Perhaps you’ve seen the cover of the most recent New Yorker, drawn by Barry Blitt. Perhaps you, like Barack Obama’s campaign, were offended by the image of the candidate dressed in Muslim garb, mimicking that of Osama bin Laden, who is pictured in a framed portrait over a fireplace, wherein an American flag is burning. Michelle Obama is a Black Panther in extreme, toting a Kalashnikov and giving her husband that famous fist-bump (or is it a terrorist fist-jab?). It’s possible I have no taste or decency, which is why I laughed.
Satire is tough, and good satire almost necessarily offends someone. The trick is offending the “right” person, I suppose.
David Horsey makes a better stab at the subject in the Seattle PI, benefited by pseudo-controversy and the ability to bounce off Blitt’s piece.
I got to thinking about these illustrations–both potentially offensive to some–while reading Imagethief’s reaction to the new That’s Beijing, which should be considered offensive to all. A snippet:
So, how is it? It’s Chinglish monthly, and much expense appears to have been spared on copy editing. It has amateurish layout and design, to the point of occasional unreadability. It’s lifeless and sports a gloomy, stark cover that says nothing about what is in the magazine. (The cover relates to an article on the Wenchuan earthquake. This may explain the stark design, but if so it comes a bit late and is a strange approach for an expat entertainment magazine). The back page is a grade school crossword puzzle. There may be something of value in the magazine, but you have to wade through the desert to get to it.
Some background on this: That’s Beijing was the mainstay lifestyle magazine for English-speaking Beijing denizens until this spring, when its publisher pulled the copyright from True Run Media. The magazine continues in all but name, Imagethief reports, under the new masthead, the Beijinger. (Disclosure: I wrote a bit for Urbane, an offshoot of the original That’s).
Will Moss should earn a model worker badge for typing out a passage from the magazine so readers and fellow bloggers could properly dismember it. Hell, he deserves an award just for reading it.
The shower: Conversation between American guy and Chinese girl
Q. Why don’t Western people take showers at night?
A. Some do. Especially after moving to Beijing. There’s no doubt it makes sense to shower before hitting the sheets. But many Westerners, before coming to Beijing, lived relatively comfortable lives, with an air conditioned home, car and office, and no sweat or stench at the end of the day. Another way some westerners manage their stench is through creams, powders and deodorants, which all work to limit perspiration and odor. When clothes or bed sheets get too dirty, the washing machine and drying machine makes every thing as good as new in just a couple of hours. It is easy to see why with this sort of day-to-day routine the nightly shower might drop out of the picture.
Q. But now that my boyfriend is in Beijing, shouldn’t he shower before sleeping? There’s lots of pollution here.
A. The simple answer is yes, he probably should. But old habits die hard. After doing things his own way for 20 to 30 years, he’s bound to have formed his own patterns and habits about sleeping, waking up and cleaning his body. Many Westerners sweat a lot during the night and so require a shower in the morning if they want to look presentable. Differences in hair and skin call for different patters of care. Imagine how you’d feel if you suddenly gave up your nightly shower. You might find it harder to go to sleep. Many Westerners rely on their morning shower to start their day, and a shower at night throws that immune system out of balance.
Q. Why don’t Chinese people shower in the morning?
A. Some do. Especially if they have a skin and body type that sweats during the night, or hair type that requires special care or conditioners. Otherwise, it’s not uncommon for many of the people you work with to fall out of bed and drag combs across their heads on their way to the bus. This makes even more sense when you remember that it was just eight hours or so previously that they took a shower, followed by a good night’s sleep in a clean bed. So what is there to clean?
Q. Why do Chinese people insist that I shower at night?
A. Because 1) they are concerned about your health, and 2) they think you’re totally disgusting for not doing it. If you were dating someone who never, ever brushed their teeth, would you kiss them?
When I built my online clip file last year, I used Wordpress, the same software I use on my blog. It’s easy to use, I could install it quickly and tweak it as needed. It’s good for SEO without much effort. And best of all, it’s free.
But Wordpress really is a blogging platform. It’s meant for conversational media, like this blog (in theory, anyway). With my clip file, I turned off comments on posts, because I didn’t envision that as a place to have a conversation. That’s what this blog is here for. Plus Twitter. And Facebook. Or Wired Journalists or FriendFeed or [insert social media darling of the month].
