Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:58:56 -0800WeeblyFri, 26 Mar 2010 19:43:45 -0800http://www.weiyuzhang.net/1/post/2010/03/two-years-in-asia.html June 2009. Penang, Malaysia. Reading newspaper - "racial origins so intrinsic to our very being"; listening to leading scholars - "how to prioritize your audiences? 1. private sector 2. policy maker 3. academia"; watching TV - "MM Lee criticizes Penang's low speed of development"; visiting the house of Sun Yat-Sen - "Penang has changed Chinese history". This is Asia.

September 2009. Manila, the Philippines. Typhoon Ondoy crashed the ceiling of my conference hotel. Professional journalists were so concerned by bloggers and their amateur practices. Intramuros was surrounded by water. Aileen Baviera introduced the political scene - popular participation w/o competitive elections, rule of law w/o human rights, government responsiveness w/o transparency. National museum was under water. Dozens of journalists would be killed one month later in Maguindanao. This is Asia.

December 2009. KL, Malaysia. After presenting my paper, a question went like this - do you consider what you just talked about research (because research is supposed to challenge power)? I was meeting my collaborator during the break. Our keynote speaker looked at him and asked why you are here! They both happen to be scholar-musician. This is Asia.

January 2010. Shanghai and Nanjing, China. The air was crispy cold and I ran through Shanghai from the East to the West. I constantly wondered - how many cities are there in Shanghai? I spent most of my holiday shopping on taobao.com and soon forgot the inconvenience of GFW. Nanjing was only an apartment with an Internet access. This is home.

February 2010. Colombo, Sri Lanka. All my knowledge about this drop of tear came from three sources: Wiki, Lonely Planet, and a novel called Serendipity. Soldiers at check points stopped your vehicle with loaded guns. Cell phone vendors showed off their products - all made in China!  The wind from the sea was different in Galle Face hotel as the sunshine was different in barefoot. Youngsters were holding a drinking party on an empty terrace. The midnight of Colombo 6 was unusually quiet. Michael Jackson was unusually familiar, bringing back memories. This is Asia.  

March 2010. Delhi, India. When waiting for traffic lights, a girl knocked the window and pointed to her mouth. She rolled her eyes when we handed her a pack of fries and 1 rupee. Dilli Haat has the most beautiful fabrics you have ever seen. The salesman asked for 1500 rupee for a blouse which we bought later at 400. I said if taking out Indians and putting in Chinese, Delhi is just like a northern city in China. My Kenyan friend said if taking out Indians and putting in Kenyans, Delhi is just like Nairobi. Is this Asia?

March 2008. Singapore. Before flying back to the US, Millie smiled at me and welcomed me to CNM.

Here I am, Asia. 

]]>Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:35:40 -0800http://www.weiyuzhang.net/1/post/2008/11/onlinejournalism.htmlI thought my enthusiasm for journalism has long died since I decided to turn down the job offers from two Chinese "party-organ" newspapers in 2001. But it does not seem to be the case until I encountered quite a few events/people/perspectives recently.

The first one is my visit to Manila when typhoon ripped off the ceiling of my hotel in Makita city. Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism was celebrating its 20th anniversary and held a three-day conference on democracy and media. A haunting ghost that keeps bothering these respectful journalists (most of whom are on the front line of fighting for freedom and democracy in their countries) is neither the corrupted and ineffective government nor the anti-democratic social forces. It is - new media! Yes, the Internet is more troublesome than the powerful institutions because when journalists share some consensus on how to fight with the established powers, they rarely associate themselves with bloggers who try to report news.

My colleague and dear friend Lokman Tsui wrote a small but insightful piece on technology and journalism in the book "The Changing Faces of Journalism". He pointed out that technology threatens journalism in two ways - its institution and its principles/values. It is clearly the case that my fellow conference attendees are afraid of bloggers who never get trained "properly" and know little about the "professional" practices - they are not subject to the constraints of the journalism institution. The other facet of this worry is that even journalists are willing to incorporate bloggers into their routine, the key is to identify the "qualified" ones - the ones who share the same values and hold to the same principles.

One week after Makita, I was headed to Association of Internet Researchers 10th annual conference in Milwaukee, USA. What was big in this year's conference is online activism - how activists use the technology to organize social movements, dissident actions, and so on. Twitter, Second Life, and Facebook. These are all new tools that excited us. But when activists post pictures of policemen firing tear gas on twitter, are they doing a journalist job as well? An interesting concept that I mostly find in developing countries is called activist journalism. The values and principles associated with this model are quite different from what we often see in the NYTimes type of journalism. Objectiveness is surrendered to activism. Balance is considered as lack of political progressiveness. One journalist in Makita asked this question: "who do you speak for?" That is where I see the possibility of two worlds - the traditional journalism and the online journalism - reconcile with each other.

If journalism is not just for discovering truth (even partial truth), if journalism in transitional societies has goals more than objectiveness, online journalism could be considered as following a different model and should have its own legitimate role in journalism, too.

The circle became full after I met Prof. Yuen-Ying Chan from the Journalism and Media Studies Center, the University of Hong Kong. The technology training they provide to journalists is ahead of many advanced bloggers (Link1, Link2). So why not we train journalists as well as bloggers to be activists who advocate for social changes? Put the occupational pride aside, embrace the technology with principles and values - not necessarily the NYTimes type - and in this moment, I regret my change of life course from the journalist profession.

But, I can still teach!

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