Maria Korolov (Trombly)

Description vs. prescription

2009-02-16T19:10:00.000-08:00

I love the fact that there are always two kids of everything in the world... the binary system is so neat and orderly.

There are two kinds of grammarians: the prescriptivists and the descriptivists. The prescriptivists lay down the rules, then want other people to follow them. When someone splits an infinitive, for example, or ends a sentence with a preposition, the prescriptivists get very upset.

I fall into this category most of the time. As an editor, I spend a lot of time putting commas in their correct places and mediating subject-verb disagreements.

Descriptivists, by comparison, say that language is whatever it is that people talk and write. That language changes, and it changes all the time. And different groups speak slightly different languages, and as they move between groups, people will change their speaking and writing patterns -- just as they would, say, change their workout clothes for a business suit.

If you were to pick any two language points on the planet, it is possible to move from sub-group to sub-group until you're no longer speaking one language, and speaking another. (Before mass media, this was even more pronounced -- every village would have its own language, an amalgamation of the languages spoken by surrounding villages, plus their own unique take. Now some of the border languages are dying out. Sad.)

When I'm not an editor, I'm a language relativist. Obviously, at work, I think that AP Style is the be-all and end-all of existence. But, off duty, I don't believe it has any intrinsic superiority over, say, the slang spoken by rap artists or the various creole languages created by immigrant groups.

I believe the purpose of language -- as the purpose of fashion -- is not just communication but also group affiliation. This is why words that communicate perfectly well -- like "ain't" -- are so soundly condemned (by, say, rich people): they signify affiliation with an enemy tribe (for instance, poor people).

Now, plenty of educated, rich people split infinitives and end sentences with prepositions. So I'm siding with the descriptivists here, and saying, "Let them split!"

But there is one line over which I will not step -- I mean, there's one line that I won't step over -- "between you and I" will never replace "between you and me" to me.

In politics and leadership there are prescriptivists and descriptivists as well.

The former group lays out the theories and the rules, and sticks to the theories even as things go to pot. And when they go to pot -- as they are wont to do -- they blame not the theories but the people.

Descriptivists, by comparison, are natural populists. They can tell what the people want, what the people need, and get out ahead of the crowd. They are often derided for not having the courage of their convictions. But they do have courage, of a different sort: the courage to say that they are wrong, that times call for different measures.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and today's current financial meltdowns are both examples of what happens when leaders follow their convictions, their ideals, their political and market theories even as they depart further and further from reality. And, at some point, all theories start to depart from reality.

I love my work -- do my employees?

2009-02-11T17:06:00.000-08:00

My theory is, in China, the higher up you are the less work you do -- poor people on farms, in mines work the hardest.

If you're unemployed you scramble the hardest to feed yourself and family.

In the US and Europe, the poorest people don't work at all, get subsidies, the highest-paid people work super hard. I'm not saying that they do their jobs well -- just that they work a lot of hours.

In rich countries, work becomes its own reward -- a symbol of success and status. People complain about how many hours they work -- but, really, they're just bragging.

In China, I think, there's still the sense that people have to be forced to work, that it's low-status and demeaning.

In my office, my Chinese managers occasionally ask me why we don't fine employees for coming in late, not writing enough, stories, and so on.

Apparently, this is a common practice in Chinese companies (and in foreign ones here, too: see "Ghastly" conditions at HP, MS, Lenovo factories).

At first, I didn't understand this. What kind of horrible employer would dock employee pay for minor infractions? Safety violations, maybe, where the employees' own lives were at stake. And if you're an hourly employee then sure, you lose pay when you clock in late. You don't lose a day's pay -- you just lose the hour you're late. It's commensurate, not punitive.

I believe it will take time to change these attitudes but, most importantly, it will take the creation of a real safety net. Ironically China, even though a technically still a communist country, doesn't have many of the protections we take for granted in the US and Europe. There are no wholescale welfare support systems for the disabled, the sick, the elderly, the very young, the unemployed, or the very poor.

One of my European friends here said last week that his highest goal was to have influence. That's a pretty active goal. He wants to change things, to make an impact, and to be in a position where he can do this. Maybe the CEO or a VP of a company, he said. (I believe he's already reached this point -- but that's neither here nor there.)

In China -- especially with the older generation -- it seems that the main driver is respect. Not the Aretha Franklin R-E-S-P-E-C-T kind of respect, but the Godfather kind of respect, where people come and pay you obeisance. Or give you bribes, if you will. And you wave a little finger, and flunkies rush around to do your bidding. It's a passive kind of goal.

I think it's changing. The younger generation, which has grown up with shows like Friends, is starting to embrace the idea that interesting work is its own reward, and is even worth a loss of status -- think of Chandler quitting his accounting job and taking an unpaid marketing internship.

In the west, people routinely take time off to follow their dreams. To write their novel, to travel, to start a business. As a general rule, they are admired for their bravery and respected for their passion. And people envy the fact that they're getting to do something that they love.

I have a hard time seeing a senior Chinese executive taking a year off to, say, try to make a go of it as a short story writer.

An American executive would have no problem doing that, and would probably blog or write a book about how he was able to connect with his inner self and forge renewed bonds with his family and friends. And his dog.

Until that happens, I'll have to find new ways of motivating Chinese employees. The status, say, of having their names in print in US publications. Or good old money.

The new scarcity: valuable work

2009-02-08T19:54:00.000-08:00

In the past, wars were fought over resources. The definition of power was the ability to collect a great deal of physical wealth -- land, gold, slaves -- and order people to work on your behalf to get you more.

Two rulers would go to war and the winner would have more of everything at the end.

It started to change a few hundred years ago as the colonialization period was coming to its end. Some wars began to be fought for access to markets, not access to goods. Instead of taking stuff away from others and forcing them to work, rulers wanted to give stuff away (in return for money which, is, basically, an IOU) and to have their own people work.

Today, most wars are over markets, not resources. The US occupied Iraq -- but handed the oil fields back to the Iraqis. The main US beneficiaries of the war were defense contractors, who got the chance to work.

The most powerful, influential people I know -- Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the guys at Google -- aren't known for their hoards of physical goods or armies of servants taking care of their every personal need. Sure, they may have these things but nobody would care, or, worse, laugh at them.

They do create interesting and popular products but there are plenty of people out there who who make things that everybody plays with -- Rubic's Cube, anyone? -- without getting the same degree of respect.

I would argue that the respect comes more from these guys' ability to create valuable jobs for large numbers of people.

Valuable to society, in the sense that society is willing to pay for their work.

And valuable to the employees themselves, as the jobs are challenging and interesting.

As birthrates continue to fall across the world, as expanded industrialization drives prices for commodity goods lower and lower, and as the market for virtual goods such as music and movies, as well as goods that exist only in virtual worlds, continues to expand there will come a time when everyone has everything that they need.

Even today, in some western countries, a person can opt out of the rat race, through age, disability or emotional problem or simply a well-crafted excuse and live on government subsidies. Their standard of living may be lower than average as a result, but the payments are usually enough to cover basic needs. I have relatives and friends in the United States who live on government pensions or disability paychecks and live better than royalty did a couple of hundred years ago.

After all, they enjoy modern conveniences -- hot and cold running water, electricity, television, radio -- that weren't even available a hundred years ago. Their health care needs are covered. They can lie on their couch. Pick up the phone any time and order takeout. And watch TV.

A couple of hundred years ago, only the nobility could afford to lie around, have food brought to them, and be continually entertained.

It was the pinnacle of existence.

Today, in most civilized countries, it's the bottom.

I know some people who do little if anything to support themselves and spend their time drinking, flirting, watching television, playing around with hobbies to pass the time.

A few centuries ago, they would have been considered the luckiest people in the world. Today, they're lazy bums.

In the past, workers would riot and rise up when they were forced to work too much by their overlords. Today, workers riot because they don't have enough jobs.

Jobs are today the only real scarce resource. The men and women who are able to create jobs are the new heroes.

We're already starting to see situations where people are competing to work for free: internships at high-profile media companies and in politics pay little or nothing at all, and can be extremely competitive. And freelance writers are often paid in copies of the magazines for which they write, and, on occasion, are asked to buy a minimum number of issues.

There are also places where people actually pay to work. For example, you can have a working "vacation" on an archeological dig, or a family farm, or in some non-profits.

There are companies that charge students significant amounts of money to place them into internships in China.

This is a very new phenomenon, but as the basic standard of living continues to rise (temporary economic blips notwithstanding) -- and there's only so many physical things that you can buy before you run out of storage (and of time to play with them) -- then we might start seeing even more of these "paycations"? Reverse jobs? Fee-based internships? Trial careers?

I like that last one. Trial career.

For example:

BE A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT FOR ONE, TWO, OR THREE MONTHS!

For just $1,990 a month, you too can be a foreign correspondent! You get your correspondents' visa, ten hours a week of intensive Chinese language lessons, and actual reporting assignments in China. Our bureau chief will help you come up with story assignments, find sources, and organize the story. Our copyeditors will get your story ready for publication. And your byline will appear in magazines in China and around the world: you will be an actual foreign correspondent.

In your downtime, you will be encouraged to enjoy the many perks of being a foreign correspondent, such as the ability to drink, unembarrassed, in bars and pubs around town. You will be able to ask total strangers deep, penetrating questions.

Journalist visa, lodging and language classes included. Transportation extra.

No foreign language skills necessary! Reporting experience helpful but not required.

A walk down the fake DVD lane

2009-02-05T23:01:00.000-08:00

Back in the old days ... 2004 ... we had to buy our foreign-language books in hotel shops -- and had as many as five different novels to choose from, if we were lucky, right next to the tour guides and "Your first 1,000 Chinese characters" and "Chinese in 1 million easy lessons."

There were fake DVD shops on every street corner, but they all usually had the same dozen or so foreign movies, and half the disks didn't work. Foreigners in the know went to the Ka De Club, located on a succession of small side streets.

Its location was a closely-held secret, passed around by word of mouth. You would walk through a bland doorway into a small dingy room with an old TV set, a tiny middle-aged woman eating noodles, and a shelf of dusty Chinese DVDs. She would stare at you blankly until you said "Ka De Club?" Immediately, someone would appear to whisk you out the back, down a dark hallway, and into a new room -- brightly lit, packed solid with foreigners, with shelves lining the walls filled with all the latest movie and TV releases, music CDs, and tables stacked with thick binders in which you could find almost every classic movie that Hollywood -- or Europe -- ever made. You'd flip through the books -- each page full of movie covers -- and write down the code numbers. Then staffers would disappear with your list and return with your stack of DVDs. There were little piles of scrap paper and pencils on each table.

The DVDs were pricey -- 10 yuan each -- but the Ka De Club had a fantastic return policy. No receipt, no problem. In my experience, they would gladly refund the money or replace the DVD, no questions asked. Well, not my experience personally, of course, but in the experience of certain friends with much looser morals than mine.

But for the most part, all the DVDs worked. And when a particular DVD was known to be bad -- for example, a movie that just came out and was only available in a lousy camcorder version -- the staff would warn you about it.

For the record, I was horrified -- horrified! -- to learn that there was fake DVD selling at Ka De Club and followed the store from location to location for entertainment purposes only, and not to support the piracy industry in any way.

At one point, Ka De Club landed on Dagu Lu, a short stretch of street parallel to Yanan Lu, one block north, running one way from Chengdu Lu (with the north-south elevated highway) to Ruijin Lu No. 1.

This was vastly more convenient than other locations -- I could walk there from my apartment. So could a lot of other people. And at this point, it seems, the authorities stopped caring. The store was wide open -- no back hallways, no secret codes.

Eventually, Ka De Club moved again, but this time I didn't follow it to its new location. Ka De Club was replaced on Dagu Lu with Movie World and, directly across the street, Even Better Than Movie World! -- the two surrounded by an Indian restaurant, a Middle Eastern place, a gay and lesbian bar, and cafes. The selection was almost as good as Ka De Club, and the prices were lower -- just 8 yuan per disk. (From what I hear.) And with all the cafes and restaurants, it was a good place to hang out for an afternoon.

Today, I returned to Dagu Lu, walking over from the Cantina Agave on the corner of Changle Lu and Fumin Lu (the salsas tasted a bit funny, and the atmosphere so-so, but a step up from Taco Popo at any rate).

Ka De Club was back! Now, with a fancy new "Le" in front of its name. And it was huge. It had replaced the Movie World that was there before -- but Even Better Than Movie World! was still across the street, and joined by Big Movie and Movie Planet (I might have the name of this last one wrong). So now there four -- four! -- giant DVD shops, starting to look like those big book warehouse stores in the States like Borders and Barnes & Noble. New releases. Old releases. TV shows. Music. I even saw pirated books. Everything arranged nicely on shelves, covers out, easy to browse.

But for some reason they were all missing Mythbusters, my son's favorite TV show.

Ech store had a computerized catalog at or near the checkout counter, so it was easy for the clerks to check. And the prices -- just 7 yuan for a standard DVD. Sure, still higher than the street-side vendors. But there's a certain indescribable joy in being able to walk up and down aisles full of big, bright DVD collections and know that you can buy any of them -- or all of them -- depending on how much you can carry. The entire Friends collection? Forty DVDs -- less than 300 yuan. Compare that to the list price of $300 on Amazon (and even on sale it's $170).

I might be tempted -- except I've already switched to watching all my TV on surfthechannel.com.

Rebranding

2009-01-03T12:20:00.000-08:00

A Massachusetts court signed off on my divorce last week - after about three years of separation in which my ex and I weren't in the States long enough at the same time to get it done.

This means that, on January 30, I officially become Maria Victoria Korolov again. And I am never changing my name again -- in the new Internet age, its becoming harder and harder to maintain a consistent identity if you keep changing names, email addresses, Twitter accounts....

There's probably a way to cross-post to both Twitter accounts... maybe through FriendFeed or Facebook.

My personal email address is now maria@korolov.com, but I'll probably continue to maintain the old one -- maria@trombly.com -- for the indefinite future. In any case, both are simply forwarded to my company account, maria@tromblyltd.com. A bit of advice for married female entrepreneurs -- think twice before naming your company using your husband's last name!

But it works out, irony is conserved, since my ex took my maiden name as his middle name when we got married, and now its too much of a hassle to change it back, so he's stuck with Korolov.

Meanwhile, I've already set up the Korolov Group as a separate US entity affiliated with Trombly Ltd. by virtue of the fact that I own both of them, to handle the US side of operations.

I've got the korolov.com domain as well -- if there are any other Korolovs out there who want to have a @korolov.com email address, just let me know, and I'll set it up. The email for the domain is hosted by Google, so it only takes a couple of seconds to do, and there's no additional cost for me.

Finally -- email inbox success

2009-01-02T14:49:00.000-08:00

I've finally found a system that works for keeping my inbox at a manageable size (one screen or less), a variation of the GTD system.

Step 1: Do I need to respond to this email?

Many emails are sent to me for my reference -- or are spam. If they're spam, I lick Gmail's spam button and they go away. If they're reference, I click on the "archive" button. I don't bother about labeling reference emails -- I can always find them later by searching by keyword or date.

Step 2: Can I take care of an email quickly?

Many emails just need to be forwarded to the appropriate person, or briefly acknowledged and archived.

Some require me to do something at a particular time in the future -- to conduct an interview, for example, or write a story. All this requires is a calendar entry, an acknowledgement email, and, if necessary, an addition to the workflow database.

Step 3: Can I take care of this email as one of the group?

With some emails, it's easier to take care of many at once rather than do them one at a time. For example, when I receive a business-related invoice, I need to print it, add it to my accounting database, and file it away. Doing this one at a time is a pain, so I save them up and do them all at once.

For these emails, I set up a label -- "Print and file" or "Add to Website" or "Pay" -- and then archive them. When I'm ready to print -- or work on the website, or pay bills -- I open that folder, handle these emails one right after another, and then take off the label to get them off the to-do schedule.

To keep myself reminded of them, I also mark them "unread" -- that way they show up nicely when I'm checking my email, a regular reminder that I've got tasks to do in these categories when I'm ready for them.

Almost all my emails fall into one of these three groups. The rest usually have to do with stories I'm currently working on, and may require a little bit of thought, or some hard work.

For example, in my inbox is a reminder from my business manager to call the consulate and check on my visa. There's no particular time I need to do this, but I do need to take care of it in the next couple of days. Once I do, I'll archive that email.

Another email is a draft of a story from one of my writers, and I need to go through it and get my questions back to her within two days. I don't have to do it right now, but I might work on that later tonight.

Hey -- I just took care of another email, by deciding not to do anything about it.

