine, Yahoo’s sudden interest in mobile marketing, and concretely, its potential to tie apps together in a more cohesive fashion, “could bolster its engagement per user, and presumably its revenue per user.” In short, by using Google’s own marketing tactics, Yahoo will most likely increase its stock and help continue its winning streak against the online research giant Google. However, now users morally opposed to having their web search information scanned and stored in order to better sell them things will have to find other search engines. |
According to HowToGeek.com, a few of the most popular alternatives are the engines DuckDuckGo, StartPage, and IxQuick.
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