Talk:Steven L. Herman

Would the real Voice of America please stand up

Despite the fact that Danforth Austin, Director of the Voice of America was one of the judges, the Association for International Broadcasting's International Media Excellence Award is only listed (alongside advertisements for 'partnership opportunities' in the "gala dinners" accompanying the awards) as being won by the Voice of America, not Voice of America's Steven Herman, and while the article only claims he wrote about the last half of the war, the award was given for coverage of the war with no mention of parts. http://www.aib.org.uk/newsContent.asp?node_id=95&pSize=6&user=&content_id=2047&currentPage=2&searchFor=International+Media+Excellence+Award . I am removing the whole thing. Quite apart from not citing the content, the whole thing smacks of nepotism from top to bottom. God help anyone whose life ends in the endless farce that is the Dicky Bow Brigade. Anarchangel (talk) 06:09, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

With respect to the analysis below, the original article had 11 citations; 8 of them have been changed by User:HL9OA (which my admittedly limited experience on the subject leads me to believe would be appropriate to suspect as being both, evidence of COI, for anyone who cares -I don't, I only care about the actual behaviour of the interested party-, and a sockpuppet of User:W7VOA; both user names are claimed as ham radio handles used by the subject). Thus, the refs discussed below were in most cases not the refs I tagged as failing verification. I was mindful of overtagging, and only tagged the citations that existed in the article, rather than tagging the end of each uncited paragraph. I don't tag uncited sentences, that's too much. I have never seen so many uncited facts in one article, and by the same token, so many facts shoehorned into each citation. They are not presented in the order in which they appear in the article, which I will be following, so use the quoted phrases to compare them.

• Bulleted items (beginning with an asterisk) could have had {{citation needed|date=}} tags put on the sentence or paragraph. My best practice forbade me to. Arguably they should now, since the article, article sourcing, and good editor practice is a matter of contention.

-http://www.voanews.com/english/Steve-Herman-Bio-2007.cfm was replaced by http://www.insidevoa.com/media-relations/experts/117955284.html - "broadcast correspondent and bureau chief". Agree, ref does not support.

-Observations about the 'Tokyo Steve' page are correct, but I contend that it is also promotional and there is no indication that it is not personally edited, a personal web page at best. This cite remains unchanged. The Tokyo Steve page is additionally problematic in that it is used in multiple capacities, among them, to cite a myriad of locations from which the subject is said to have reported. The phrase "phoning it in" comes to mind; if this phrase was not first used of or even by journalists to describe them or themselves, it should have been. A very large number of facts, each with a large burden of proof, cited by an extremely dubious source.

• There are still no sources for South Korea, New Delhi, Japan, AP Radio, BBC, CBC, CBS, CNN, DW, PRI, RTHK, or Radio 3.

-http://www.e-fccj.com/aboutus/organization/pastpres was replaced by http://www.fccj.or.jp/node/1828 Herostratus is correct about the reliability of the new cite, but the old one is a broken link, which helpfully redirects (In a way, I wish more sites did this, instead of directing to error pages, but on the other hand, it is misleading) to http://www.fccj.or.jp/ . http://www.fccj.or.jp/ contains nothing of relevance to the article.

• There still are no sources for Cincinnati, Ohio, Associated Press in either location, "returning to Japan" has no context because it was never mentioned when he had previously been in Japan, and PBS and NHK work is not cited.
• There are still no sources for "parent company of Discovery Channel and Animal Planet". There is no indication as to what that company is. DC and AP is interesting, informative, and serves promotional interests. Guess which I think was the prime consideration. The actual parent company name; less interesting, more informative, and would not serve promotional interests. "radio representative on the FPIJ Executive Committee" is not cited.

-http://community.myvoa.com/service/searchEverything.kickAction?keywords=herman&includeVideo=on&as=45137 was replaced by the Tokyo Steve citation. The former is a search on VOA for "Herman", which yields, on page 2 of the results, a link to a video report by Herman http://community.myvoa.com/_VOAs-Steve-Herman-Reflects-on-Sri-Lanka-Conflict/video/665277/45137.html

-I had and have the same concerns about the PDF

• The entire ill-titled Professional Organizations section (2nd word should be lower case) is cited by one source.