Today, though, I got to thinking: What would a conversation about my old clips look like? Maybe somebody wants to talk about the time Henry Hearns, mayor of Lancaster and bishop of a major church, hired a convicted child molester to help plan his day camp. It’s possible somebody has a critique of my multimedia projects, or an idea for improving the site itself.
So I’m thinking of opening up comments there, but first I thought I’d ask anyone passing by here. Should I?
Quick recap of Saturday. CopyCamp was awesome. No other word for it. Anytime a newspaper opens its doors and lets its readers say what could be done better, that’s a good thing, and the Mercury News reporters and editors who came can’t be thanked enough. I don’t know if I could have after ending the week the way they did.
Much as the discussion was haunted by the latest round of job cuts, there was, I think, still a feeling of optimism, if not from within the newspaper, then at least from outside, and that may be worth more in the long run.
My impression is that people need this newspaper, that readers want it to be better and believe it can be. Of the two dozen or so who came (admittedly, a limited sample in a circulation area of several million) most still felt some sense of ownership over the paper, or at least a longing for it.
“People are still passionate and do still care,” Chris O’Brien said at day’s end.
More tomorrow, when I’m more awake. (I spent the rest of the day with my grandparents, hence the late and weary posting.) Stay tuned.
I’m finishing up a long project on second-tier Chinese cities for a real estate newsletter, and clearly, I now have second-tier cities on the brain.
CN Reviews posted a list of the Middle Kingdom’s top 30 universities, according to the China Academy of Management Science (h/t China Law Blog), and I couldn’t help count how many were in smaller cities. For purposes of consistency, I’m calling Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen the first tier, and anything else is second-tier or lower. By that standard, two-thirds (20/30) of China’s top 30 campuses are in second-tier cities.
This could be as much a function of there being more (duh) cities in the second tier than the first, but its interesting to watch places once on the fringe rise to become metropolitan centers in their own right. If the universities listed below are indeed the best in the country, it wouldn’t surprise me to see those cities begin to draw more research talent and more high-value investment as their campuses gain notoriety.
Anyway, here’s the list. As all rankings of this sort go, add salt to taste.
Top 30 China Universities in 2008
Tsinghua University: Beijing
Beijing University: Beijing
Zhejiang University: Hangzhou, Zhejiang
Shanghai Jiaotong University: Shanghai
Nanjing University: Nanjing, Jiangsu
Fudan University: Shanghai
University of Science and Technology of China: Hefei, Anhui
Huazhong University of Science and Technology:Wuhan, Hubei
Wuhan University: Wuhan, Hubei
Xi’an Jiaotong University: Xi’an, Shanxi
Jilin University: Changchun, Jilin
Zhongshan University: Guangzhou, Guangdong
Sichuan University: Chengdu, Sichuan
Harbin Institute of Technology: Harbin, Heilongjiang
Shandong University: Jinan, Shandong
Nankai University: Tianjin
Tianjin University: Tianjin
Beijing Normal University: Beijing
Central South University: Changsha, Hunan
Southeast University: Nanjing, Jiangsu
Xiamen University: Xiamen, Fujian
Renmin University: Beijing
Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics: Beijing
Dalian University of Technology: Dalian, Liaoning
Northwest Polytechnical University: Xi’an, Shanxi
Tongji University: Shanghai
South China University of Technology: Guangzhou, Guangdong
Chongqing University: Chongqing
East China Normal University: Shanghai
Lanzhou University: Lanzhou, Gansu
(For what it’s worth, I studied Chinese at Dalian University of Technology)
Update: I took out the Chinese names for the universities listed, because Wordpress, in its current incarnation, doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. If anyone knows how to fix this…
My Saturday gig sent me to Tennyson High School this week where alumni celebrated the school’s 50th anniversary. I was tasked with adding unspecified multimedia to an already-written print story. I went, grabbed photos, audio and nachos, and built a slide show that I’m in no way happy with.
Here’s where I think I went wrong: I tried to tell a linear story, and I fell all over myself doing it.
First, Soundslides was the wrong tool. It was wrong because, for the most part, it is a tool for telling stories that go from beginning to end, or for capturing one concise moment or idea. It’s perfect for photo essays, or profiles, or focused narratives.
This was none of those. There was a Big Story, to be sure: a sweeping narrative of five decades, a sense of history in the place and hope for the future. Not very visual, though (especially lacking historical photos).