Down to ... drumroll, please ... seven emails!

Life is good.

More on WordPress -- it's starting to look pretty ... pretty

2008-07-31T23:49:00.001-07:00

I checked out SquareSpace -- nice web interface, but seems a little lacking in functionality.

Then Ottawa-based web guy Gesman pointed me to a WordPress design site specifically for magazines and news organizations.

This is EXACTLY what I was looking for - thanks, Gesman!

The designs are gorgeous and don't look like blogs at all. I particularly love the way the categories are organized on the front page.

Content management systems -- the good, the bad, and the ugly

2008-07-31T22:15:00.000-07:00

Today (well, it's after midnight, so it was yesterday) I attended a Meetup of the Northampton Web Developers/ Web Designers Meetup Group.

Excellent, excellent meeting. Many web developers there -- most looking like young, Silicon Valley Web 2.0 types. Mostly a male crowd, four Macs to one PC in terms of the laptop ratio.

The presenters -- all local developers -- talked about the pros and cons of Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and self-developed content management systems.

I need a new content management system very badly. The Trombly Ltd. website is built using Dreamweaver, with templates and iFrames linking back to Dabble DB database exports. I love Dabble DB -- it's one of the best, and easiest to use, online relational database systems out there.

We use it for invoicing, workflow, content management, HR, CRM -- everything and anything. It requires no programming, and can hold an amazing variety of different content types and can produce online submission forms and gorgeous reports.

When iFrames aren't enough -- for example, if we want Google to be able to search the data exported by the database, or for Google Translate to work -- we use PHP to generate static pages, refreshed daily and also on demand. That's how Emerging China and China Speakers Bureau sites work.

This is getting expensive -- PHP programmers don't come cheap. I was hoping that Drupal would offer a solution that was not programming intensive but more flexible than our iFrames setup.

However, according to the presenters, none of these three content management systems would be able to take in input from our database (in the form of RSS or JSON feeds) without some serious coding, at the very least.

So we'll be stuck with having our editors copy-and-paste materials from the database into the content management system when they're ready to publish stories online.

If we're going to be doing that, I'd want a system that is super easy for them to use -- and easy for us to set up and maintain ourselves.

I Twittered throughout the Meetup (http://twitter.com/Maria_Trombly) and one of my China-based subscribers, PandaPassport (a.k.a. Rick Martin in Dalian) suggested that I take a look at SquareSpace.

I asked the Northampton developers if they'd heard of it (they hadn't) so I went to check out the site. It's expensive -- especially compared to WordPress, Joomla and Drupal which are all free because they're open source. (I do love my iPhone -- all the functionality of my laptop. Okay, it's a rather old laptop, but still....)

I'm going to be giving SquareSpace a try. They've got a 14-day free trial, and a beautiful intro video on their home page.

I particularly liked the way they were able to edit all the style elements of the page through a drag-and-drop interface (like my iPhone).

By comparison, the Drupal presentation went more like this (I'm quoting from memory here, so this is very approximate):

Me: Do you have to be a programmer to use Drupal?

Rick Hood of Flow Media Design: No, of course not. Drupal is quite easy to use. Only takes a few minutes to install. All you have to do is upload the file to your web hosting provider, create a files subdirectory, set up a MySQL database -- a simple interface in your CPanel -- and you're all set. If you need to customize it beyond the basic templates and modules, you will need to write PHP code, though.

Me: Uhum.

Rick: (Spends an hour explaining in detail all the PHP files that govern templates and design elements in Drupal)

PHP, by the way, looks NOTHING like the normal programming languages I learned in high school and college -- Assembler, Basic, Fortran, and Pascal. It looks like the top line of your keyboard exploded -- the line with all the symbols.

Well, I'm going to give SquareSpace a try and I'll tell you guys how it works out.

In W. Mass,

Maria

The future of the Internet is coming on

2008-06-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know if anyone remembers this, but there used to be days... the days of BitNet... when using the Internet meant a command-line interface on a mainframe terminals.

Then there were the bulletin boards and their menu-driven interfaces. Anybody out there remember menus?

Between the bulletin boards and the World Wide Web, there was a transitional stage -- America OnLine. You had to dial up and log in, as if it was a bulletin board. But once inside, there was a graphical user interface -- in other words, you could point and click. There was online content -- newspapers, magazines. There was shopping. There were discussion forums, and there was email.

It was more complex, and more involved, and more engrossing than the alternatives.

At first, AOL was a "closed garden." Only members could get in. And they could only send emails to one another. Then the email system opened up, and AOL emails could go elsewhere on the Internet. Then the rest of it opened up, and AOL became just another Internet portal.

The World Wide Web was different from AOL -- AOL had buttons, and the WWW had links, but in many ways it was very similar.

Both were graphical user interfaces. And people could go shop, communicate, research, and get entertained.

At each stage of its evolution, the Internet has become more engrossing, a richer experience, with more choices. Also, at each stage, nobody expected it to change. Back when there were bulletin boards, people expected the bulletin boards to last forever -- except they would be slightly better bulletin boards.

Today, many people expect the current version of the Internet to last forever, except maybe with faster connections, more videos, and slicker websites.

It's not going to. Our websites are about to disappear as quickly as the old bulletin boards did. Well, they'll be stored in online archives somewhere.

But really, when's the last time you checked out a Compuserve forum?

The next version of the Internet will look a lot like Second Life. It won't be Second Life -- Second Life is a walled garden, has interface and scalability problems, and is difficult to use.

But it will, in many ways, be like Second Life. You will be able to walk down virtual streets that are ever-more-accurate representations of physical reality -- or down imaginary streets that have no counterpart in the physical world.

Your online representation -- currently just your email address or instant messaging handle, LinkedIn profile, MySpace page or personal website -- will be augmented by an ever-more-realistic three-dimensional avatar.

The entire planet -- and our space satellites -- will have virtual equivalents. In addition, there will entirely new virtual-only worlds.

Second Life is a poor imitation. Slow, cumbersome, and cartoonish. But for anyone looking to get a jump on the next iteration of the Internet, it's great place to learn how to do it.

Tempted to cheat on my chosen career

2008-06-09T00:28:00.000-07:00

I believe that, on average, the sharper your focus, the further you will get in life -- whether in your career, your business, your hobbies, or anything else you're after.

Unfortunately, picking a career is no easier than picking a mate -- no matter how attractive your spouse, there will always be other people who are prettier, sexier, nicer, or just plain different.

You can't get away from it.

Some people deal by becoming promiscuous. They work on a hundred different projects, each going off in a separate direction. By playing the field, they get to enjoy variety -- but it's much harder to enjoy any success.

And, even as people in perfectly happy marriages can be tempted, so people with perfectly wonderful careers can sometimes be seen sighing over the green grass on the other side of the fence.

In my case, this past week, I've been tempted by the thought of a career as an urban fantasy novelist.

Sure, I love being a business journalist. And I absolutely love running my own company. But I have a secret desire to write novels about witches and demons.

I know, from a practical sense, that I've never written anything longer than a hundred pages -- and that was a struggle. I prefer, short, tight deadlines -- the tighter, the better.

I also don't like working alone. I prefer to be part of a large team of people. No, I prefer to be the head of a large team of people.

I also like making money. There are only a handful of novelists out there who make real money. Writing -- like music and acting -- is a career for people who don't mind spending most of their time waiting tables, or living off their significant other.

Finally, I like making a difference. What difference could I possibly make writing frothy, escapist books about witches and demons?

I'm like the guy in the bar complaining that his wife doesn't understand him -- when he knows that the opposite is true, that, in fact, she understands him all too well. And that the woman he just met is a soulmate -- despite not having any in common with her at all.

I'm the guy in the bar. And urban fantasy is that woman in the bar. She's fresh and dewy -- she's Samantha in Bewitched. She's fun and doesn't take life seriously. She drinks sweet fruity cocktails. And she compliments me on how creative I am.

Meanwhile, my old career has been with me for 15 years. Made me reasonably happy most of the time. Is likely to continue making me reasonably happy for the rest of my life. And we've produced some good stuff together.

Of course I'm not going to throw that away.

But it's nice to flirt and to fantasize once in a while.

In my fantasy, I live in a house in the middle of fields and woods. In fact, it's my actual house in Massachusetts, where I hardly spend any time at all -- it's in the middle of nowhere and I start going crazy with boredom within a week.

In my fantasy, I write on an Apple laptop -- maybe a pink one, like Reese Witherspoon had in "Legally Blonde." In real life, of course, I would rather shoot myself than get a pink laptop. A Mac, maybe, but definitely not pink.

And I write light, fun fantasy about urban witches.

I've got one idea about a former executive secretary who slows learns that she can sense an object's history just by touching it. At first, she uses her powers to help her boss, but then quits her corporate job to raise foster kids and fight evil.

And another idea about a woman whose parents immigrated to the US -- from another dimension. And she's got secret magical power and uses them to maintain peace in the city where she lives -- even as others of her kind use their powers for evil.

But now that I'm thinking about the serious implications of doing this, there are ways to set it up like a business, with teams of contributors...

Okay, gotta go... I smell the potential of money to be made.

In Shanghai,

Maria

How to kill your journalism career: The story of J.

2008-06-07T01:48:00.000-07:00

We cover a lot of countries here at Trombly Ltd. Some of these countries speak other languages. So we're always looking for reporters with go od language skills.

J. was perfect. Young, ambitious, had the languages we needed -- plus, with journalism experience.

She wrote ten articles for us. Sure, her work needed work. She needed to improve her reporting, story organization, and grammar and style. But she was well on her way to becoming a solid international business journalism. Plus, we were getting in assignments on the movie industry -- just up her alley.

On Wednesday, I took her to a meeting with a local media executive who liked her background and was interested in helping us put her on TV.

On Thursday, I offered her a part-time assignment editing gig for one of our publications, on top of the other work she was doing, and started up the process for getting her a key to the office and a pass to the building, and a new set of business card with her name on them. Later on, if everything went right, we would have gotten her accredited, and she'd become an international correspondent.

And by "international correspondent" I mean someone who works for the top tier of publications. These are the publications that pay enough so that you can travel, buy a house, have children anywhere in the world.

This is a small group of publications, mostly based in the US and Europe, with a few in Asia, and they're shrinking. Moreover, the budget these publications allocate to international reporting isn't getting any bigger, either.

It's a hard market to break into. You have to have the experience they need. You have to demonstrate ability and connections. And you have to be able to gain their trust. After all, it's hard for an editor to manage a reporter who's based on the other side of the planet.

If the reporter is still one desk over, you can easily see whether he's on the job, how many phone calls he makes. When he goes out on assignment and brings back into, you know whether he did a good job covering the event because you've been working in this area for a long time, and may have, perhaps, covered it yourself in the past. Sure, frauds still slip through -- like the New York Times' Jason Blair -- but then your readers will usually let you know.

With foreign reporters, you don't know the beats that they're covering. You don't know the topics that they're covering. And your readers usually can't act as a fail-safe fact-checking mechanism because they don't have first-hand experience of what the reporter is covering, either.

As a result, publications typically send trusted, senior writers to overseas assignments. These guys are expensive -- but they know what they're doing, and they don't need constant supervision.

These are hard-to-get, high-profile, glamorous assignments. You don't just walk into them. You spend years working your way up.

There are short cuts, however, and our bureau is one of them.

We hire young, inexperienced writers. We train them, and we supervise them. We help them find people to talk to. We help them figure out which questions to ask. We help them organize their stories and improve their English grammar. We help them decide which stories ideas are interesting -- and which ones are the same old, same old.

Finally, J. had learned enough about our databases and processes to work on her own. Her task was to find someone to comment about a particular news development. She had a number of people she could try to reach -- and she only needed one quote for this particular story, a 250-word brief.

She had everything she needed to make the calls.

But instead of calling, she pulled a quote from an old article from another publication, translated it into English, and put it into the story. More than that, she didn't just plagiarize the quote -- she added in the story that the source talked to her, personally.

We caught the problem immediately -- before the story even went out for copy editing.

There was no reason to do this. It would have only taken a few minutes to actually call the source and get the quote. Maybe a little longer if the first guy wasn't available. Maybe a couple of hours if she had to call several different companies.

Why did she do this? Not just "accidentally" copying something and "forgetting" to attribute it properly -- that happens, we catch it, issue warnings, help the writer avoid such mistakes in the future. (If they keep making these "mistakes," though, they're out.)

This was an out-and-out lie.

I would guess that the lie saved her, most likely, 30 minutes of reporting time.

And, most likely, it killed her career.

I may have given her a second chance, but my business manager and Shanghai bureau manager forcefully overruled me. The risk to the company's reputation was too great - and the risks of setting a precedent too severe -- to allow her to remain in the office at any capacity.

We also pulled her previous ten articles and re-checked the sourcing of all stories. For two stories, we opened her company email account and checked for email confirmations of the quotes.

Then we notified all the clients whose stories she worked on -- all US-based business publications -- and explained what happened.

It is possible that J.'s career will recover from this. There are other news organizations in China, and she might also be able to report for smaller news organizations overseas, especially ones who require her language skills.

She's very lucky that her fraudulent story wasn't printed. If it had been, we would have had to run her name along with the correction -- and any future editor who Googled her would have known what she did.

In Shanghai,

- Maria

A busy May

2008-06-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry about not posting last month -- it was a busy, busy May. The company continues to grow -- and new people have to be trained, new clients dealt with.

I was on local TV -- the International Channel Shanghai -- and taped the first episode of a new ITV-Asia program, Emerging China, for which I'm the host.

There were business deals with new partners. More details to come later, but it looks like I'll be running a second company soon in a different, but slightly related, line of business.

And I'm getting ready for my annual pilgrimage back to the US to meet with clients and see the old folks. We're flying out July 15 -- the e-tickets are already in hand.

Then, last night, I went out to an evening with some business friends (following up on an earlier meeting that night with another business groups - my Friday nights are packed!) -- and the discussion quickly turned to non-business issues. I needed to get back to my computer near 9 p.m. -- 11 p.m. at the latest. Those deadlines came and went.

I haven't just hung out and talked like that -- just talked with a bunch of cool guys -- for ages.

Not since the last webloggers meeting, in fact, which was a couple of months ago. And that in itself is sad -- my main non-business social outlet is a webloggers group.

Back when I had a marriage, my marriage counselor told me that I needed to learn how to get in touch with my feelings, learn to relax, embrace the softer side of life.

That didn't get too far.

Maybe it's time to rethink this. And get a hobby. Based on my high appetite for risk, I'm considering something like race car driving, or sky diving. But I might start out with rock climbing or downhill skiing.

In Shanghai,

Maria

How to invest your money and beat the stock market

2008-04-28T19:06:00.000-07:00

When people find out that I'm a business journalist, they invariably ask me for stock tips.

After all, I'm probably sitting on tons of juicy corporate insider dope that my editors won't print so as not to offend advertisers, right?

First of all, not true. Any inside dope I've got, has been printed. I've been lucky with editors all my life -- in 15 years as a journalist, I've never had a story pulled due to advertiser influence. It's true. I've had stories pulled because they sucked, but that's a different matter.

Secondly, I'm not allowed to give stock tips. There are regulations out there about insider trading. If I do find something out, I either have to tell everybody, or nobody at all.

Finally, if even the employees at Enron didn't know that their company was going down the tubes, how would a journalist who spends a few minutes on the phone with an exec and some analysts know anything at all? Those employees pretty much lived at that company. They knew what was going on. They heard all the gossip. But they still lost their shirts.

But, despite all this, I still know the secret of how to beat the stock market. It's the only strategy that works.

We journalists don't write about it much because it conflicts with the news cycle.

Here's the problem: there's only one good way to invest your money. Everybody knows what it is. But you can't run the same story every day. You need to say something different, something interesting, something new. So we write about what various sectors are doing, how the economy is shaping up, give advice on what company to put your money in. Most of this advice is no more useful than the latest Britney Spears gossip.

But people want it, so we write it.

Take, for example, this month's cover story in Fortune: "What Warren Thinks..." It's not online yet, or I'd give a link to it.

Here's Buffett's advice on investing:

...they should just stay with index funds. Any low-cost index fund. And they should buy it over time... It's a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market.

Then, if you turn the page, the very next article is titled "Where to Put Your Money Now" -- advice to investors on how to outsmart the market.

Journalists are not evil. But sometimes it does look that way, doesn't it?