Herman also has been President of the Japan-America Society of The American University and the Charleston (W.Va.) professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

During his award-winning career he has also served on boards of directors of the SPJ Las Vegas chapter and the California-Nevada AP Television-Radio Association (APTRA). He is a voting member of the Asian American Journalists Association, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of South Asia, the Seoul Foreign Correspondents' Club, the Overseas Press Club of America and the South Asian Journalists Association.

Herman served on the Advisory Board of the Waseda Marketing Forum, associated with the Business School of Waseda University in Tokyo.[cited]

In 2006 Herman was a member of the Japan panel to select the journalism fellows of the Fulbright Program.

-I had and have the same opinion of the Waseda Marketing Board information and citation. I noted the Waseda marketing board as an exception to the citations' general failure to verify in my edit summary, along with Google Books

• KORK, KNUU, and the VOA Gold Medal Award remain uncited.

-http://www.aib.org.uk/ was replaced by the "RushPR" source; however, I had the same reservations about the former and also ran searches, although for VOA and Voice of America, the name of the award, the awards ceremony, etc, and came up with nothing other than VOA awards judges are consistently represented on the awards panel and VOA journalists consistently win multiple awards, including one for coverage of the end of the Sri Lankan conflict.

-I added the Google Books citation to replace an Amazon.com purchasing page. I noted the Google Books source as an exception to the citation's general failure to verify in my edit summary, along with the Waseda marketing board

• UNLV, Thomas Edison State College, graduate level studies, American Military University, American University, Bath Spa University, Harvard University and Mountain State University are all uncited.

-I marked the dead link http://www.qrz.com/w7voa as such; it was replaced with http://www.qrz.com/db/w7voa . I do not share Herostratus' confidence in the quality of this source.

-I should point out the distinction between being of the opinion that ham radio as a whole being unimportant as a subject, and notable figures in ham radio being unimportant; there is some discussion of this at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tsuneyoshi Yamano; looking for rationales in regard to that article's inclusion is how I came across this article in the first place.

• HL9OA (Korea) is uncited by the QRZ source, as are the (countries) of all those call signs

-My removal of the "executive producer for the documentary 'The History of America's Secret Casinos.'" material and the http://www.voanews.com/english/SriLankaConflictZone.cfm dead link are two of my changes still in the article. "Casinos" was sourced by filmbaby.com, a site for self-promotion.

Anarchangel (talk) 00:14, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Well. I don't know about the earlier refs. I would say that, based on the current refs, that Steven L Herman almost certainly is a broadcast correspondent and bureau chief for the Voice of America, and he is based in Seoul, and he did create a book which was published. Beyond that, there is not much in the article that is both properly referenced and important.

• I'm willing to accept the source that he is a ham. However, this is not important.
• I'm willing to accept the source that he served a term as President of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. However, I doubt that this is important. I would assume that the foreign correspondents in Japan mostly probably hang around a lot together, and sure they have a formal organization and somebody has to take turns being president. How notable all this is I'm not sure. Probably not very.
• I'm willing to accept the source that he is formally associated with the entity Waseda Marketing Forum. However, I doubt that this is important, although I'm not sure.

However, this is marker of notability (not saying its enough of a marker to support an article, but it's something):

"Herman's articles, columns and opinion pieces have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Far Eastern Economic Review, Harvard Summer Review, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Japan Times, Popular Communications, Proceedings (U.S. Naval Institute), Radio World, Skyward, Shukan Bunshun, South China Morning Post and the Wall Street Journal.

The problem is, the ref for this no good, so we can't include this info in the article. But surely there must be some other ref that shows this. And if this can be shown to be true, the guy probably gets to have an article.