But this wasn’t really one story, or rather just one story. It was hundreds. Threads of every student and teacher and administrator’s life at this school make up the real story, not beginning to end but overlapping in a way that’s tough to boil down to 400 words, or a dozen photos with two minutes of sound.
Were I writing for print, I could probably wax with some eloquence about the coalescing of memories, the nostalgia free of longing, the connections between oldexperienced and young.
But really, most of that would be utter bullshit.
The truth of Tennyson High is that it’s not my school. I was there on a Saturday, and I’ve never been there before. If I did my job right, I served as a conduit for others to remember and to share, and I got the hell out of the way.
Which brings me to my second error: I got in the way. By trying to force a spectrum of memory into a linear story, I made myself the arbiter of recollection. I sat over GarageBand deciding whose story deserved to be told. That’s pretty much a no-win situation for something both personal (to those involved) and trivial (in the grand scheme).
So, for next time, what’s the best way to cover something like this?
First, start early. We know this is going to happen, when and where. We know there is going to be community interest. We know generally what the Big Story will be. There’s time to build some infrastructure.
Infrastructure? Yeah, I said it. Roads and bridges, or in this case, a space for people to share memories, exchange photos, plan to meet up. Much of this is already out there, so it’s just a matter of cultivating and curating, hopefully.
Flickr is a good place to start. Make a group and invite people to scan photos of Tennyson in the old days. Or last week. Doesn’t really matter because we want them all. Make it clear that the newspaper (and it’s website) intend to use some in print and online features, but also aggregate as many as possible under the company banner. Whenever I’ve covered community events, the number one complaint I would hear back is about whose kid didn’t get their photo in the paper. Online, everyone gets their photo in the paper (so to speak).
Next, stories: It needs to be easy. Set up an email address, a simple web form, a snail mail address and a voice mail line (Cinch might work here). Again, invite people to share memories of their (or their kids, parents, etc) time at Tennyson. Also encourage them to attach photos to these memories, but don’t require it.
All of this needs to be promoted in the print edition ferociously. People should see it at least two weeks before and every day until the event. Make it obvious, and make it easy.
Next, get all the photos, stories, voices and other extraneous bits into one place. Make them sortable and shareable. This is probably the toughest part, since it might mean going outside most newspapers’ content management systems in order to bring people in. Do what you gotta do.
When in doubt, go with what’s out there. Most of this can be done with Ning (it’s free, at least to start). Drupal, too, has modules to pull in threads from other sites, and I’m sure it’s wicked easy in Django (I will learn this, eventually).
But if any of that looks hard, run back to Ning, get something up, and get talking to people, because that’s the real juice for this. It’s not about technology or websites or brands. The point is to create a vibrant portrait of a community that already exists. People, first and last, and get out of the way.
Journalism, like so many crafts, is often about the process more than the product. A good story will show the trail of reporting and let the reader in on the oblique conventions of policy or public happenings.
Online, too, there is a need for engagement, for openness, not just by those we cover, but by us, the journalists.
But in many ways, the process of getting newspapers from ink on paper to text and multimedia online is getting bogged down by process, when more people really ought to be thinking about the product.
I spoke to a reporter yesterday who is fuming over his paper’s website (it was a private chat about a paper I’d like to work for, so no names here). It’s a conversation I’ve had with friends at several papers, owned by different companies and using different technology. In most cases, there’s a similar theme:
Higher ups don’t get the web, and editors’ eyes glaze over at talk of moderating comments, integrating multimedia, building something that, as Rob Curley says, moves the needle.
What they’re getting stuck on, too often, is the technical details. They’re not thinking about what they want; they’re thinking about how to get there.
Don’t get me wrong, getting there is important, but the underlying code is not something every reporter, photographer and editor needs to, or even should be thinking about. Most of what we do online, as in print, calls for social science more than computer science.
I’ve done this before, helped build a website as the non-technical guy on the team. When we started DalianDalian, Alex was the coder, while Rick hunted for new technology to integrate and I…drew boxes and lines on notebook paper. I would hand those sketches to Alex and say, “Build this.” And to his credit, he did, and even encouraged me to keep doing it (instead of laughing at me or telling me to go learn PHP).