So here's the best strategy. Only one guaranteed to beat the stock market:

1. Index Funds

Index funds sound boring. Basically, they're a fund that includes every company of a certain type. Your best bet is the biggest fund that there is. You want to bet on the whole US economy, not just on one company. Or on the whole world. Over time, the whole world is getting more efficient, more productive, and richer. Index funds reflect this. And the best thing with index funds is that you're not paying multi-million-dollar salaries for fund managers who do no better than monkeys throwing darts. Sure, by chance, some managers do well some of the time. But they're no more likely to do well the following year than anyone else. In fact, the more clever the story behind some manager's strategy -- whether it's a mutual fund, hedge fund, or some crazy new plan -- the more likely it is to lose you money.

Stick with index funds. Go for the cheapest ones. If you don't like saying "cheap" because it sounds... well ... cheap, then say "no load index fund." Now you're no longer cheap, you're a savvy investor.

2. Invest Over Time

If you want to sound fancy, you can call it "dollar cost averaging." For example, you might want to take $100 out of each paycheck and invest it in your index fund.

The key here is not to look at the news. Don't put in more when the market is hot. Don't put in less when it's down. Just set up the investment strategy and then don't look at it again... oh, for the next thirty years.

At the end of the thirty years, you'll find that you've beaten the market. Why? Because when the market is down, that $100 bought you more stock. When the market was up, that $100 bought you less stock. In other words, you were automatically investing more during the best times to invest - when the stocks were less expensive.

If you try to do this deliberately, chances are you will fail. People have a hard time guessing what the market will do, and even the best fund managers get caught up by investment fads and bubbles -- and by panic, as well.

By not looking at your investment, you take the emotions out of the equation.

There is one big drawback to the "index fund-invest over time" strategy. You have nothing to talk about with your buddies. Some guy will say, "I bet everything on big oil and war profiteers, and now I'm up $10 million!" and what have you got? "I'm in index funds." That sounds so lame. (Now you see the problem that journalists have.)

If you're desperate to play the market, then take some of your entertainment budget and play with it. Think of it as going to Las Vegas -- you'll lose everything, but you'll have fun doing it and you'll have some stories to tell. Except to your spouse. He or she won't want to hear these stories.

Then, when you tell your friends that you lost your shirt betting on pork bellies you will have literally lost just the price of your shirt.

Still in Shanghai,

Maria

Nostalgic for My Shanghai

2008-04-27T03:31:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be heading off to the U.S. on July 15 -- and coming back in the fall -- but I'm already nostalgic for the Shanghai of today.

I was down in the French Concession area this afternoon, one of the nicest parts of Shanghai.

After having a quick bite at Abbey Road with journalist friend Bill Marcus -- of Marketplace fame -- I walked up Dongping Lu to buy some bread on the way home.

I walked into Paul's, a new French bakery chain in town. I love their Xintiandi location -- small, but drowning in a sea of real crusty French breads. Not the typical Wonder white-bread-style bread you get here in Shanghai. During nice weather, you can sit outside, sidewalk-cafe style.

The location on Dongping Lu is a full-scale sit-down restaurant. So although I walked in for a loaf of crusty whole wheat bread, I immediately saw that they had one croissant amande left in the bakery display.

I first had one of these when visiting a friend in Paris. They're sweet, filled with almond paste and sprinkled with sliced almonds and a light dusting of powdered sugar.

As I rode the taxi home, I was overcome with a wave of nostalgia. Shanghai will never again be the way it is today. The beautiful weather, the cafes popping up all over town. The laid-back lifestyle.

Bill says that the longer people stay in China, the less they work. Finally, they're just coasting along, moving around from one wifi-equipped cafe to another, blogging and twittering, pretending that they're doing something, until finally they're living on no money at all.

You can do that in Shanghai.

Bill is not an example of this -- he actually seems to be working pretty hard.

But I do know guys -- and gals -- who come to Shanghai with sky-high hopes and business plans then somehow get off the career track. Or never get on it in the first place.

Pretty soon, they're doing a little teaching or copyediting or corporate copywriting for a few hours a week. Just enough to pay rent on their part of a bachelor pad, and to buy a few beers and coffees during the week.

Next thing you know, they're in their mid-40s with potbellies, still coasting along on the coolness of being expats.

One mid-40s guy I know copyedits a couple of hours per week. The rest of the time, he told me, he spends dating. His dates are all hot young Chinese girls. He himself looks like the Big Lebowski, from the film of the same title. Well, a little dumpier.

Another guy -- in his late 40s -- somehow married and reproduced without leaving the Shanghai slacker mode. He teaches English some of the time. The rest of the time he spends working on his business plan. With each iteration the business plan becomes more grandiose, all-encompassing, and impossible to actually execute. If you want to hear about his idea, he'll make you sign a non-disclosure agreement. Don't be surprised if his idea seems familiar to you -- I've seen it on House.

Then there's a group of guys married to rich women. All in their mid-40s. Most pot-bellied. (To be fair, so am I.) Some seriously balding. (Not me. I've got tons of hair. Long. Blonde. Lustrous.) They tell people that they're running online businesses. These are one-man operations, involving an occasional consulting gig. Maybe some search engine optimization. Or web design. Their wives do the heavy lifting, bringing-home-the-bacon wise, leaving the hubbies to the cafes and beer gardens. Have wifi, will drink.

If you think you recognize yourself in this description by the way -- it's not you. It's somebody else. It's that other guy -- you know, that guy you hate.

I love these guys. They always have time to hang out. They're cool and laid back. They'll sit around and argue politics and solve all the world's problems over a couple of slices of pizza and some beer. They never have to rush off for an appointment, and never seem to have any deadlines to meet.

I'll miss them when I leave.

Once I move my family back to the States, I'll be back in Shanghai only on business. I'll probably pack my days here full of staff meetings, and interviews, and bureaucratic get-togethers with government officials. There will be stacks of papers to sign, new hires to interview and train, budgets to go through, cashflows to plan. I won't have as much time to just hang out in cafes, enjoy the free wireless, and blog about life in Shanghai.

It's too bad -- it's a beautiful life. Someone should make a movie about it.

Still in Shanghai,

Maria

Journalism vs. PR

2008-04-26T23:45:00.000-07:00

Just came back from a nice lunch at KABB, in Shanghai's people-watching mecca Xintiandi. Hose Mitamura (author of China s Environment 2008, available from Amazon) and I discussed the differences between journalism and PR.

As my staff constantly reminds me, I tend to believe passionately in whatever I heard most recently. In my case, this is Law and Order -- I was watching reruns of the show the night before.

(I'm not going to say how, except to mention that I was shocked -- SHOCKED -- to find that there were illegally uploaded TV shows available through surfthechannel.com. Don't people know there is intellectual property violation going on? The horror!)

Anyway, on Law and Order -- and in every show that depicts an American-style legal system -- every legal case has two sides. There's the prosecutor, who tries to make the accused look as bad and guilty as possible, within the constraints of the law. And there's the defense attorney, who tries to make the accused look all harmless and innocent. There's a judge there, to keep things moving along, and the jury makes the final decision.

That's the media landscape in a nutshell as well.

The journalists try to print as much of the scandal and wrong-doing that they can dig up. Sure, they present ordinary facts as well -- so do prosecutors. But we all know what we're there for -- the blood and gore.

The PR guys try to make their clients seem sweet and wholesome. They also present some actual facts, but these are shaded in such a way as to tell the most flattering story about their client.

Sure, a good defense attorney will advise a client not to commit the crime in the first place, or, if the crimes are ongoing, to stop as quickly as possible. But once the crime is done, the defense lawyer is supposed to go all out to get the client off -- whether or not the client deserves to be punished.

So, a PR agency will usually advise clients to clean up their acts. But, barring that, the PR folks will do all they can to keep the bad acts from being publicized -- or, if they're already out, to put the best possible spin on them.

In this analogy, the jury is the reading public and the judges are the libel courts.

I don't mind working with PR people. They perform a useful public function. They get me in touch with company executives. They hook me up with customers, and send me background information and research reports. They suggest story ideas.

I regularly read PR blogs. One of my favorites is the China Law Blog. Yes, it's a PR vehicle for the law firm that sponsors it, Harris & Moure. But there's excellent information in the blog as well. PR Newswire is also a great source of information, sources, and story ideas, and they have a Chinese version through a partnership with Xinhua. Their Profnet service is by far the best way to find sources. I occasionally browse through their database of experts, but, more often, I post queries about articles I'm working on. Especially for tech-related stories, this is a great way to immediately get interviews with high-ranking executives at major companies, since their PR agents subscribe to these queries.

So I love PR guys. I used to be married to one. In fact, my ex still works in PR.

Would I want to be a PR guy? Be forced to say nice things about people? Never. Shoot me first.

Fortunately, PR work and journalism require such different personality skills, such different characters, such different approaches to morality, that there doesn't really have to be a conflict on a personal level. I can't do their jobs -- they can't do my job. And we wouldn't want to.

It's the old "Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean" thing.

I believe that the greater good is that which benefits society as a whole. This means, exposing corruption and injustice whenever it happens. If a few innocent people get hurt in the process -- well, that's just too bad for them.

Other people believe in the rights of the individual. Better that a hundred guilty people go free than an innocent guy go to jail. This is also a noble sentiment. In fact, if I was a lawyer, I might be torn about deciding whether I wanted to be a defense attorney or a prosecutor.

One of the things that appeals to be most about journalism -- and about prosecutors -- is that we are heroes. The mafia lawyers and the corporate attorneys -- they make the big money, but they don't get much respect from the public.

With PR, it's the same way. Sure, they have better haircuts. And better clothes. And better food at their parties. Their drinks are more expensive, and their cars are newer and flashier. But who really respects them?

The worst that can be said of good journalists is that in our zeal, we sometimes step over the line.

That brings me to the final parallel between PR and law. In the legal profession, the worst that can happen is for money to cross the line between the defense and prosecution. Whether it's the defense attorney paying off the prosecutor, or the prosecutor paying off the defense, if there's an exchange of cash there's corruption going on and the minute it comes to light the careers of everyone involved are over, and the respective organizations will suffer major PR blows.

On the media side, any exchange of money or favors between PR folks and journalists -- regardless of the direction that the money flows -- is a scandal. The bigger the money, of course, the bigger the scandal. If someone buys me lunch to pick my brain, no problem. If we're discussing possible stories over dinner, however, them I'm picking up at least half the tab.

I've worked for many media organizations. I've never seen a case in which they paid money to sources, or in which they accepted payments for PR people in return for editorial coverage. There was one case, of a very small-circulation local business magazine, that preferred to quote advertisers in stories and write flattering pieces about them.

In the competitive American media climate, it is hard for publications like that to become successful -- after all, who wants to pay for articles that are composed exclusively of advertising blather? Especially if there's an alternative publication that gives you the straight scoop, the solid dope, the inside dirt. Which one of us wouldn't take the dirt over the puff piece any time?

Since, over time, the average media climate tends to become more competitive, not less, I would guess that the demarcation line between PR and journalism will become increasingly clear in every region.

And this means that people who are just getting into the media field should be clear from the start about which side of the line they want to be on.

There's nothing wrong with being either a journalist or a PR guy. But the folks who try to cross the lines are vilified by both sides, and by the reading public.

When the public gets upset at either PR people or journalists it's when they confuse the functions that the two groups serve. At various times, the PR guys are the bad ones because they're trying to make evil corporations look good. At other times, the journalists are the bad guys because they're only looking for bad news.

In some emerging markets, where the media and PR functions are conflated together, the end results can be extremely messy. But I believe that over time, as the two functions are separated due to market pressures -- as well as increasing professionalism on both sides -- this situation will be resolved as well.

It pays to be clean.

In Shanghai,

Maria

One week of Twitter

2008-04-25T22:34:00.000-07:00

I've been using Twitter for about a week now. I keep all the tweets in a column on the side of my browser windows (using Twitbin). It feels like being in a chatroom populated exclusively by your friends -- the friends who Twitter, that is.

My Twitter handle is Maria_Trombly if anyone wants to follow me.

I'm not the only journalist who's using Twitter this way.

ReadWriteWeb just ran a nice article titled How We Use Twitter for Journalism.

In Shanghai,
Maria

Summer has come to Shanghai

2008-04-25T05:18:00.000-07:00

Today I left the house and stepped into what, in Massachusetts, would be considered a pretty hot summer day - 77 degrees Farenheit (25 Celsius).

So much for the one week of nice, spring weather. From now, it's only going to get worse and worse. I plan to stay inside for the next two months with the air conditioning cranked up, stepping out only in the evenings.

In other good news, I made the top-ten most sought-after speakers list at ChinaBiz Speakers, China's premiere -- and, as far as I know, only -- speakers' bureau. You can check out my speaker's profile.

The speaking business is actually picking up. There was that trip to Bangkok, to talk about Chinese pet food. And a talk on marketing to a local business group.

Earlier this week, the folks from the International Channel Shanghai send me a DVD of the five days I was a guest on their Culture Matters program -- I've got permission to post excerpts and will do so as soon as we get the 2.5 hours of film edited down to 15 or so minutes.

I still haven't seen it. If I think my voice sounds weird on tape, how much worse is it to see yourself on TV?

In Shanghai,

Maria

Editorial Process Outsourcing

2008-04-10T23:26:00.000-07:00

I don't see a lot of hits for "editorial process outsourcing" in Google -- but this is exactly what we do.

Publications have been doing outsourcing for a long, long time. Mostly, they just outsource the development of content. They use freelance writers and freelance photographers, and they buy photos and articles from agencies.

Editorial process outsourcing takes this a step further, by providing additional services on top of the content itself.

For example, Relaxnews is a Paris-based outfit that provides high-end lifestyle content -- they can do a complete magazine for you, writing, art, photos, layout, the whole thing. I'm currently working with one of their former editors, Fanny Landrieu, to start a similar agency in Shanghai.

This is different from bespoke news agencies, such as Israel-based Abbey Content, which provides editorial services for US newspapers, and U.K.-based International News Services Ltd., which provides high-end financial articles and other content written specifically for individual clients.

We did start out as a bespoke news agency, covering the emerging markets for individual US publications. Today, however, we provide more services -- we run entire bureaus for our clients, including accreditation, recruiting, training and managing staff, covering beats, assigning articles, copyediting and fact-checking.

Here at Trombly Ltd. (at tromblyltd dot com) we cover mostly emerging markets for US business publications. In addition to providing articles, we also do photos, fact-checking, and copyediting for our clients, and are rapidly moving up the value chain to provide more services. With writers and editors in China, India, the Philippines, we cover Asia extensively, but also handle Russia and Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East through an ever-expanding pool of trained freelancers.

In the U.S. and Europe, many providers do even more -- they will produce an entire publication, or supplement, for a client.

This is not something that's talked a lot about. Publications tend to want to control the content they publish. As a result, many of these outsourcing projects are limited to special sections, supplements, or advertorial inserts. Outsourcing these sections helps to distance them from the main editorial content of the publication, which is especially important for advertorial sections.

But outsourcing can also bring in additional expertise that in-house staff might not have, and can reduce fixed costs. At a time when advertising can increase or decrease sharply, outsourcing parts of a publication can reduce the number of staff on long-term contracts, and reduce the need for layoffs during downturns.

Yesterday, I met with Kerry Kennery, of ITV-Asia, for lunch. Before starting up his online business channel, he used to launch magazines for a living. He's got about a dozen magazines off the ground in his previous life. He says that magazine publishers need to be aware of the business they're in -- they're in the advertising sales business. Everything else can be outsourced.

Too many publishers, he says, spend too much time micromanaging content.

I agree with him. Publishers are highly-paid people. Their time is worth a lot -- they should be spending it where it's going to have the most impact. That means, meeting with potential advertisers.

Editors and writers are low-paid people. They're artistic, creative types. Pick the best team you can for the budget you've got, set clear objectives, then let them go do their thing.

As an additional bonus, the less interference from advertising into the editorial process, the better the editorial content will be, and the more trust the readers will have in what they read.

In the old days, a publication had to keep everything in-house because the logistics of coordinating advertising and layout and distribution were unwieldy unless everyone was in the same building.

Today, with electronic delivery of documents and virtual workflows, there's no reason for publishing companies to remain vertically integrated.

In Shanghai.

Recognized on the street

2008-03-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

The Culture Matters show aired last week. People could watch me every night at 6:30 p.m., then again the next day around noon.

Finally, this past Sunday, someone recognized me on the street. It was someone I already knew, though -- Megan Shank, an editor at the Chinese edition of Newsweek. People at my kids' school saw it, though -- the producers of the show came to my house for some background footage and filmed my kids playing their instruments -- the guitar and the violin. They also showed by son, Basil, making a salad.