Not in my opinion, though. I use the "typical accomplished person" standard, which in my opinion is not enough to have an article. A lot of people get advanced degrees and go on to have successful careers in their field, and are competent, likable, energetic, and ambitious. It's inevitable that these people will sit on this board and that board and be chairman of this fund drive and that local professional association. But it's not enough. You have to have someone write about you, in my opinion. I see articles by the subject here but no articles about the subject.

If we include just the top one-tenth of one percent of accomplished people in the world, we would need to add biographical articles totaling twice the number of article that we now have on all subjects combined. Do we want to do this? I don't know. But you'd have a hard time getting consensus that we shouldn't do this, I think.

Anyway. Absent some better refs, the article needs to be scrubbed down to the approximately three sentences that are supported by refs, in my opinion. Herostratus (talk) 04:55, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Request from subject

The subject of this bio has expressed displeasure with the article, here.

I'm not certain that this person is notable (not saying he's not either, just haven't considered the matter closely yet), but let's vet the refs first. Herostratus (talk) 17:11, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

He looks like a low notability person with a job on the telly to me, nothing of specific notability. I would happily delete him, low nobility television journalist/reporter. - he is not wiki notable, the stuff he reports is wiki notable but he is not notable at all - not at all. Off2riorob (talk) 17:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Is this true? He has written a published book. That alone would make him notable in the eyes of some editors. If you want to nominate the article for AfD, that'd be justified. Whether or not it'd pass I don't know. Herostratus (talk) 17:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

In this media driven world we now live in I and anyone else that can be bothered can write and publish a book a day before breakfast, the issue would be, is that book notable, in this case the answer is no, not at all. Off2riorob (talk) 17:41, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but could you get someone to publish it in hardcopy with color photos and everything? [http://www.amazon.com/Bhutan-Color-2007-Himalayan-Journalist/dp/0965561429/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1302370783&sr=1-1 here] is the book at Amazon. It'll set you back $73, so it's not like it was run off on a mimeograph machine. I can't find anything on Nama Press... there is a [Hari-Nama Press] but they appear not to be the publisher... Oh wait, maybe it is Nama Productions... they are in Union Square of all places... but they seem to only make films... at any rate, not a big publishing house FWIW... I'm not saying that writing this book makes the person notable, I'm saying that I suppose an AfD would garner some "Keep, published author" votes (maybe not, I don't hang around AfD much anymore). By all means AfD it and let's see, though. Herostratus (talk) 17:52, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think I will AFD it as we have a lot of associated users from the reporting sector and I have nominated similar television workers from other countries that were kept by users from that country, sadly, I doubt if a deletion request would be successful but I am watching and that is the correct position imo and if I see an opportunity to get rid of it I will jump in, for the time being improvement is a good option, regards. Off2riorob (talk) 18:28, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Vetting refs

Edit conflict with above... I started looking through the refs, not sure if I should go on if the article is to be AfD'd... here's what I got so far:

• http://www.insidevoa.com/media-relations/experts/117955284.html an internal VOA organ. Reliable for uncontentious statements of fact, I would suppose. Use to support the statement "is a broadcast correspondent and bureau chief for the Voice of America". Ref does support this.
• http://tvtokyo.com/steve.html. Not sure what "TV Tokyo" is but 1) it appears to be just some sort of directory or something rather than a newspaper or whatever, and 2) much of the material here seems to be a copy-paste from the VoA site (the above reference). So this appears to not be a good ref. It's used to source that statement either that he had a piece or pieces numerous publications (or that he has been published in the WSJ, not clear). Since it's a word-for-for copy of the VoA site and less reliable, it's not acceptable.
• http://www.fccj.or.jp/node/1828 is an organ of the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan. The reliability of an internal club organ is probably not high, depending on the material it supports. It supports "...one-year term as President of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (FCCJ)" so it would be reliable for this, I would say.
• The next ref is an exact repeat of #3. The next one is also TV Tokyo, but a different page: http://tvtokyo.com/19-16905.pdf. It support the statement "On July 14, 2009 the Tokyo District Court awarded Herman, as plaintiff, more than Yen 1,700,000 in his civil libel case filed against conspiracy theorist Benjamin Fulford and Fulford's publisher (Herman vs. Fulford, Fusosha & M. Katagiri)" Unfortunately it's in Japanese, and since it's a PDF I can't even run it through machine translation. I wish I knew more about TV Tokyo. The site's home page just says "TOKYO RADIO & TELEVISION DIRECTORY" and appears to be just a list of links to other sites... I would wish for an article from The Japan Times or the Yomiuri Shimbun or something rather than this... I would not be inclined to accept this ref as a reliable source.
• The next ref is http://www.wasedamarketing.com/staticpages/index.php/board is an internal organ of the the Waseda Marketing Forum, which appears to be some kind of professional association or something (not sure). At any rate, its only used to source the assertion that Herman is on it's advisory board and it's reliable as a source for that assertion, I would say. Whether this is worthwhile information is another matter.
• The next ref is http://www.rushprnews.com/2009/11/06/voa-correspondent-wins-international-broadcasting-award-for-sri-lanka-coverage. The "PR" in "RushPR" does seem indeed to mean public relations, and their "about us" page says that they are a "public relations social media newswire"... not clear exactly what that means, but at least part of what they do is, I think, write and publish press-release-type things. It's used to source that statement "his 2009 coverage of the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War won an Association for International Broadcasting International Media Excellence Award" and I would say that it is not a good source for that. However, AIB has a website and here is their list of 2009 award winners. Unfortunately its neither HTML nor PDF but some kind of proprietary page-presentation software program which I can't get to work very well - it seems to be poorly designed or executed and is essentially unusable - and which we couldn't use as a source (we can't use programs as sources). However, it does have a search function, and the string "Herman" returns no result, so either the search function doesn't work or Herman didn't get an award in 2009 or I'm missing something. At any rate, it's probably not important, the AIB awards look to be basically log-rolling and probably not worth mentioning (granted, one could say this of the the Oscars and Emmys etc. also, but they are inherently notable and the AIB awards probably not).
  • (OK, to update on this, another search found what I think is referred to: The AIB did give a "Commended" (which is kind of like a silver medal in this case) to VoA's coverage of the war in Sri Lanka. However, Herman is not mentioned by name (no one is, and this seems usual for the AIB, the commendation is for the coverage or I guess you could say for the whole team). Anyway, assuming that Herman was involved in this coverage (I assume this is true), its a bit of a stretch to say "his coverage" won an award. At any rate, we don't have a reliable source that we can use for any of this, so it would have to be removed, I would say.) Herostratus (talk) 19:57, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
• The next ref is http://books.google.com/books?id=l5WjJwAACAAJ, a link to Google Books. It supports that assertion that Herman authored the book Bhutan in Color and is reliable for that assertion.
• The last ref is http://www.qrz.com/db/w7voa and is used to support the assertion that Herman has a ham radio license. I don't know what QRZ is but without checking its probably reliable for that assertion. Whether this is important is another matter. Herostratus (talk) 19:42, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

refs possible

[1] finds him cited in the NYT. Steve Herman, a Voice of America correspondent who is in Fukushima Prefecture, where Japanese officials are struggling to contain the damage at a nuclear plant, reports on Twitter that he, like many people in Japan and around the world, is following the latest news from the plant by watching Japan’s state broadcaster, NHK. (Within the past hour Mr. Herman observed a change in tone by the state broadcaster’s journalists and guests, writing on Twitter: “NHK on-set commentators [are] being openly critical now of contradictory and opaque communications coming from [the] Japanese government.” [2] also NYT for him in North Korea article. Several more. Enough named quotes to meet notability in any case (using NYT usage as a gold standard). Clean the BLP, but I dount an AfD makes sense. Collect (talk) 16:46, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm agnostic about whether he's notable enough for an article. The refs you note are from a blog, but a NY Times blog and so a very good source. They do prove to my satisfaction that the 1) Herman is indeed a correspondent for the Voice of America, 2) he did report from Japan on the recent unpleasantness, and 3) Robert Mackey at the NYT reads his Twitter feeds and considers them worth citing, which is a marker of notability I would think. Herostratus (talk) 19:06, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