There are plenty of tools I use everyday that I don’t fully understand the underlying mechanics of:
I know how to use all of these things, to be sure, but I couldn’t rebuild Wordpress any more than I could rebuild my car engine. That doesn’t stop me from hitting the gas or posting to my blog. If something breaks that I can’t fix, that’s what professionals are for.
And here’s where I think a lot of newspapers get off track: knowing what takes a technical professional (building and fixing tools) and what anybody should be able to do (use those tools).
In some ways, not knowing the intimate workings of available technology can be useful. It helps you think about what you want to build, not what you probably can build. Here are two ways creating something new can go:
I have these tools
I think I can produce this, that and the other thing
Or:
I want to build this awesome thing
What tools do I need to get it done?
Again, this is a very real process I go through when producing something online. I built a map this week, and I knew what I wanted it to look like (having explained it in an email to my editor) long before I chose Zeemaps to make it happen. Over the course of putting together the underlying database (taking notes in a Google Notebook, pasting into a Google Spreadsheet), I sent messages out over Twitter asking for suggested tools.
I settled on Zeemaps (which I already liked) because it got me closest to what I’d already envisioned with the least headache.
Bottom line: Systems are imperfect. People have limited skills, and there’s no way everyone can (or should try to) learn everything. But waiting for something ideal, or making excuses because a particular tool isn’t on the table, is going to produce a whole lot of nothing.
Simple question, tough answer. Alex found a good dataset, which we put on DalianDalian. Well, the question has come back.
I’m writing a cover story on real estate in China’s second-tier cities for an investment newsletter, and as part of the project, I’ve decided to compile a database of locales, most of which people outside of China have likely never heard (admittedly, there are some I couldn’t have put on a map before starting this piece).
I have a spreadsheet defining cities, provinces, regions, population, major industries, notable real estate and other notes. Most of that information is widely available, especially since these cities are now making a major push for investment. But population has proven tricky. For the map I’ll eventually build off this database, I think I’m going to attach the following disclaimer/explainer:
Counting how many people live in any Chinese city is an imperfect science. For this dataset, we’ve relied on a variety of sources, including government websites, published reports and other online resources.
Part of the problem is the population itself. Chinese cities have been undergoing a massive growth spurt since 1978, when the government first began letting people move to urban areas en masse. Most of this movement is legal, and counted in official surveys. Residents register with local authorities in order to receive government services, such as health and education. But unofficial migration is also widespread, and most cities have large segments that remain uncounted (and unserved).
Further blurring statistics is the way a city is defined. In Dalian, for example, the urban center–what might be called the city proper–is home to about 2 million people. Add in the surrounding “towns” such as Zhuanghe (pop. 700,000) or Pulandian (pop. 900,000)–both of which are a mix of city and countryside–and the total is above 6 million. Different sources count different areas, making a definitive number hard to come by.
This is a long way of saying: Take these numbers with a grain of salt, and please, forgive us if you’ve seen a different number elsewhere.
What should news organizations stop doing, today, immediately, to make more time for innovation?
A scene from the Grey’s Anatomy season finale I saw last night comes to mind:
A young man is trapped in quick-dry concrete, which he jumped into because he thought it would impress a girl. While he’s moaning in ER–the cement is leaching water from his body, burning his skin, crushing him slowly–the team of doctors, who are all highly gifted and well-trained, is arguing over what has to be done first.
Finally, the chief comes in, says stop arguing, each take a piece, and then everybody gets to work.
It’s a cheeky metaphor for newspapers, I know, but we do have a similar problem. There’s a lot to work on, all of it seems urgent–vital–and plenty of advice from all corners:
Go web first
Build a community around your content
Fix your CMS
Develop a video strategy
Develop a more general multimedia strategy
Reinvent classifieds and job ads
Embrace mobile
etc
For individual journalists, the open list of possibilities is equally expansive. There are lists of lists of what every reporter could (and some say must) learn.
Audio
Video
Sound slides
Flash
(X)HTML
Photoshop
Programming
Blogging
Online community management
These are all good ideas, and all good skills. But too many places and too many reporters–myself included–are going in too many directions at once.
Trying to solve every problem in one shot–to build the perfect newsroom, indestructible CMS, that universal theory of everything–is almost guaranteed to leave you with an equally immense list of reasons why nothing can be done at all.