The producers tell me that they'll be posting the show online soon. Then the kids will be really famous - I'm sure they can't wait.

Meanwhile, one of my fellow guests -- famous Shanghai blogger Wang Jian Shuo - wrote about the experience of being on the show. If you scroll down through his post, you'll see a couple of photos of me with my hair down.

The show's stylists brushed it out (it's normally a little wavy). I've decided to trust the experts -- I now wear my hair this way for all public speaking occasions.

I just wish I'd known we were going to film five days worth of show all at once -- I would have brought some changes of clothes with me. Instead, it looks as though I only own one shirt.

I'm a geek at heart. I'd rather spent a day at a computer store than clothes shopping, but I do own more than one shirt. But not too much more. Today, I promised my business manager that I'll buy more clothes.

This is what's known as a "geek tragedy" -- having to go clothes shopping.

Riding the elephant

2008-03-06T11:37:00.000-08:00

I took some time away from work to see some elephants, as long as I was in Thailand. I was with Tim Phillips, editor of Petfood Industry magazine, and Julie Lezner Kirk, an expert on petfood safety and traceability, who also spoke at the conference.

This is a picture of me riding an elephant. In this shot, I'm behind a waterfall.

Speaking in Bangkok

2008-03-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

Today I gave a talk about global and Asian petfood industry trends at a conference in Bangkok. One of our clients is Petfood Industry magazine, and we've been covering the melanine-laced petfood scandal since it broke last summer. If you forgot, hundreds of dogs and cats were killed or sickened by petfood made with wheat gluten and other fillers that were laced with melanine, a chemical that makes it appear that the filler has higher protein content than it really does. Melanine is normally harmless, but can be poisonous when mixed with certain other ingredients.

I love being up in front of large groups of people, and some of my presentation was video taped. I'll be posting it later, if I ever get a copy.

Should you be a writer or an editor?

2008-03-02T19:53:00.000-08:00

A beginning freelancer asked me today whether he should be a writer or an editor -- and whether he could do both.

At the end of the conversation, he decided what he wanted to do, but I've heard the question several times, so I'll post my answer here.

Editing and writing are two completely different jobs, and appeal to different types of people. Sure, they both involve words, and grammar. But that's about it for similarities.

Before you decide what you want to do, ask yourself a few questions.

Do you like finding things out?

Finding things out -- and tracking down the right people who know those things -- is one of the fun things about being a reporter. Editors, for the most part, sit back while someone else has all the fun. If you agree with this, then you probably won't be happy sitting on the editing desk.

Do you like helping people and watching them grow?

Editors get to teach writers, train them, mold them in the publication's preferred image. If you enjoy watching people develop their professional skills, if you have patience with newcomers, then you'll probably enjoy editing. But if you're the kind of person who can't tolerate stupidity and incompetence, if you get frustrated when people don't listen to you and don't do what they tell you, if you get sick and tired when people make the same mistake over and over again, then maybe you won't be happy as an editor.

Do you like seeing your name in print?

Writers get to take credit for their work. Editors are named on the masthead, in an acknowledgments section, or, if they're lucky, in an "edited by" credit at the bottom of an article. If that's too much anonymity for you, and you get upset when other people get credit for all your hard work, then editing might not be for you.

Do you like doing something different every day?

Reporters are encouraged to try new things -- track down new story ideas, talk to new people, experiment with their writing. Editors are supposed to take all this experimentation and mold it down into something that will fit in the publication. An editor's job is pretty much the same, day to day. Yell at writers for missing deadlines. Clean up style and grammar. Yell at writers some more. Work on story budgets and other administrative tasks. Yell at some more writers. If you like predictability, be an editor. If you like variety, be a writer.

Are you a big picture person or a detail guy?

A writer gets to look at a mass of confusing information, interview transcripts and research notes and distill it into a coherent idea that ties everything together -- then writes that idea up into a coherent narrative that flows smoothly from point to point, making things ever clear and more understandable to the reader. An editor takes this finished masterpiece and pokes holes in it, looking for every place where the argument doesn't hang together, where the paragraphs are too long, where the sentences are too awkward, where the commas are misplaced, and where names are misspelled. Only you know whether you are frustrated in the details -- or find your calling in them.

Are you a team player or a loner?

Reporters are, for the most part, lone wolves. They go out on the hunt, and bring back the story. Editors spend their time working with others -- with writers, with other editors, with their bosses. Editors have to nurture the writers they work with, massage their egos. Writers do, occasionally, have to be nice to sources -- but only long enough to get the interview. They're allowed to -- even encouraged to -- savage those same sources in print.

Are you shy or outgoing?

Editors do have to work well with others, but they are not required to have a large, aggressive personality. They can by shy and polite and do very well. Reporters, on the other hand, are supposed to get out there and push everyone else aside so they can get the story. A shy reporter isn't going to last long.

Plenty of people make the jump from reporter to editor -- and vice versa. Often, however, it's a painful process and many wind up going back when they discover their personality isn't suited for the new job.

Others stick it out, in misery, because the need the job, the money, or the better working hours that they get as a result of the change.

But, if you are a writer, there are plenty of ways to advance in your career without becoming an editor.

They include:

Moving to a larger market
Writing books
TV or radio appearances
Getting an "editor" title while actually continuing a reporting job
Becoming a columnist
Writing your own newsletter

Cultural wars: the parent trap

2008-02-25T09:10:00.000-08:00

Last Friday night, a bunch of us journalists slash bloggers slash entrepreneurs -- and, in Shanghai, who isn't these days? -- were sitting around talking about cultural differences.

We had a guy from a Chinese province who had moved to Shanghai, who was worried about taking care of his parents. A young guy who moved to Singapore, who was probably trying to get away from his parents. An older guy from Taiwan who had moved to the U.S. before moving to Shanghai and who was very concerned about taking care of parents well, and me, daughter of Russian immigrants, who was planning to be taking care of her parents someday.

The guy from Taiwan said that a big difference between Asia and the U.S. is that Asians care about their parents. He mentioned something about "family values."

Now, we all know that Americans are prone to stick their aged relatives in nursing homes at the drop of a hat -- the horror! The horror! I was mortified when my American inlaws put their grandmother in a nursing home. I volunteered to take care of her myself, just to avoid the shame and embarrassment to the family.

I think they thought I was crazy.

I finally figured out why on Friday night.

For older generations, brought up in times of economic hardship, children are their survival -- the family is who will take care of you when you're old, or sick, or need money, or need a job. It makes sense that my parents would turn to me first if they needed anything like that.

But I, who grew up in the U.S., have no memories of economic hardship -- and no economic worries about the future. Sure, I'm worried that the Social Security problems might cause me to postpone retirement, but given the voting strength of the elderly, it probably won't be postponed too much.

I don't depend on my children for my survival. The only reason for my family to exist is to fulfill our emotional needs. After all, even if the worst comes to pass, and my kids end up in foster care, they'll still get food, shelter, and clothing. I have to do better than that -- I have to make sure my kids are loved, and cared for, and appreciated, and nurtured.

When I'm old, I'm going to want a good, close relationship with my children. I want them to love and appreciate and nurture me. But I don't need them to wipe my chin if I drool. Instead, I plan to hire someone who loves wiping drool to do that for me.

After all, there are plenty of people who get a kick out of caring for others. Doctors. Nurses. Home health aides. And, since they're caring for strangers, they get to go home at the ends of their shifts and leave the worrying for the next guy who takes over.

Children -- even caring, compassionate children -- would be worrying around the clock. I don't want them to do that, even if my children do grow up to be doctors and nurses. Which they've already told me that they don't plan to do.

So when I grow old, I want my kids to visit. A lot. I want to see my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But I don't want them to have to physically take care of me, except to the extent that they want to, in order to help out.

So when it comes to the cultural divide, I'm straddling the economic barrier. On the one hand, I can understand where my parents are coming from -- and will do my part. My parents risked everything to get us to the United States. I owe them.

On the other hand, I've grown up trusting the broader society to take care of most of my physical needs. I'm comfortable with doctors, lawyers, police officers, bankers -- people and institutions that my parents are extremely wary of. I'd rather put my life in the hands of trained professionals than caring amateurs.

It's not a cultural divide. I share my parents' culture. I am shocked by how Americans treat the elderly.

But when I get older, I want to be treated American-style. Loved by my family. Kept alive by the pros.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

International Channel Shanghai in my house

2008-02-23T22:20:00.000-08:00

As I type this, a crew from the International Channel Shanghai is here at my house filming me blogging.

It's for a program on blogging that will run in the middle of March.

They taped five shows the day before yesterday, Friday, at their studio, but for some reason wanted to see me at home, and see my kids.

- Maria

Culture versus economics

2008-02-21T18:28:00.001-08:00

As a business journalist, I'm a big believer in the power of economics. I'm also not a big fan of culture. Sure, it's fine when it comes to entertainment, but I don't trust culture as an explanation of behavior.

Many habits which are routinely attributed to culture can be better explained by economics. Take, for example, the issue of saving money. According to some people, saving money is a Asian cultural value, or a Chinese cultural value.

But saving money can also be attributed to economic forces -- recent economic problems, combined with current wealth and doubts about the future.

In the United States, we've seen high levels of savings after the Great Depression, for example, and with recent immigrants. My immigrant parents, for example, have a high propensity for saving money and being thrifty. I myself, having grown up in the United States, have no memory of hardship, and few doubts about my future earning potential. This creates a little bit of friction between me and my parents -- my mother routinely reminds me to save money and warns me not to waste it.

To some, this would be an example of the "cultural wars" between immigrant parents and their children. To me, it's just an example of the different economic realities in which we live.

Another example is career choice. My father was very concerned that I grow up to be an engineer. This is common for many immigrant parents -- as well as parents in China and India and other emerging economies. A couple of generations back, most American parents were very concerned about raising children to be white-collar professionals -- doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Personal fulfillment took a second seat compared to long-term income potential and career stability.

When I chose to drop out of the engineering program to follow my dream of being a writer, my parents were very concerned about the risks this career path involves.

In China, I also meet lots of young people pressured by their parents into careers that they don't want. This is often seen as an example of the Chinese cultural value of listening to your parents, or being conservative and not creative in making career choices. But if you go back to the United States in the 1950s -- not to mention the many examples of immigrant families like mine -- the same issues come up. How much risk is a person willing to take on?

I would say that children listen to their parents to about the same extent, regardless of whether they live, depending on how much of an economic impact their parents have on them. Today, in the United States, many parents tell their children to be happy -- to find a career that is fulfilling and rewarding, not just financially renumerative.

This brings me to yet another value that is often ascribed to culture -- the relative importance of personal happiness compared to family commitments.

Again, I feel that the basic issue is economic -- when the family is the primary economic unit, it makes sense to protect it at all costs. In underdeveloped countries, the family takes care of the sick and elderly, protects its members from physical violence, provides career training to children, feeds and clothes its members, provides work, and provides money. In a developed country, governments and private pensions take care of retirement, doctors and hospitals take care of the ill, police departments protect citizens against violence, schools and colleges provide career training, banks lend money, and restaurants and delivery services provide all the food that anyone would want, at any price point.

In a developed country, the role of the family is to provide emotional support -- to ensure that its members are happy and loved.

It makes sense for people in a developed country to ignore the wishes of a family that is pressuring them to do something that would make them unhappy -- including adopting a boring career, or marrying someone they don't love.

In an underdeveloped country, it makes sense to put personal fulfillment aside to take care of more pressing needs for physical and financial security.

In China, as with immigrant families in the US and Europe, the economic reality is changing very quickly -- and personal behavior is changing to keep up.

Ascribing the changing behaviors to changing cultural norms is a mistake, and often results in absurd reactions such as blaming US movies, music and television for the "declining cultural values."

The three stages of China consultants

2008-02-11T18:25:00.000-08:00

This weekend, a friend asked me to tell him all I knew about consultants in China -- but to tell it quickly, since he didn't have much time.
My initial thought was to list all the consultants I knew. Management consultants. Business strategy consultants. Market entry consultants. Sourcing consultants. Quality consultants. Engineering consultants. Financial consultants. Human resources consultants. Marketing consultants. If there's a question you have about China, there's a whole consulting industry dedicated to helping you.
Then I suggested that he first check to see how long a particular consultant's been around. In general, a good rule of thumb is that the longer a company has been in business, the more likely it is to be offering something of value.
But then I thought about some of the oldest China hands I know, and I rethought my position.
The thing about China that makes it different from other places -- and what makes it more exciting -- is the rapid pace of growth here.
But as a result, some of the normal rules of business don't apply.
The people who were here doing business twenty years ago are not necessarily the people you need today.

THE WILD WEST CONSULTANT

I know a few guys who were among the first people to come to China. Some adapted with the times, and became very successful, running profitable businesses. Many did not, and are still trapped in the "Wild West" mindset. They see themselves as explorers, risk-takers and rule-breakers. They often go native, marrying Chinese women - or men, learning the language, studying the history and culture. They make much of their personal contacts and connections.

In the big cities, they've become mostly marginalized, hanging out in expat bars and telling stories of the old days. But in smaller cities, where foreign investors are just starting to come in, they may still be influential.

One such consultant even recommends in a book he wrote that foreign businessmen looking to find good local contacts should check out the expat bars.

I have to admit, I love these guys. They tell the best stories. But rather than going to the bars to find a consultant, foreign businesses are probably better off checking with their Chamber of Commerce representative or the city's economic development officials.

THE GOLD RUSH CONSULTANT

Unlike the Wild West consultant, who prides himself or herself on deep local knowledge and connections, the Gold Rush consultants think they're going to strike it rich just by showing up. They learn just enough Chinese to get by, and if they marry a Chinese spouse, it's more often than not a trophy marriage, with English the predominant language spoken at home.

The Gold Rush consultant is likely to have better business skills than the Wild West consultant, but the get-rich-quick mind set isn't very conducive to long-term success. This consultant may also be found in bars, but he or she is wheeling and dealing, not telling long stories of the good old days. Like the Internet dot-commers of a decade ago, these guys are looking for the big score, and often have no patience for the slow daily grind of real business.

In my experience, the Wild West and the Gold Rush guys have little to do with one another. The Wild West guys have no respect for the newcomers, who they think are here just to make a quick buck and have no real interest in China. The Gold Rush guys think the old-timers are crazy old coots. Both might well be right.

THE GROWN-UPS

At some point, even the successful Internet start-ups had to hire grownups to actually run the companies. The Internet was no longer uncharted territory, or a gold mine -- it was just business.

Today, so is China. Just business. In business relationships what counts more and more is the ability to deliver. A friendship might get you in the door, and a good sales pitch might get you that first deal, but in long term what counts is execution. And to do execution right takes serious business skill. For today's new breed of consultants, China might as well be any other country. Meg Whitman came to run eBay after a successful career in traditional retail companies. People used to say that the Internet changed everything -- and then they realized that it didn't.

China has followed a similar path as many other countries and industries and has now become just another global player. A significant global player, yes, but operating under the same rules as everyone else. It's the grown-ups turn now.