[3] VOA cite. [4] PC magazine. [5] Washington Post cite. [6] BBC News. Events in Japan have pretty much settled this. Collect (talk) 22:20, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

-edit conflict-The first NYT blog (I disagree about it being a very good source; I would say, NYT x blog(usually not OK) = OK) is furthermore reporting the report of someone unnamed, reporting on SLH ("Mr. Herman observed a change"). Their report states that SLH tweeted about something, namely gossip between "NHK on-set commentators", whoever they are. Thankfully, at the bottom of the blog page. The second says nothing about SLH other than SLH tweeted that someone else said something. Welcome to the 21st Century. More of this quality would be worse, not better.

And so it proved to be.

1. Another VOA source.
2. The Washington Post is actually about NHK reporting; Herman reports for NHK, so NHK quote him so they can get someone who supposedly does not work for NHK, because they can say he also works for VOA.
3. is not only not about SLH, it is not about anything. It is overtly a collection of news snippets from other sources. The man on the street gets quoted. Reporters write stories; all of them, not just the notable ones. Reporters have always been quoted by other news sources- doesn't make them notable, just a source to fudge a citation with. WP BLPs, on the other hand, have to have sources written expressly about them, not referring to them obliquely or quoting them. The matter is not "pretty much settled" at this time. Anarchangel (talk) 00:14, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

\ Still in the news per [7] NPR, and [8] ABC. Collect (talk) 13:52, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Moving forward

Well, it's hard to keep this all straight, so what I've done is, removed all the material that is unsourced or sourced with citations that, especially considering that this is a WP:BLP, of insufficient quality per WP:RS. This is based on my assessment of the references in the "vetting the references" section above.

I also removed the ham-radio material. This was sourced, but is trivial in my opinion. This is arguable.

As to the other sources that are talked about in the sections above, I'm not inclined myself to vet sources that are not in the article nor to to add material from sources that are on the talk page, since I don't have a particular interest in this subject. But if others want to add in material based on these sources that of course is fine, provided of course that they are of sufficient reliability for a BLP. Herostratus (talk) 05:30, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Nice one, at least its a good tidy cited position that can be developed on, thanks. Off2riorob (talk) 15:58, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Enough already

Well, User:HL9OA restored all the unsourced and extraneous material in the article (with an edit summary of "[Restore] malicious and unwarranted deletion of relevant and validated material". According to this, User:HL9OA is Steven L. Herman himself. He might be, or -- and this would be a lot worse -- this might be a false flag and he might be an enemy of Herman trying to make Herman look like Roland Hedley -- that is, a vainglorious, narcissistic, and ridiculous news talking head who thinks he's a lot more important than he really is.

Anyway, if it's the former, it's a WP:Autobiography issue, and if it's the latter it's a WP:BLP issue. And Herman -- or his bete noir, whichever it is -- has a dynamic IP address, I'd infer, and so we're likely to see this again. So let's keep an eye on this. Herostratus (talk) 02:37, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

It's on my watch list. I will keep an eye on it. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:59, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit request on 1 May 2012

Please add that Herman is now also the President of the Seoul Foreign Correspondents Club. Reference: http://www.sfcc.or.kr/eng/sfcc/sfcc_ceo.asp

121.160.92.154 (talk) 05:58, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

• Done, thanks for providing a reference. Monty₈₄₅ 04:53, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 6 October 2013

Please note that Herman is now based in Bangkok as VOA's Southeast Asia bureau chief. Reference: https://www.opcofamerica.org/news/voas-herman-tours-north-korea

Done. Thanks for the update. --Stfg (talk) 17:30, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 September 2016

I have left my posting in Thailand and am now VOA's Senior Diplomatic Correspondent, based at the State Department in Washington, DC.

190.255.36.82 (talk) 19:53, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Also, please keep WP:COI in mind — Andy W. (talk · ctb) 20:51, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Please see: http://www.insidevoa.com/a/178822.html

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 10:33, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 March 2017

Steven L. Herman has been named VOA's White House Bureau Chief, effective Monday, February 27th, 2017, and is now based in Voice of America's Washington, DC bureau.