In the same way that trying to cover everything at once yields deep coverage at nothing, trying to fix everything at once is most likely to fix nothing.
So here’s my answer to Ryan’s question: Stop trying to fix everything. Sit back for a minute and think this out a bit.
On a strategic level, find the low-hanging fruit and the cheap solutions. Start small, really small, and build on successes. Getting any one thing right and nailed on the list above will do. Then do something else.
For individuals, same thing, except you need two. Will Sullivan calls these the Peace Out skills, the kind you can walk away with.
In a given week, I write for at least three publications, both in print and online (plus this much-neglected blog). Because I’m pretty much at the bottom of each respective totem poll, I tend to get assignments that are, well, befitting that altitude.
I did this at my last newspaper, too, those unglamorous bits and pieces, but since I had a regular beat there, it wasn’t all I did. I had stories that developed over time, that had new angles, and that weren’t just things we covered every year.
So let’s make some lemonade here. What can I learn doing stories that won’t win awards, that have no real controversy, that an editor would trust to a guy she sees at best once a week?
I used to complain about having to grind out stories, but damn, it made my writing better. And faster. It meant I didn’t wait to make phone calls or chit chat with sources that weren’t telling me stuff I needed to know. And I’m a better reporter because of it.
When my new editor tells me to cover a parade, I don’t even ask if I can maybe do something multimedia. I just build the slide show.
In my bag–same one I’ve lugged for five years, through four countries–is my laptop (MacBook), audio recorder (Zoom H2), point ‘n shoot (Canon A530), plus the notepad, pens, batteries, cords and a portable 80 GB hard drive.
I’m getting better at this, and it’s getting easier. Building a Soundslides piece takes about an hour. I’ve used photos from staff photographers, subjects and my own camera.
This week I’m going for video, which I haven’t done much of since leaving China. When I can put a two-minute story together in under two hours, I’ll start fine tuning.
Plenty of sites start out by asking for contributions. Everyblock doesn’t. Its first mission is to make data that’s already floating around the internet and locked in government file cabinets available and easy to access.
Tips for getting data:
Be nice: People will help you out if you’re polite. Duh.
Governments should focus on services: Making mashups and analyzing data is our job. The government’s job is to solve problems and serve its citizens.
Plot cities/agencies against each other: Tell New York what Chicago is providing. Let one agency know that their bureaucratic rivals are way more open and cooperative. It really does work.
2: The more local it gets, the more effort it takes; but the reward is bigger
Every city has different ways of managing data, and there are no national databases for things like building permits, restaurant inspections or even crime (San Francisco, for example, only specifies a zip code).
Private sites like Flickr, Yelp and others have APIs that work anywhere. A photo in San Francisco is the same as a photo in Chicago.
But it’s worth doing the work, Holovaty says. No one else is aggregating this much information on such a focused area.
3: Embrace hypertext: “Be of the web, not just on the web”
One question to ask when building a site like Everyblock or Chicago Crime: “Will my site work without maps?”
All this makes information easy to find, and easy to share.
4: Move beyond points
Some news applies to a whole neighborhood. Sometimes to a street. Sometimes a block.
When news affects an area, show an area, not a point. This is a bit trickier, technically, but data is more meaningful when it’s applied the right way. If information is only as specific as a city, your map doesn’t need to zoom down to street level. Keep it where it’s relevant.
5: Roll your own maps
Google maps are designed for getting directions. They include one-way streets, bus stops and BART stations. Plus, Google (or Yahoo, Microsoft, etc) decides how they look.
As Holovaty says: You wouldn’t make your corporate website with some generic Wordpress template. Why do that with your maps? Here’s how Everyblock made its maps.
Also notable: Everyblock takes out names to protect privacy. “We don’t want to make people Google-able.”
On how Everyblock will make money: “We have no freakin’ idea. We might go for another grant. We might go VC. We might magically dream up a business model.”
The last question is especially noteworthy: How do you get boundary data?
“We’ve had good luck with governments,” Holovaty said. And that’s a bigger thing than most people realize. American locations geocode pretty well. Try making a Google map in China, and you’ll find yourself staring at a sparsely populated satellite image with no streets and little searchable beyond major cites. And that’s an improvement.
It is possible to get street-level data in China, but only if you read Chinese. Go to ditu.google.com and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s what Xi’an looks like in Ditu, and here it is in English.