The Joys of Being Sued

2008-02-01T18:24:00.000-08:00

Frivolous lawsuits are one of the banes of Western corporate life. Lawsuit artists walk through stores looking for puddles to slip in, sue restaurants for the coffee being too hot -- even sue people who try to save their lives during disasters.
The lawsuit artists -- and the lawyers who serve them -- are considered the bottom feeders, the carrion birds of civilized society.
But, like vultures and maggots, they also serve a useful purpose. They have a nose for rotting meat.
In some cases, they go too far, and eat live flesh. In the case of Good Samaritans, for example, there are now laws in many jurisdictions protecting people who make a good faith effort to help others in emergency situations.
But take the example of the $2.7 million lawsuit against McDonald's alleging that the coffee was too hot. It's widely considered the poster child of frivolous lawsuits. But the facts of the case – including massive third-degree burns, eight days of hospitalization, and skin grafts that the victim suffered demonstrate that there was actual substance to the case. In addition, McDonald's produced documents demonstrating over 700 similar complaints. The company also admitted that it maintained coffee temperatures at dangerous levels, higher than other restaurants, despite the fact that it knew that many of its customers would drink the coffee immediately after purchase -- or in cars, when buying at drive-throughs.
The final amount of the settlement was eventually reduced a bit on appeal, but the main consequence of the case is that McDonald's reduced the temperature of its coffee so that it would no longer scald its customers.
One breed of lawsuit artist is the slip-and-fall conman or conwoman. They trawl retail locations looking for wet floors or cracks in cement, then sue the parties responsible.
As a result, the phrase "clean up in aisle six" has become a common refrain for the public announcement systems in supermarkets and department stores around the world.
But here, too, these lawsuits serve a social purpose. For every conman who slips and falls and sues the company for a trumped-up claim, there's now a store that monitors its floors with a keen eye – and any number of real little old ladies are not slipping and breaking their hips.
When I lived in Moscow ten years ago -- again, I'm not commenting about China here -- winters were a nightmare for little old ladies. My neighbors were virtually housebound all winter, since all sidewalks and streets were permanently covered with ice. It was common to find open manhole covers, unfenced construction sites -- and don't even get me started on medical malpractice.
The general feeling was that if you fell down a manhole, it was your own fault for not watching where you were going. So people watched where they walked. This meant that you did not want to walk around at night, or while drunk, or even while engrossed in conversation with a friend.
Civil lawsuits, in the long run, protect consumers.
But, these lawsuits, even frivolous ones, can also protect companies.
A lawsuit might expose staffing problems or safety issues or management malpractice.
A frivolous lawsuit is usually easier to deal with -- since the case has no actual merits, the lawsuit artists is often willing to settle for a small settlement. But it also exposes problems that could lead to a larger, potentially more significant lawsuit in the future.
For example, an employee who sues over wrongful termination may expose a problem with dispute resolution at a company, and may inspire a firm to include a process for mediation in its employment contracts, and, perhaps, a provision for binding third-party arbitration in case of problems that would otherwise go to court.
Lawsuit artists go after low-hanging fruit -- the companies who don't clean up their wet floors. They're an early harbinger of worse problems to come -- or an early warning bell for companies to clean up their acts.
In other words, if you're seeing vultures circling overhead, maybe it's time to get out of the desert and back to civilization.

Corporate Cultural Imperialism -- it's a Good Thing

2008-01-22T18:08:00.000-08:00

The usual advice for new managers coming to China has been to adapt, and to learn to do things the Chinese way. Don't bring your expectations and standards to China, the old China hands say. The more time experts stay in China, the more likely they are to argue that China is a unique place, and managers need to understand Chinese cultural norms and mores in order to be effective.

I've always personally felt the opposite -- that international management standards are international standards for a reason, and the more closely a manager adheres to principles used elsewhere, the better off he or she will be.

As far as I am concerned, local management practices are mostly irrelevant -- unless it has to do with legal issues, such as labor contract law or government-mandated holidays.

I used to think I was alone. But now there's new research to support my point of view.

According to a report released by the UK-based Economic and Social Research Council last week (Jan. 18), foreign multinational retailers entering the Chinese market should "keep largely to their own, time-tested management techniques."

The researcher, University of London professor Jos Gamble, interviewed management and staff in eight Chinese cities, in both English and Chinese. His peer-reviewed study included more than 400 interviews with store workers and managers in 22 companies and 2,200 survey questionnaires.

Foreign organizations can provide workers with significant opportunities to prosper and improve their skills, he reported.

He offered the example of Japanese retailing firms, which are very prescriptive and detailed in the customer-relations training they provide to employees.
"The Japanese approach to customer service was particularly innovative in the Chinese context," he said. "Whilst, initially, local customer response was quite negative, it rapidly achieved acceptance as a form of best practice."
He also reported high levels of satisfaction about foreign retailers' human resources methods, even when it came to staff employed in menial or dead-end jobs, he said. Workers reported that even these jobs provided learning opportunities.
"All the evidence suggests that, whilst it may be necessary to adapt to some extent to local conditions, time-tested management practices actually translate well across cultures," he said.
I couldn't agree more.

Many Chinese workers have told me that one reason that they want to work for a foreign company is to learn the international ways of doings things.

I don't blame them. International companies are globally competitive. Compared to domestic firms in China -- or anywhere else for that matter -- they are more likely to encourage open discussion and internal criticism of plans, and hold people accountable to higher ethical and business standards. Good international firms reward people for ability and results, encourage risk-taking and innovation, and focus more on market performance than politics.

Back when I worked in Russia for an major international news organization, I heard from managers that they preferred to keep their bureau chiefs in country for nor more than a couple of years at a time -- any longer, and the bureau chief would start to lose the connection to core corporate culture.

I'm not commenting on the Chinese media environment here, but in Russia in the mid-90s it was common for local journalists to copy information and quotes from local media and use the material verbatim, unattributed, in their reports. Journalists regularly received payments from sources for favorable publicity and ran articles favorable to local officials in order to ensure continued access.

News organizations have problems overseeing their foreign correspondents -- editors in New York or Washington DC are unable to fact-check or manage these correspondents effectively. They rarely have the language skills or access to source materials that would enable them to catch plagiarism, or the contacts with sources that would ensure accurate reporting. They have to rely almost completely on what the foreign correspondents produce.

I knew a couple of foreign bureau chiefs who adapted remarkably well to local conditions. Lifting stories from local press meant shorter working hours. The lack of enterprise reporting was explained away by the fact that they were in Russia -- and reporting was difficult and dangerous. Some of this was actually true -- but managers back home had little way of differentiating laziness from actual problems on the ground.

As a general rule of thumb, the longer a journalist was on the ground, far from the competitive US journalism environment, the more their coverage suffered.

Now, I'm not going to speculate about whether this happens in China or not. As a matter of policy, our publication does not comment on media issues.

But I can say that the struggle against slipping standards is universal in all emerging economies -- and, in fact, everywhere in the world. Whenever a company is best in class, its peers are going to be behind. And the weight of all those average companies will drag on the top performers.

In mathematics, this is known as "reverting to the mean." In common terms, it's simply, "that's how everyone does it."

Fighting against this tendency is a necessity for any high-performing company. When the prevailing practices are even farther behind, as in emerging economies, it only gets more difficult -- but no less necessary.

Movie industry opens up

2008-01-18T18:16:00.000-08:00

Thursday night, I witnessed the birth of an industry -- the foreign-made Chinese movie business.

In the United States, we don't think twice about foreigners making English-language movies for American distribution. In fact, some of our greatest producers and directors have been foreigners, and two of our biggest studios are owned by Japanese and French companies, Sony and Vivendi.

In China however, until now, all Chinese movies produced domestically have been made by Chinese companies.

Until now.

In March, China Venture Film's drama "Milk and Fashion" is expected to hit theaters around China. In it, former "Growing Pains" child star Jeremy Miller is the uncle of a young boy, played by Rothstein's 17-year-old son Kyle Rothstein, in a coming-of-age story about ballet and fashion. The movie is filmed in Chinese, with even the Western actors speaking the language (except for Miller). Kyle Rothstein not only speaks Chinese in the movie -- he's been studying the language since he was a small boy -- but also ballet dances.

The movie also stars Hollywood actress Vanessa Branch, known in the U.S. as the smiling British-accented blonde in the Orbit gum commercials. She also played the woman who slapped Johnny Depp in all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies. She speaks Chinese throughout the movie, and, in fact, is currently acting in the Chinese drama "Border of Love," filming now.

The movie is set in Shanghai and in rural Yunnan province and was made for just $1.35 million. Jay Rothstein estimates that it would have cost over $8 million to make the same move in the U.S.

It wasn't easy to get the movie made, he admits, but it was a labor of love for Rothstein. For example, getting government approval to distribute in China took six months - the final go-ahead came two weeks ago.

It was a true multi-national effort. In addition to Rothstein, who is American, the film was backed by a Japanese investor and by China's Yunnan Film Studio. The actors were American, Dutch, British, Chinese, and other nationalities, while the director, Roy Chin, hails from Taiwan.

I first met Rothstein and his family four years ago, and he was already talking about the movie. The script has gone through several revisions, and the launch date has been postponed more than once.

It took a lot of commitment to get the movie made, Rothstein told me. A good sense of humor about the process probably didn't hurt, either.

"Milk and Fashion" demonstrates that it doesn't take a big budget, or a big-name producer, to do ground-breaking work in China. Sometimes, all it takes is a man and a screenplay.

Labor Law Losers

2008-01-10T18:13:00.000-08:00

A new labor law went into effect at the start of the year, making it more difficult -- and expensive --to fire employees. The law also specifies increased additional costs to employers, including minimum wages, overtime and benefits payments.

According to the Associated Press , Dongguan’s Taiwan Merchant Association reports that that the cost of doing business in China will rise by as much as 20 to 40 percent.

Calvin Chang, general manager of Shenzhen’s Jinghua China Investment Consulting, told Reuters that he expects labor costs to rise by 8 percent as a result of the law. He predicted that companies may move operations further inland in order to remain competitive.

There have been massive labor abuses in China. The brick-making slavery scandal was the worst of all those which have come to light this year, but there were also widespread reports of non-payment of wages, forced overtime, child labor, and other abuses.

But passing a law is one thing – implementing it is something else entirely. Many of Chinese laws, including guidelines about minimum wages, are frequently ignored. As the slavery scandal illustrates, local corruption and loose enforcement can make even the worst abuses possible.

There are two major problems with this law. One is the lack of detailed implementation processes. The other is selective enforcement.

Some companies feel that they can get away with flouting labor laws because of their geographic locations, importance to the local economies, or relationships with officials or enforcement authorities. And if a law is not well written, companies will try to find loopholes to get around the law.

Many companies, for example, spent the last months of 2007 forcing long-time employees to sign new contracts – or temporarily laying them off – in order to evade some of the requirements of the new law.

Finally, regulators may have overlooked one of the most basic laws of all – the law of unintended consequences.

If a law specifies special protections with employees who have stayed with an employer for at least ten years, then that creates incentives for employers to file marginal employees just before that magic number is hit.

In effect, the law will hurt those very employees that it was designed to protect.

Finally, some companies may leave China altogether – and the loss of jobs will be the worst blow to labor.

One of the best advantages that China had, in the battle for economic growth, has been that the government has been mostly immune to popular political pressures.

There are times when a government must step in and protect the rights of its citizens, and create an even playing field for all businesses.

But when a government leans too heavily towards protecting the rights of workers – as some European countries have done – the result is economic stagnation. Companies become reluctant to hire staff if they know it’s going to be difficult to fire them later. Constrains on working conditions and overtime hours can be over-protective – hindering innovation and competitiveness.

Passing a new labor law is a high-profile act that will help appease a nation of laborers toiling under unjust conditions. It is a more popular alternative than making small, incremental steps towards better enforcement of existing laws.

Unfortunately, the companies most likely to comply fully with the new law are foreign-owned export-oriented manufacturing firms. They are the first to come under the scrutiny of both local regulators and foreign activities. But these are companies that often offer the best jobs, and the best working conditions, and help build China’s export base.

These companies are also the most price sensitive – they came to China because of low labor costs.

Where will they go next?

The new law is creating an opening for other emerging countries to step forward. It is also creating more opportunities for China’s second- and third-tier cities to compete for this business.

Personality Profiling

2008-01-04T18:17:00.000-08:00

There are many first-time entrepreneurs in China -- in many respects, Shanghai is now what Silicon Valley used to be at the height of the dot-com boom.
As a result, there are many seminars on how to actually go about starting up a business, and I try to make it to as many as I can.
One of the more valuable pieces of information I've picked up has been about using personality testing to identify core strengths among senior staffers.
In China, these tests can be particularly useful because certain personal characteristics sometimes don't translate well across cultures.
For example, last summer I hired a Canadian manager to help run China operations and do some marketing. He was an outgoing, upbeat person -- especially compared to Chinese staffers. I was surprised when he spent most of his time on busy work, such as producing a very detailed -- and universally unread -- employee manual.
It's nice to have policies in place, but the weeks of effort could have been reduced to a page of bullet points and a staff conference.
Marketing was nonexistent, employees were not managed, and a whole month of sales calls resulted in not a single sale.
On paper, based on his resume and educational background, he seemed perfect for the job. The problem became apparent shortly thereafter, after I had all my employees take an online Myers Briggs Personality test from Similar Minds. I like this one because it doesn't just tell you that you're an extrovert or introvert -- it tells you how far along you are on the continuum.
My employee was very much on the extreme extrovert side of the divide. He was also more detail-oriented and practical -- "sensing" -- as opposed to creative and visionary -- "intuitive."
In other words, he had the exact opposite personality type than that best suited for sales.
The fact that he was in China made him look outgoing by comparison to my other staffers, who had spent years in the Chinese educational system learning to be quiet and inconspicuous. He also looked like a visionary compared to people forced to channel all their energies into rote memorization rather than creativity.
But when push came to shove, he reverted to type -- focusing on minute details, and working by himself at his computer.
One interesting application of this test is spelled out by frequent visitor and speaker Roger Hamilton, author of "Your Life, Your Legacy." Hamilton takes the basic Byers Briggs test and applies it to the question of entrepreneurship. For example, if you're an extreme introvert, but highly creative, you may want to follow in the footsteps of entrepreneurs like Ray Crok, who created the McDonald's system. If you're highly creative, but halfway along the extrovert-introvert axis, you might want to follow in the footsteps of people who create businesses, like Bill Gates. Hamilton identifies eight basic types (he ignores the one where a person is in the middle along both axes). My own type is heavily extroverted, but about halfway between the practical and the creative -- well, a little on the creative side. According to Hamilton, that puts me in the same neighborhood as Jack Welch -- someone who is good at managing companies.
Another personality test offered by a recent visitor to China was based on spending patterns. According to Ted Prince, author of The Three Financial Styles of Very Successful Leaders, the best manager can come up with innovations, but hates to spend money. The worst business leader, he says, is one who is conservative about innovating, but spends money like there's no tomorrow. That guy is likely to quickly drive a company into the ground. My business manager (who is extremely practical) prefers saving money to spending it, and will negotiate deals and contracts down to the last penny. She is also conservative about change -- she wants to see a good case spelled out first. I, on the other hand, will readily spend money on anything and everything -- and am always ready to try new things, start new companies, and embrace new management fads. Most people however, fall somewhere along the diagonal, he says -- they're either conservative on both counts, or are both innovative and free-spending. These companies will always be struggling to balance growth and spending.
Here, again, cultural differences may mask personality differences. China is a nation of savers. But people who save money out of necessity in their personal life, may turn out to be big spenders when under the pressure of running a company. Under stress, or at times of change, people are most likely to revert back to their core personality types, Prince says.
Personality testing is not a complete solution to cultural differences, of course. But in companies like mine, where major personality aspects can be hidden by cultural backgrounds, personality testing can be a useful tool to uncover mismatches between employees and their responsibilities -- or shed light on underlying causes of conflict.

Battling Shyness

2007-12-27T17:23:00.000-08:00

I’m invariably surprised when, at employee training sessions or staff meetings, none of my Chinese employees ask questions.

Part of the reason, they tell me, is that schools don’t encourage students to ask questions – and certainly discourage them from interrupting teachers and professors.

This is very bad training for journalists, who have to ask questions and interrupt as part of their job descriptions.

There’s nothing worse than a journalist at a press conference who fades into the background. They should be out there, collecting business cards, introducing themselves to everyone, asking questions, arranging follow-up interviews and otherwise working on developing their sources.

But if shyness is bad for journalists, it’s murder on sales people.

Recently, a friend of mine needed to hire a business development person to find leads and schedule interviews with prospects, and he specifically wanted a young college student for the job.

To test for shyness, he had the candidates come all at the same time, to a group interview, to see how they acted when they needed to compete for attention.

In addition, he asked me to come in to serve as a potential customer. I was, in fact, a potential customer for his services – Carlo Wolff is a partner at Wolff & Tan, a consulting company that helps small businesses become more organized and profitable.

We conducted mock telephone calls in which I played the part of myself, and one job applicant after another pretended to call me and attempt to get through my sales resistance.

The experience was educational for the job applicants – they watched what the others were doing and saw what worked on me and what didn’t work.

It was also educational for me. I learned a lot about cold calling from watching Carlo run the job applicants through their paces.

Most of the applicants were local students, but one was from Singapore.

The difference between the Singaporean applicant and the others was dramatic. He was more outgoing, had a stronger presence, and also had some experience as well.

I talked to Wolff later about what he thought of the experience.

“Especially in this context, which is strongly culturally-directed, it was interesting to get people out of their comfort zone,” he said. “In a Western setting, this would have been easy. But here, it was a challenge for them.”

Next time, he said, he plans to push the applicants even further in the interview setting, and increase the stress level even more.

After all, sales is a high-stress field – candidates who cannot handle the pressure should be screened out as early as possible.

Next time I have a number of job applicants to interview I may well do the same thing. Call them all together into one room, and run a mock press conference. See who asks the most questions, who introduces himself and comes up to shake my hand, and looks me in the eyes, and gets my business card.