Please update "Steven L Herman is a broadcast correspondent and chief of Voice of America's Southeast Asia bureau, based in Bangkok.[1]" to:

"Steve Herman is Voice Of America's White House Bureau Chief, currently based in Washington, DC."

Corq (talk) 12:55, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. -- Dane ^talk 21:53, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Corq (talk) 05:20, 7 March 2017 (UTC) At this time, the 'InsideVOA' citation source reflected in his original wiki (above) has also been updated to reflect his current status.

Additional sources have been provided below. Thank you for your time in reviewing.

1. Muckrack Bio: https://muckrack.com/w7voa/bio
2. http://www.insidevoa.com/a/178822.html

 Done - although I kept "Steven L Herman", rather than change it to "Steve Herman", as this is how VoA refer to him, as well as our article title - Arjayay (talk) 10:22, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Corq (talk) 00:38, 8 March 2017 (UTC) Thank you all for the guidance! Much appreciate your efforts!

References

Edit request: political interference from senior USAGM appointees

NPR reports subject was the _target of possibly unlawful political interference from two senior USAGM appointees: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/04/919266194/political-aides-investigate-voa-white-house-reporter-for-anti-trump-bias. Suggested addition: On October 4, 2020, NPR reported that two Pack aides had compiled a report on Herman's social media postings and other writings in an attempt to charge him with a conflict of interest, and that the agency released a conflict of interest policy stating in part that a "journalist who on Facebook 'likes' a comment or political cartoon that aggressively attacks or disparages the President must recuse themselves from covering the President."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Folkenflik |first1=David |title=VOA White House Reporter Investigated For Anti-Trump Bias By Political Appointees |url=https://www.npr.org/2020/10/04/919266194/political-aides-investigate-voa-white-house-reporter-for-anti-trump-bias |accessdate=7 October 2020 |publisher=National Public Radio |date=4 October 2020}}</ref> 156.98.118.108 (talk) 17:22, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Uncited material in need of citations

I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:CS, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, WP:BLP, WP:NOR, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 15:11, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

I am Steven L Herman. I am no longer White House bureau chief and am now VOA's chief national correspondent. See: https://www.voanews.com/author/steve-herman/yuqqt and https://www.sej.org/sejspotlight-steve-herman-chief-national-correspondent-voice-america If someone is able to update the entry it would be greatly appreciated. W7voa (talk) 15:15, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Early life

Steven L Herman attended UNLV in the mid-1970s and later graduated from Thomas Edison State College. He has studied at the graduate level at numerous institutions, including American Military University, American University, Bath Spa University and Harvard University.

Career

Herman worked as a print and broadcast reporter for the Associated Press in West Virginia and Washington, D.C. before returning to Japan in 1990 as a reporter/producer for Asia Now, which aired weekly on PBS. From 1996 to 2000, he was the senior executive in Japan for the parent company of Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Herman was elected for five consecutive years (1998-2002) to serve as Chairman of The Foreign Press in Japan (FPIJ) after completing a one-year term as President of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (FCCJ). For the 2005–6 term, he was again on the FCCJ Board of Directors and continued to serve as the radio representative on the FPIJ Executive Committee until his assignment to South Asia.

Herman was President of the Japan-America Society of The American University and the Charleston (W.Va.) professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. During his career he served on boards of directors of the SPJ Las Vegas chapter and the California-Nevada AP Television-Radio Association (APTRA). He is a voting member of the Asian American Journalists Association, the Foreign Correspondents' Club of South Asia, the Overseas Press Club of America and the South Asian Journalists Association. Herman served on the Advisory Board of the Waseda Marketing Forum, associated with the Business School of Waseda University in Tokyo. In 2006 Herman served on the Japan panel to select recipients for the journalism fellows of the Fulbright Program.

His print work includes two novels: Last Assignment and Sunset 2020.