And the one who calls me up afterwards, and asks follow-up questions – that’s who will get the job.

The Holiday Spirit

2007-12-20T18:23:00.000-08:00

Christmas is my all-time favorite holiday. I’m not alone, it’s popular with many people, whether or not they actually adhere to the Christian faith. In my family, with its blended background of faiths, we see Christmas as a symbol of what is holy in every child.

But, putting aside, the religious significance, the Christmas season has more stuff associated with it than any other holiday I know of.

Sure, the Fourth of July has fireworks, flags and picnics, and Thanksgiving has a big meal and a football game. New Year has the ball on Times Square and a big party at midnight and one song that most people only know a couple of lines of, anyway.

Chinese New Year is a pretty good holiday, too, with fireworks, red envelopes full of cash, gifts, and bright red decorations.

But Christmas is a whole industry. There’s the tree and the presents. The decorations. The proximity to New Year. Plus a million Christmas songs and carols, movies, cartoons, books and poems. You’ve got the Santa Claus legend with the sleigh and the reindeer and the elves and the costumes. The North Pole village, Rudolph and Frosty, the Grinch. There’s a Santa in every major mall and shopping center in the US and many countries around the globe – and now, in China as well.

It can be overwhelming for some, sure. People who are living alone, without friends or families, can feel even more isolated during the holidays.

And then there’s the spectre of consumerism and commercialism that haunts the holiday – almost as bad, in my opinion, as the spectre of self-righteous religiosity that can make those of other faiths feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.

But, on the whole, the Christmas season brings people together. I’m glad to see that the holiday is becoming more and more secular. The gifts, Santa Claus, many of the songs and movies, are not specifically religious. But even the secular aspects of this holiday are about family, about giving and sharing, about shared traditions.

Those of us who celebrate this season in all its trappings, whether as Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwaanza, or even simply as a secular New Year, are participating in a shared international event. Even more than the Olympics, Christmas reaches directly into homes and public gathering places.

Many countries have contributed to Christmas traditions, and there are regional variations on this holiday. The best holiday practices spread quickly, by word of mouth, from family to family, by businesses, and by the media.

As countries like China embrace globalization, they adapt this holiday and make it their own – and add their own touches.

You can track the pace of globalization through China by tracking the Santa Clauses and the decorations in public squares and the carols playing in the shopping centers.

Foreign firms are in the vanguard, with chain restaurants like KFC putting up holiday banners and playing holiday music.

But even Chinese stores, like the national supermarket chains, are playing Christmas music in a variety of languages. Most of the popular Christmas carols now have Chinese versions, and they sound as pretty as they do in the original.

Others may bemoan the secularization of Christmas. But, to me, a secular Christmas is an inclusive holiday that brings people together into one global family.

Given the choice between bonding over competitive, national-pride events like the Olympics, and shopping and eating centered holidays like Christmas, I’ll take the food and presents anytime.

All Roads Lead to China Blogs

2007-12-13T17:16:00.000-08:00

As a journalist, I routinely hear complaints that the news industry is dominated by a few giant multinationals that determine the boundaries of public discourse. I also hear that the news industry is dying, as bloggers now do for free what the media used to do for money.

My personal position is that we’ve always had consolidation in the industry – as long as publishers existed, they’ve been growing bigger and merging with other publishers.

But we’ve always had competition. First the tabloids and the “yellow press,” mimeographed newsletters, radio and television, alternative newsweeklies, and now the Internet.

New companies will always spring up. Some will fail or be swallowed up. Others will remain small, serving a particular niche audience. Some will rise above their humble beginnings and join the ranks of media conglomerates.

I am enjoying watching the rise of the online news alternatives – the bulletin boards and forums that aggregate user-generated materials, the blogs and personal newsletters, the podcasts and videocasts.

One of my favorites is Fons Tuinstra’s China Herald. Disclosure: Fons is an old friend, and a member of my board of directors.

I subscribe to his blog on RSS (using Bloglines). One of the great things about reading his blog, and blogs like his, is that I don’t just find out what he’s thinking about on a particular day, but also what he’s reading.

Bloggers like to read other bloggers, and they link to them on their sites.

This week, for example, Fons linked to China Rises, a blog by Tim Johnson, the Beijing bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers.

Tim has been collecting photos of overburdened trucks and bicycles. It’s a lovely introduction to the perils of transportation and logistics management in China.

In a recent blog post, Tim talks about having some furniture reupholstered – and seeing a sofa, several chests of drawers and two huge bookcases loaded on the back of a tricycle.

My other favorite blogs include All Roads Lead to China and the China Law Blog.

At the beginning, one of the main topics of conversation of bloggers was blogging. They wrote about their software problems, about how they agonized over which font to choose, and other administrative and technical details.

Interesting comments often got lost among the minutia.

Today, however, blogging software has become reasonably easy to use and standardized, and bloggers turn more of their attention to their topics of interest – rather than to their blogging process.

Sure, some blogs never catch on. Their writers either give up or keep the blog as a hobby, with a small group of diehard readers.

Other blogs catch on, get organized, get professional, get discliplined, and get focused. With readers come advertising dollars, and the bloggers can even hire staff and turn into what is starting to look like real news operations.

This has happened at Gawker Media in the U.S., for example.

English-language blogs don’t do as well in China simply because the audience is smaller – there are fewer Americans in China than, say, Americans in America. But blogs like The Shanghaiist, with its stable of regular contributors, looks like it might be getting there.

Do you have a blog about business in China? Email me, and I’ll add it to my personal blog list – and we might review it here on this site as well.

The Educated Workforce

2007-11-29T18:22:00.000-08:00

This week, Xinhua reported that the new four-year education plan will extend compulsory nine-year education to 98 percent of children in China’s 410 poorest counties.

In 2004, children in those counties received an average of 6.7 years of education each – hardly enough to prepare them to work in today’s industrialized China.

Today, the agency reports, nine year education covers 368 of those 410 counties

These counties are mostly located in hard-to-reach mountainous areas.

To solve this problem, local governments are setting up boarding schools for junior-high level students so that they can get a state-of-the art education.

According to Xinhua, the central government allocated 10 billion yuan (1.3 billion U.S. dollars) between 2004 and 2007 to build over 7,600 boarding schools, serving about four million students in a total of 953 counties in western China.

I recently visited one such boarding school in the Sichuan province, just east of the city of Chengdu, on the western side of Longquan mountain. This is the Longquanyi district, home of the “Golden Phoenix” project – junior high school students get free housing, school uniforms and a food allowance, and attend an urban boarding school in Longquan.

More than 3,000 students have already moved from their mountain villages to the city for their educations, almost two-thirds of them subsidized by the government. The district government has already spent 14.5 million yuan on the project, and will spend another 160 million.

School officials told me that 42 percent of the district is located in the poor, mountainous parts of the province. In 2006, all middle schools and high schools located in the poor regions were closed down, and the students transferred to central, urban schools. Often, their parents moved to town as well, and got city jobs.

At the Longquan junior high boarding school I visited, the building was surrounded by new construction projects – the district continues to invest in student education. Classes were large – over 50 students per class – and both the classrooms and dorm rooms were unheated. However, this is typical for a southern Chinese city. Even in Shanghai, classrooms tend to be unheated.

The school had a huge outdoor sports field, covered with artificial turf, where students exercised. There were computer labs, and English language classes. And central plumbing.

Students and teachers all carried magnetic stripe cards which they ran through card readers to get their lunches – tofu and vegetables, slapped onto metal trays. Students bussed their own tables.

Longquan is a high-tech development district, with over half a million people. The high tech parts are in the urban areas, of course.

Now these students will have a shot at the urban jobs.

The hillsides that they used to farm will probably revert to forest, as the district finds tourism more profitable than trying to grow crops on a mountain.

I also visited some of the farms in one of the mountainous parts of Sichuan, near Yibin, and the plots of land are tiny, terraced into the hillsides. All the labor is manual – it would be difficult to get a weed-wacker up these hills, much less a tractor or a combine.

By getting a decent education, the children of these poor farm families will get a chance at a better life – and employers will be able to benefit from having a more trained workforce.

China Putting Teeth in Environmental Regulations

2007-11-22T18:00:00.000-08:00

This year, Chinese officials began putting some sharp teeth to the country’s environmental regulations.

This can have significant implications for the economy – last week, the World Bank calculated that air pollution alone is costing China 3.8 percent of its GDP. Adding in water pollution and non-health impacts of pollution raises that estimate to about 5.8 percent of GDP – a total of about $100 billion.

Last month, health officials said last that birth defects in China had increased by nearly 40 percent since 2001, in part as a result of environmental degradation, according to the state-owned China Daily newspaper.

Jin Yinlong, a researcher at the Center for Disease of Control and Prevention told the National Forum on Environment and Health in Beijing, that water pollution accounted for 59 percent of 600,000 complaints registered last year.

Zhou Zhengxian, director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, told Xinhua this week that local regions will be assigned pollution caps – those that exceed those caps would not be allowed to embark on new potentially polluting projects.

In 2009, enterprises would be required to get environmental permits before discharging byproducts into the environment.

Enterprises that do not meet discharge requirements or are found guilty of other environmental regulations would be refused permission to list on the stock market, he added, and companies that are already listed must open their environmental records to the public.

In rural areas, sewage systems will be upgraded and the use of chemical fertilizers reduced, with all new or renovated poultry farms required to pass environmental assessments.

By 2010, he said, 70 percent of all urban sewage will be processed before being discharged.

"From a long-term perspective, our target for China's rivers is to resume their natural appearance," he told Xinhua.

In July, a new policy required local authorities in areas along the four major rivers to prioritize the environment over the economy.

Some of the new measures are already having an effect.

According to Xinhua, in the first three quarters of this year, emissions of sulfur dioxide - the major air pollutant - hit 19.06 million tons, down 1.81 percent year on year. Chemical oxygen demand - a key water pollution index - was 10.44 million tons, down 0.28 percent.

Last year, a survey showed that surface water was generally affected by "medium pollution," and a full third of samples of surface water were graded "worst polluted."

Putting new teeth in environmental regulations is just half the battle, however.

The government also needs to allow non-governmental watchdog groups – non-profit organizations, educational and research institutions, and media groups – to take a more active role in monitoring violations.

Private companies, state-owned enterprises and government agencies must all be subject to public scrutiny – and the criticism that sometimes comes with it.

Public criticism doesn’t always make for a perfectly harmonious society, but it could lead to a cleaner and healthier society – and create more harmony in the long term.

The New Chinese Farmer

2007-11-16T18:25:00.000-08:00

During my trip to Sichuan last week, I met several successful Chinese farmers. The main reason for their success, however, was that they weren’t actually farmers any more. Instead, they were construction contractors, or operated tourism resorts.

It’s hard to run a small family farm anywhere in the world, and China is no exception.

My home is in Massachusetts, where my in-laws used to run a family dairy farm, with about 100 head of cattle on 90 acres of land. They shut down operations quite a while back, to take regular “city” jobs, and the only thing left to remind us of the farm are a couple of baby cows and a barn full of unused milking machinery.

The reason is that it takes either massive economies of scale or a very high-end, niche product to make a living as a farmer these days.

The tiny plots owned by most farmers don’t lend themselves to economies of scale. We could see by the ditches and other obstacles separating fields that there hasn’t been much thought given to bringing in tractors or other mechanized equipment. And everywhere we went we could see people doing manual labor in the fields. Selling your plot to the farmer next door so that the fields can be combined is an option in other countries, but not in China – farmers don’t own their land here, they rent it from the government. And, since they don’t own the land, they can’t borrow against it in order to buy machinery.

And the problem with making a high-end, niche product is that marketing is a bear. The people who can pay for high-end organic produce or gourmet cheeses are on the coast, far from the farmers themselves.

Local governments are doing their best to solve both of these problems. For example, farmers are allowed to sublease their lands to agricultural businesses. They get a little income for their land, and then either work for those businesses directly or go into the cities to find jobs. Other initiatives include farmers’ cooperatives, where farmers pool their lands in order to engage in agriculture on a larger, more efficient scale. Both businesses and cooperatives are able to engage in more marketing activity than individual farmers, as well. There are also marketing initiatives, such as an organic food certification program.

Chinese farmers could use a few million tractors, combines, harvesters, balers, fence post diggers – you name it, they need it. In theory, there should be plenty of opportunities for farm equipment manufacturers and distributors. But it will take a few more reforms before the average farmer in China can afford to buy them.

Eventually, most of these farms will be gone. A few family plots will probably remain, tended on weekends or holidays. The rest will turn into retirement homes, vacation resorts, parklands – or industrial-sized factory farms.

It will be sad to see a way of life disappear. But, like many traditions, family farming looks best from a far distance. Up close, the work is dangerous, grueling, and ill-paid.

Meanwhile, if you want to see rice paddies, hand-tended plots of cabbages, tiny fields painstakingly terraced into hillsides, and the absolute quite that comes from not having any machinery around, do take a trip to western China before it’s all gone.

There's Something About Chengdu

2007-11-08T18:26:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, I asked Ge Honglin, the mayor of Chengdu, what incentives his city had to offer foreign companies wishing to relocate here.

Can companies get subsidies? Low-interest loans? Tax breaks?

His answer surprised me. I expected a few vague promises, maybe some obfuscations, some exaggerations.

I got none of that.

"Frankly, Chengdu can't offer the same kinds of incentives as some other cities are offering," he told a room full of visiting foreign journalists.

Yang is a technocrat. He started out his career as an engineer, and seems not to have learned the art of hype and public relations. Instead, he tells it like it is.

At the Bookworm the next night – the town's favorite gathering place for expats – a local business executive told me that Ge was the best mayor in China.

The mayor has to be doing something right.

The city has a third of the population of neighboring Chongqing. It's located in a basin, and a perpetual bank of clouds seems to hang over it. The city itself is flat, and full of gray, dull buildings.

But there's something about the place.

It's got the fifth largest airport in China, and ranks third in the number of cars people drive, according to Zen Chen, general manager of the local European Union Chamber of Commerce. It's a major draw for high-tech firms, for foreigners, and even for foreign restaurants. About 11 percent of the city's GDP comes from tourism. Over 25 million tourists came to the city during the first half of the year, a 15 percent increase over last year, according to the latest government data. The number of foreign tourists went up 41 percent, to almost half a million, for the first nine months of the year.

The city consistently ranks in the top ten for livability and business climate.

It welcomes outsiders like few other cities in the region, said Zen.

For example, Chengdu has twice the number of Starbucks as Chongqing.

According to Ge, 120 of the Global Fortune 500 have offices or branches in Chengdu – including 14 foreign banks.

From what I heard, the city is focusing firmly on the basics – and not the unnecessary frills. On education, for example. On building a new subway system. On making it easier to commercialize farming. On helping out the rural underclass. On protecting the environment.

I heard from locals that, in years past, the air was so full of pollution that the sun could never get through. Today, I'm told that a nice bright sun will sometimes burn away the clouds and you can see blue skies.

I saw the Panda Research Center – a world-class facility. The pandas had beautiful habitats, very much in keeping to what you would see in the best zoos in the West.

But I was constantly surprised by how little hype and selling was involved. Sure, there was a tiny little alcove where you could buy a stuffed panda, but with 500,000 visitors a year to this facility alone (60% foreign), I would have expected to have been besieged on all sides by people looking for a piece of my wallet.

If this center had been anywhere else, it would have been difficult to walk out without panda T-shirts, panda books, panda jig saw puzzles, panda DVDs. And where was the panda-themed restaurant and amusement park?

Here, as everywhere else, Chengdu seems understated to the point of humility.

There were no sequins on the clothes in downtown storefronts that I could see – the whole city seems to be classically stylish.

Even the high-end malls in the city center, showing off the latest European fashions, avoid the garish.

The city is also far more intellectual than I expected. The drinkers I met debated Chinese history. The population of expats is small but warm and welcoming. There is a definite vibe of a college town.

Everybody I met here loves Chengdu.

According to the mayor, there's a saying that once people visit Chengdu, they don't want to leave.

I'm flying back out to Shanghai on Saturday, and I have to admit that Chengdu is a difficult city to leave.

Fair Taxes For All

2007-11-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

At a dinner over hairy crabs a few days ago, I was discussing Chinese taxes with a group of visiting Italian logistics managers. A Chinese manager at the meeting complained about high taxes and fees but after the Italians heard what the tax rates actually were, the conversation took a different tack entirely.

Sure, an increase from 15 percent to 25 percent is big jump high. But compared to the tax rates in other countries – especially Europe – the 25 percent starts seeming like a pretty low number.

And, as Sherisse Pham explains in this week's article about Aoxing Pharmaceutical, some foreign companies are able to lock in the previous 15 percent rate for a little while longer.

For Chinese companies, the tax rates are falling – from 33 percent to 25 percent - thus leveling the playing field for domestic and foreign firms.

I have friends who are Russian businessmen who came to China because the tax situation is so friendly. It is possible to do business legally in China, paying all taxes and fees, and still make a decent profit. In Russia, by comparison, taxes can sometimes add up to more than 100 percent of income.

Sure, some people do avoid paying their taxes. Eventually, the "fapiao" system of tax receipts needs to be replaced with the standard international system, where any invoice or receipt or cancelled check can be used as documentation of a business expense – and all revenues are taxable, whether a company issues a fapiao for them or not.

However, even with its problems, China's tax structure – and collections – are improving dramatically.

Earlier this month, China's State Administration of Taxation reported that tax revenues went up 30.8 percent -- to 3.72 trillion yuan (US$495.5 billion) -- in the first three quarters of this year. That's the highest growth rate for the same period since 1994, according to Xinhua.

It's also about three times higher than the rate at which the economy as a whole grew.

Corporate income tax revenues rose even more, by 35.8 percent.

Clearly, somebody out there is paying more taxes than they paid last year.

Equalizing taxes between foreigners and locals can only encourage that process, as a basic unfairness in the system is eliminated.

And much of the taxes that are collected do go for pretty decent purposes – infrastructure, education, health care. This creates a virtuous cycle – better infrastructure and education helps business, which in turn further expands the tax base.

Now that the government has lowered the tax rate, it should make it easier to track receipts. Today, taxi cabs and Starbucks restaurants already issue receipts which are official tax documents, so it is possible to integrate tax collections into general operations. But the supermarket chain downstairs forces customers to go to the customer service window to get a tax receipt. It's very doubtful that more than a small percentage of customers will ever bother doing that.

KFC Ditches Nestle, Teams up with Mongolian Sour Cow

2007-10-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

I love fast food, and I love celebrity marriages. Better still, I love celebrity divorces.

This week's announcement about the tie-up between KFC and Mengniu Dairy has everything I need.

In June, Mengniu also pushed out Nestle in a deal with Starbucks.

Mengniu is the largest milk producer in China, a country not traditionally known for dairy products. But today, Xinhua reports, China is the third-largest dairy producer in the world - following the United States and India.

In part, it was foreign brands such as KFC - which has over 2000 outlets in China - that helped change that. I'm thinking of KFC's soft-serve ice cream, for example. Or Starbuck's lattes. Or the slices of cheese on McDonald's hamburgers.

According to the state-owned China Daily, the deal is a demonstration of faith in China product quality.

This past January, Mengniu became the "Official Dairy Product of the NBA in China." Last summer, Hong Kong Disneyland named Mengniu as its dairy supplier.

Mengniu literally means "Mongolian cow." I remember the company for its sponsorship of the Supergirl contest, a copy of foreign talent shows like "American Idol." The show was officially known as the "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Supergirl Contest".

The contest has since been banned by the Chinese government for being, as far as I can tell, too non-conformist – but it did help catapult Mengniu to national prominence

In other countries, dairy companies are very conservative. Cheeses are made based on centuries-old formulas. Occasionally, someone will come out with an innovation like 2 percent milk, or a new flavor of yogurt, or organic cheese but, in the end, what can you really do?

My in-laws were dairy farmers in Massachusetts. The farm went out of business a couple of decades back – as a mature industry, milk is a commodity product. It's hard to make a business at it, except through vast economies of scale.

China proves that it doesn't have to be that way.

By allying itself with Supergirl, with the NBA, with Disneyland and Starbucks and KFC, Mengniu is nothing if not the epitome of cool. The Chinese daily industry in general is cool – fast growing, innovative, popular with the youth market.

And new dairy products are coming out at a rapid pace. Flavored milks and milk with chunks of real fruit, novelty ice creams, even "breakfast cheese."

But, as Li Bin writes in this week's feature about China's dairy industry, China still has a long way to go.

Despite being one of the world's leading producers of daily products, China averages 10 kg of dairy consumption per capita – a tenth of the consumption of the world average. Japanese consumption is 18 times higher. US consumption is 30 times higher. And the French – no surprise here, given their love of cheese – consume 50 times as much dairy as Chinese do.

If the pace of growth in China's dairy industry continues, China may soon eclipse the US in milk production. But it is already eclipsing it in innovation.

Working Men Need Protection as Much as Women

2007-10-18T18:26:00.001-07:00

Last week the China Daily explained a new labor law – due to come into effect on January 1 – that ostensibly protects women from job discrimination.

Ironically, the way that it does this is to list jobs that are "unsuitable for women."

These jobs including working in mines, cutting lumber, installing and removing scaffolding and carrying heavy weights.

On the heavy weights issue, there are plenty of burly women – and plenty of weak men. Those jobs might have physical strength requirements, but should be based on ability, not based on gender.

The other three restrictions are based not on physical ability as much as physical danger.

And, it is true, mining is not a safe environment these days in China. But it's not safe for anyone, whether male or female.

Rather than forbidding women from taking these jobs, the labor authorities should be cracking down on industries that violate safety standards.

After all, who would argue that men are more expandable than women? That their lives are worth less, and that they need fewer protections?

Okay, there are some women – maybe those going through a divorce, say – who might feel that way. But that's no reason to set public policy.

There's also the question of setting precedent.

If mining jobs are too dangerous for women, what about jobs requiring riding bicycles on city streets? Or jobs requiring long hours and stressful work, which might lead to heart attacks? Or police work, or fighting fires, or farm labor? Working on a farm is pretty dangerous work.

In the United States, for example, the farming industry as a whole is almost as dangerous as mining, with 22 deaths per 100,000 per year for farmers, compared to 24 deaths per 100,000 per year for miners. By comparison, the rate is 3.8 per 100,000 for all jobs, according to 2002 data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Forestry and fishing also had high death rates.

The people with the most dangerous individual jobs – in the United States, at least – are timber cutters, fishers, pilots and navigators, structural metal workers, roofers, electrical power installers, farm workers, construction laborers, and truck drivers.

Does the same apply to China? Not exactly.

Last fall, Xinhua reported that the three most dangerous jobs in China are mining, policing, and journalism.

As an employer, can I now refuse to hire female business reporters on the principle that these jobs are dangerous? After all, there's a precedent -- the government has a policy in place of protecting women by keeping them out of dangerous jobs. And, if you work in television, there's also all that heavy equipment to lug around.

China's labor law is well-intentioned, but does the opposite of what it is supposed to do. I hope that the Labor Ministry takes another look at this issue before the law goes into effect.

Outsourcing with Chinese Characteristics

2007-09-27T18:16:00.000-07:00

Historically, there have been two ways for a software outsourcing industry to develop in a country: through domestic demand, and through foreign demand.

The US, Japan, and other developed countries are prime examples of the first option. Large domestic customers - financial services firms, manufacturers, retailers, government organizations, the military - slowly turn to outside vendors to fulfill steadily more comprehensive technological functions. At first, outsourcing firms are brought in as consultants for specific projects, such as the roll-out of a new software system. Or they come in to handle a specific task, such as email management.

Some outsourcing companies started out as primarily hardware vendors, and initially their technicians only visited customers to help them set up new equipment. Other outsourcing companies were business or accounting consultants that moved into providing technology services as well. Others handled paper-based processes, such as payroll, and became technology companies when those processes were automated.

The biggest of these firms took the expertise they developed in the domestic markets and went global with it. The major examples are American companies - Accenture, BearingPoint, EDS, IBM, HP.

Then there's the export-oriented approach. A large customer based, say, in New York, needs some short-term programming help. One of the programmers already on staff knows just the guy - a friend back in the programmer-s country of origin. The staff programmer serves as a liaison, bridging language and cultural gaps between his employer and the growing team of outside programmers in India, Russia, or Israel.

When global companies were hit with the Y2K problem, hiring new programmers just to do that one fix didn't seem practical to many. In any case, there was a shortage of people in the United States who were willing to do the boring work of changing date formats in applications written in ancient computer languages. India was the best positioned to scale up to meet demand, with a large number of English-speaking programmers who knew the old languages and who were happy with the work. The small teams composed of friends and brothers-in-law morphed into real companies - companies that now had insight into the software development processes of major American firms.

When the Y2K crisis was over, these firms turned to other low-end programming tasks. Using their connections with customers in the US and elsewhere in the developed world, they offered to take on software testing, maintaining legacy systems, and rewriting old software to work on new computer platforms.

Today, of course, Indian outsourcing firms do extremely high-level software development, to some of the highest quality standards in the world.

China is not following either of these paths. Instead, it is feeling its way along in a completely new direction - outsourcing with Chinese characteristics. This includes localizing international software and websites to work in the Chinese market, serving domestic firms, and outsourcing projects for Japanese companies and some work for international clients.

It's not an easy path, however. Chinese firms have to compete with the American and Indian giants for both large domestic accounts and for the localization business. All of the world's major outsourcing firms are scaling up in China, and are bringing in their expertise and finely-tuned, world-classes development processes.

It's hard to imagine how, without government intervention, Chinese firms will be able to compete.

If they do then the Chinese path might become a realistic model for other developing nations to follow, the same way that its economic transformation has become a classic case of a peaceful - and profitable - transition to a free market economy.

Selling Computers In China's Frontier

2007-09-20T18:18:00.000-07:00

It's not easy to sell computers outside of the big cities, with logistics one of the main challenges.

I was at a logistics conference a year ago, where Carrefour president Jean-Luc Chereau showed slides from a typical loading dock (Carrefour has been in China since 1995, and has over 100 hypermarkets in dozens of cities around the country).

The reason I mention them is because one of the slides he showed is still stuck in my head. It was of a loading dock somewhere within China. A nice modern truck was pulled up, unloading cardboard boxes. Next to it was a bicycle, piled sky-high with computer boxes.

I'd hate to see that fall over in the middle of a busy street.

I also had a quick chat with Ying Wu, executive director of business transformation for global supply chain at Lenovo Group. He said that many of his company's computers were sold at small mom-and-pop stores around China - many of which didn't even have Internet access. As a result, Lenovo was forced to develop a sales tracking system that allowed store owners to report their data via cell phone text messages.

Despite these obstacles, China's computer sales continue to rise.

In 2006, Gartner reports that total PC shipments to China were over 28 million - making it the second-largest computer market after the US. This year, Gartner predicts, Chinese consumers will buy more than 33 million desktops, notebooks, servers and other computers. And China's computer sales will continue to grow at double-digit rates, the research firm predicts.

China has an advantage over many other markets, such as India, or Europe, in that everybody in the whole country reads the same language. As a result, applications and operating systems only need to be translated into Mandarin, and everyone is all set, making the computers accessible to people throughout China.

In addition, it seems that Chinese consumers clearly understand the need for computer ownership when it comes to their childrenâ€™s education - a significant driver for computer purchases in many homes.

Today's story by Edward Russell shows that much of this growth is coming from China's smaller cities - a sign of the growing maturity of markets throughout China.

Computer makers are adjusting their marketing and sales strategies for the new markets.

HP plans to expand its presence to 600 cities in the next two years - up from just 20 cities in 2003.

And it's not just the smaller cities in China that are benefiting from increased attention from manufacturers, both foreign and domestic. Farmers are, as well.

And Lenovo announced a 1,499-yuan (US$199) computer last month designed for the rural market. Another major domestic manufacturer, Haier, has also announced a strategy and new products for the market.

Earlier this month, Haier announced a joint venture company with Henan Zhongcheng Computer Company to produce computers for rural consumers in Henan, expected to ship a million computers designed for rural residents in three and a half years. The first computers are due out this October.

Promoting Outsourcing

2007-09-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

Outsourcing - services, not manufacturing - is one of the most appealing industries to get into. It doesn't pollute, and provides white-collar jobs to college graduates.

It's no surprise that China has been enviously looking at India's progress in services outsourcing and looking for ways to emulate its success.

Now the government is putting some money behind it. On Sept. 12, the AsiaPulse news service reported that the China Development Bank (CDB) will provide up to 5 billion yuan (US$665 million) in loans to services outsourcing projects. The CDB is one of China's three policy banks, and has signed an agreement with China's Ministry of Commerce to this effect.

Late last month, India's IT trade body, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), issued a white paper about China's services outsourcing industry, concluding that China has the potential to develop a large software and business process outsourcing sector.

"The Chinese government is key on promoting this sector," NASSCOM said. "Rapid progress on the tangible aspects of infrastructure and capacity creation is evident."

China's outsourcing industry resembles India's in the early phases of its evolution. However, NASSCOM pointed out that China also has some systemic weaknesses, and softer aspects remain a challenge.

There is a lot of opportunity for cooperation between India and China, however.

"Underlying this is substantial domestic market potential, a sizeable educated workforce and strong government emphasis on developing the sector," the organization said.

"China has come a long way in establishing itself as a destination for IT sourcing, with all stakeholders including government, academia and industry working towards improving the regulatory environment, offering incentives to IT companies and increasing the talent pool," NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik said in a statement.

Today's story by Li Bin illustrates just this, with a discussion of an agreement between India's National Institute of Information Technology and the Chongqing Information Technology Bureau to offer IT training to universities in and around Chongqing.

"Each month we host delegations from China which seek to learn from India," Karnik said.

According to NASSCOM, China's IT software and services sector accounts for just 0.5 percent of China's gross domestic product in 2006.

"Given this, the Chinese government and industry have taken a systematic approach towards addressing the above challenges with ICT [information and communication technology] oriented industry policies," said NASSCOM vice president Ameet Nivsarkar.

To develop China's capabilities as an outsourcing base for IT software and services, the Ministry of Commerce has launched a ten-hundred-thousand program: to promote ten (now 11) key outsourcing cities, attract 100 multinationals to China, and help 1,000 enterprises develop outsourcing capabilities. The end goals to double service exports by 2010.

As part of this project, the ministry is creating a special fund to train between 300,000 and 400,000 students over the next five years to prepare them for software outsourcing and business process outsourcing jobs.

The ministry will also help the 1000 enterprises obtain international quality certifications.

The plan also includes preferential treatment for cities in central and western China, such as discounted loans.

"China's approach to developing its IT software and services sector reflects the pattern adopted earlier while developing its hardware sector," NASSCOM reports. This means trading market access for foreign technology, encouraging joint ventures with foreign firms, and letting them set up production networks in China to support domestic companies.

Will all this make a difference? To the companies and individuals involved - definitely. To the country as a whole? Probably not for a while, as it takes time to create a legal system that effectively projects intellectual property and create a large enough pool of trained professionals and managers.

Go West, Young Meeting Planner

2007-09-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

When things stay the same, you do things the same way. When things change, that's when life gets interesting. Fortunately for businesses in Central and Western China, things are starting to change.

For companies that keep up, this is good - more customers, more suppliers, more business partners.

Companies that don't keep up will see the new customers go to their competitors. After all, if your sales and marketing efforts are focused on taking the same three guys out to a fancy dinner, then your business will be limited to those three guys - unless a competitor comes in and sweeps them away.

There are two main avenues to change: education, and networking. Your sales and marketing staff need to learn new techniques for finding and developing customers, for example.

Both education and networking happen at conferences and seminars. And, as Central and Western China starts to develop, so does the event planning industry in the region.

That's what a friend of mine just told me, whose company is currently organizing an event in Xi'an and is planning to open one or two offices inland in the next six months.

David Taylor, spokesman for Monaco-based naseba Lnoppen, is one of the high-end events organizers, catering mostly to multinationals and the biggest domestic firms. In mid October, the company is holding the Advanced Coal and Chemical Summit in Xi'an.

"That's where the industry is," he told me. In fact, event participants will even get an industry on-site visit.

The company is also planning an event in Chengdu for later this year.

The government's "go west" program was a big jump-start to the events industry, he said. "Business is moving there, and we follow the business."

Foreign businesses - and big Chinese companies - who are moving into the region need information and local contacts. Meanwhile, local companies that want to go national - or international - benefit from training and contacts as well.

So far, there isn't too much competition our west, he said. "It's almost an untapped market when it comes to events. A lot of that, as best as I can tell, is because the events companies tend to come from a fairly international perspective an they still see Shanghai and Beijing as being the center of China business."

But with the growth in the inland cities, demand for information at all levels is expanding sharply, he said. This creates opportunities for event organizers both large and small.

The major industries contributing to this move are the energy sector, heavy industry, logistics, and, of course, manufacturing. There's also interest in financial events, he added.

Running a successful business takes quite a bit more than producing a product and getting it out the door. It's nice to see ecosystems developing, of all the ancillary services that businesses in today's world need to survive - and thrive.

Disclosure: David is a friend, and he and I have talked before about doing joint projects together. We met, of course, at a conference.

Local Incorporation Spurs Westward Moves

2007-08-30T18:14:00.000-07:00

This past April, Chinese regulators started giving permission for foreign banks to incorporate locally. Incorporation means that the bank can do business in yuan and issue credit cards. Previously, foreign banks were only allowed to handle foreign-currency accounts, and were only able to offer credit cards through partnership deals with local partners.

Before, the foreign banks pretty much stayed in the coastal cities, going after the high-value, foreign-currency customers.

Today, those same banks have become much more appealing to China's middle class consumers -- and they have started moving to where those consumers are located. In other words, throughout China.

ABN Amro is now only one of foreign banks with branches in Chengdu and Chongqing, for example. HSBC, as today's story by Mai Yi demonstrates, goes even further, with a branch in rural Zengdu county.

Citibank, HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Hong Kongâ€™s Bank of East Asia â€“ among others -- are also competing head-to-head with domestic banks throughout China.

China's retail market is an attractive target, with 30 trillion yuan (US$4 trillion) in household savings and surging demand for credit cards and other financial services as incomes rise.

"When you are able to do local currency business, the more presence you have, the better off you are," one banking executive told us late last year. "The west is developing and it is developing fast or faster than the national average. Secondly, the government is encouraging western expansion and they are making branch licensing easier."

Foreign banks were first allowed to open branches in western and northeastern China in late 2003, but the lack of ability to do local-currency business hindered expansion.

It all bodes well for the Chinese consumer, who has one of the world's highest savings rates -- and enjoys some of the world's worst customer service when it comes to banking.

And not just Chinese consumers will benefit, though they will probably benefit the most, since there is more of them than just about anybody else.

Foreign businesses will benefit as well, since they will be able to get access to good banking services wherever they go throughout China

For example, it's a nightmare for my company to transfer money -- even within Shanghai. Too often, an employee has to carry stacks of cash between bank branches.

With international banks expanding in China, and bringing international service standards -- and product offerings -- local banks will have to shape up to stay competitive.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can transfer money electronically from my business account to my landlord, to my employees, and to my suppliers. Or, at the very least, write them checks.

In America, paper checks are so last-century. An inconvenience and a cost.

Here in China, paper checks, for some businesses at least, would be a big leap forward, and a cost savings over the current paper-bag-full-of-cash payment mechanisms.

Not to mention the security and risk management improvement.

Hotel Hotspots

2007-08-22T18:11:00.000-07:00

Three years ago, work took me on a trip out of Shanghai, and my colleagues and I stayed at a decent-looking hotel -- one of the best in that area.

We were the only people there. When we checked in, the staff acted surprised that we needed things -- like room keys. Nobody showed us where to go, and for a little while we stumbled around in the dark, looking for our rooms in the multi-building complex.

The rooms were chilly, and badly supplied. None of the amenities I'm used to seeing in even the worst hotels in the US or Europe were present.

The hotel was located on a road lined with industrial enterprises -- but the road was strangely deserted every time we were on it.

The hotel managers had trouble getting us drinks, or calling us taxis.

The promised Internet connections didn't exist -- instead, I was given directions to a near-by Internet cafe. The cafe was a bit of a hike away, full of teenage boys and cigarette smoke. Not the worst working environment of my life, but not the best, either.

Hotels are high-visibility business projects. They can bring some glamour to a town, give a place for visiting executives and investors to rest their feet in nice surroundings.

Clearly, a good hotel is a must-have for any up-and-coming business city in China.

Three years ago, that feeling, that a location "should" have a hotel, was the primary consideration for putting one up.

But is the location any good? Is management effective? Is the hotel going to make money? These are the questions that must be asked instead. And today's hotel executives are doing just that.

As this week's story by Edward Russell and Miranda Li demonstrates, business logic is the driving force now in the industry -- and it is now flourishing, even in second-tier cities.

As a result, developers are paying attention to budget hotels -- less showy, but more practical, since most travel in China is domestic, and subject to price constraints.

However, as foreign interest continues to grow in central and western China, we're starting to see some high-end properties as well.

I'm now looking forward to visiting the Shangri-La hotel in Wuhan, for example.

Rooms are just around $100 a night -- a bargain by international standards. The hotel has conference and meeting rooms, a fitness center with a swimming pool, and honest-to-goodness Internet in the guest rooms.

But the same town also boasts a Novotel, a Ramada and a Best Western -- all of which have been getting great reviews from business travelers.

The Ramada Plaza Tian Lu hotel has all the same amenities as the Shangri-La, as does the Novotel Xin Hua, and the Best Western Premier Wuhan, and prices are about the same or lower -- many sites list prices at between $60 and $70 a night.

"I just attended a hotel conference at the Ramada Wuhan," says a typical review. "I was expecting a disappointing experience typical of interior cities. I was pleasantly surprised that it had good service and cleanliness."

Last time I traveled into China's interior, away from the major cities, I stayed with friends.

Next time, I'm going to give some of these new hotels a try.

India's Outsourcing Headstart

2007-08-16T18:12:00.000-07:00

China has three major strikes against it when it comes to software outsourcing.

The first -- and biggest -- is that India has already sewn up the industry. It's got the contracts, the customers, the experience, the employees, the facilities, and the certifications.

Home-grown Chinese companies start out far, far behind. But even US and Indian outsourcing firms who come to China have to grapple with the lack of experienced personnel.

Typically, China dominates industry by coming in at a lower price point, and with more people. But India is at about the same price as China when it comes to wages -- at least, on the coasts.

In Central and Western China, Chinese firms could have a price advantage, and I know of a couple of domestic firms that are hard at work setting up branches inland in order to capitalize on just that. But, unfortunately, the lack of language skills and experience gets progressively more pronounced in the interior of the country.

In addition, India has plenty of engineers to go around. In fact, Indian colleges and universities are well suited to producing masses of engineers who can go to work for outsourcing companies -- again, because of India's track record. Established outsourcing firms have partnerships with universities, consult on curriculum, and produce veterans who can go back and teach. There are also plenty of internship opportunities. It's easy for an Indian student to find out what skills are needed in a software development job.

None of this is the case in China. Without a track record, without a critical mass of established firms, without collaboration between companies and educational institutions, the software engineers who graduate in China are less likely to have the skills needed by a world-class development house.

Related to the problem of track record is the issue of trust. Indian outsourcing firms have a long history of working for the world's top financial institutions, and, for the most part, doing a decent job protecting intellectual property and customer data. When a problem does happen, the industry reacts quickly, setting up security measures and procedures. For example, after Citibank had a problem with an outsourced call center employee stealing customer data, the Indian outsourcing industry put a process in place for tracking the history of each employee in the outsourcing industry and for checking the backgrounds of new hires.

In addition, India's justice system is reasonably fair and transparent. For India, the outsourcing industry its one of the main drivers of the economy. If anything happens to threaten that, the entire country can mobilize.

In China, the outsourcing industry is an afterthought to the country's main business, which is manufacturing. Intellectual property rights and other issues of critical importance to software developers don't get the degree of attention that they could. Even Microsoft backed down on its battle to protect Windows and issued a low-cost version for the Chinese market.

The last issue is not necessarily the most significant, but the one that comes first to mind of potential US customers: the language gap. Sure, Indian programmers have accents, but their knowledge of the English language itself is superb and they are generally easily understood. To make the language gap even smaller, many Indian outsourcing firms run "accent amelioration" programs for their employees.

In China, the problem isn't the accent as much as basic language skills. English just isn't as widespread in China as it is in India. For manufacturing firms, this is not a significant barrier. But for call centers, for data processors, and for programmers who have to work on projects with partners around the globe this is a major problem.

Today, the bulk of software development in China is localization projects -- producing Chinese-language versions of software and websites for foreign clients. There is also some domestic work, especially for Chinese financial firms looking to modernize their systems.

I predict that, in the next few years, China might become a regional outsourcing hub, producing software for Japanese and Korean companies, for example, as well as small, specialized projects for international firms. Other companies might outsource software development here because they already outsource of their manufacturing, or are interested in getting a foothold in China's domestic market by first playing nice with the Chinese government and creating white-collar jobs.

But, barring a significant catastrophe in India, it is not likely to catch up with that outsourcing giant anytime soon.

The Biggest City You've Never Heard Of

2007-08-09T18:20:00.000-07:00

Actually, the above headline is not true. If you're reading our publication, you probably have heard of Chongqing - and heard a lot about it.

If Beijing is China's Washington, D.C. and Shanghai is New York City, then Chongqing is Chicago.

I used to live in Chicago - the American one. My first journalism job out of college was in the Windy City. Chicago's heritage is as a frontier town, though it's pretty civilized these days. I was always nostalgic for the past, however - that feeling of excitement, of being at the frontier, of building something new.

Today, Chongqing is that frontier. It's the frontier of industrialization, of modernization, a front line in the move from the farm to the city.

Shanghai, with dozens of pizza delivery places and a half-dozen competing English-language city magazines, with its supermarkets and movie theaters, its five-star restaurants and its World Expo, can hardly be considered a frontier any more.

In Chongqing, other than KFC and McDonald's and hotel restaurants - and how can you escape those? - it's hard to find a good western restaurant.

But Chongqing is the home of the world's biggest public toilet, where 1,000 people can answer nature's call at once.

The Chinese government is investing in highway improvements, the city is developing special economic zones, there's a monorail in town, and the long-lost twin of the Chrysler Building is going up.

While the rest of China is growing at an average annual rate of 11 percent - Chongqing is growing at 14 percent.

Over 30 million people live in the municipality, making Chongqing one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. Most of these residents live in the countryside, not in the city proper - but that's likely to change as the city continues its push for industrialization.

Progress comes with a price, of course. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Chongqing is the fifth most polluted city on the planet.

This week, however, the city government announced that it's most of the way through a project to move 100 polluting factories out of the city - 82 are already gone and the rest will be moved within the next five years, according to the Chongqing Economic Commission.

I'm not sure how effective this plan will be to reduce pollution. After all, an estimated 200,000 people move into the city each year - many of them to work in new factories being built on the outskirts of the city. That's today's outskirts - the city is spreading out at a rapid pace.

Beijing and Shanghai are under pressure to clean up because they're showpieces - the Olympics and the World Expo are bringing in significant attention, but these cities have always been doors to the West. This is where the foreign diplomats and businessmen and journalists set up shop.

Development in Chongqing, however, will be independent of these considerations. It will be a true test case for whether the Chinese government is able to take a tough line on pollution and sustainable development - not for the sake of international perception, but for the sake of the long-term viability of the city.

Marketing to the Second Tier

2007-08-02T18:15:00.000-07:00

The residents of Shanghai and Beijing have, by now, gotten used to a superabundance of advertising. On television and on the radio, in newspapers and magazines, in buses and subways, on the streets and in taxicabs and even in elevators. They haven't reached the level of cynicism of Western audiences, perhaps, but they're increasingly more sophisticated and demanding consumers.

By comparison, consumers in China's second and third-tier cities are where the tier-one cities were a few years ago: they're less used to advertising, less familiar with the products being advertised, and less willing to pay more for foreign brands.

They need more explanation of what a product does, and they need a lower price to be able to afford it. But, at the same time, they don't want to be talked down to, or get an inferior product pawned off on them.

Discovery Ogilvy China recently surveyed consumers in 65 lower-tier cities around China. The report, "The Real China," was released this month and shows some interesting insights, the results of which can be seen in our lead story.

To me, the fact that Ogilvy conducted this survey is a sign that international marketers are increasingly starting to look beyond Shanghai and Beijing when marketing their products in China.

And it's about time. Chinese consumers throughout the country need the same kind of services and products available in the big cities. They may have less purchasing power, and will be more selective in what they buy, but their sheer numbers far outweigh the populations in the tier one cities.

And as the economy continues to grow, so will their wallets. When the coastal markets are becoming increasingly saturated and hyper-competitive, it makes sense to look inland for new opportunities.

It will be interesting to see how fast the changes will come â€“ and which foreign companies will take advantage of these trends, and which will stumble.

I hope that Ogilvy will continue to conduct this survey in the years to come, and that other marketing organizations join them in helping create a better picture of the Chinese consumer.

China's Transportation Network a Key Advantage

2007-07-25T18:00:00.000-07:00

This past February, I visited some outsourcing firms in southern India -- Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai.

The food, I have to say, was excellent. As a vegetarian, I have to say that I have never eaten as well as I did during that ten-day trip.

I was shocked, however, by the state of the roads. Even near major airports, roads were in disrepair and there were few signs of ongoing construction -- at, least, in the places I've visited.

I flew from Shanghai to Chennai and the difference in the roads to these airports was stark. In Shanghai, the highway is wide and straight. Yes, it's packed full of cars, but for the most part, traffic moves. In Chennai, the road was narrow, full of potholes, and wound through what appeared to be abandoned constructions sites -- inadequately fenced -- residential areas, and shopping districts.

And don't get me started on the taxis. Compared to the cabs in Mumbai, the taxis in Shanghai might as well be right out of the Jetsons.

The roads in other cities I visited were no different.

My experiences were not atypical. The problems of India's transportation network are a major bottleneck for that country's development. It's railroads, airports, and highways are full to capacity, and its difficult to get new projects approved.

China's transportation network, by comparison, is a modern marvel. Keep in mind, I'm comparing it to India and not, say, Germany. But for all its faults, the roads are straight and wide, and there are new plans for road and airport construction in every part of China.

And those plans are backed by political will, financial wherewithal, and by a centralized power structure.

Now, in the long term, India's decentralized, democratic decision-making system may take the country further. By having to get buy-in from affected constituencies, the country may be able to avoid some of the social problems associated with development.

But that's not necessarily a guarantee of stability, and there are plenty of other areas of social stress besides highway construction.

In addition, new highways and airports bring new manufacturing plants, new logistics hubs, new retail outlets -- in other words, jobs and economic prosperity. And the highways don't only bring in new jobs, but help employees get to jobs elsewhere in the country. That helps to alleviate a great deal of social discontent.

They certainly alleviate my social discontent.

But, more importantly, it alleviates the discomfort of China's growing blue-collar working class, the foundation of this fast-growing economy, the basis of a middle class culture.

Chinese regulators should be more careful in ensuring that there is adequate buy-in from everyone affected by a construction project. With cameraphones in the hands of everybody these days, high-profile "nail houses" will only become more common, creating the possibility of embarrassment for local officials, or a focal point for protests. Adequate public comment periods and open information about future transportation planning will help deflate some of the frustrations.

Meanwhile, those of us doing in business in China will be able to benefit from one of the fastest-growing transportation networks on the planet.

Every day, with every new road built, a new land of opportunity opens up.

Buying Power

2007-07-18T17:23:00.000-07:00

As Shanghai and Beijing reach retail saturation, international retailers are increasingly looking to smaller cities as their entry-points into China.

According to new research from A. T. Kearney, a Chicago-based management consulting firm, consumers in second- and third-tier cities are ready to embrace Western-style retail concepts and products.

The reason? The influence of television, movies and the Internet, researchers said.

"In China, foreign retailers such as Wal-Mart and Tesco, and Hong Kong-based retailers are branching into smaller mainland cities, such as Yuxi, Weifan, Nanchang and Wuhu," the research company said.

However, companies may need to use different approaches in the smaller cities.

"Retailers should not go into second-tier cities armed with a first-tier strategy," said Mike Moriarty, a partner with A.T. Kearney and co-leader of the GRDI, in a statement. "Successfully entering a new country via smaller cities requires careful identification of cities with consumers who are ready to embrace modern retail formats. But with the right strategy, smaller cities can be attractive targets for retailers that missed the window of opportunity in major cities and for established retailers looking for growth."

For example, in the most obvious difference, incomes tend to be smaller outside Shanghai and Beijing. This means that some products may need to be priced or marketed differently.

In addition, consumers in China's smaller cities live different lifestyles and have different needs than those on the coast. Differences in the quality of public transportation and penetration of car ownership may affect the kinds of products consumers can easily bring home, for example.

And, of course, there are market considerations.

In Shanghai, for example, a new product may be competing against twenty existing brands. The key marketing challenge would be differentiation.

In a smaller city, a new product may be one of the first of its type, and the challenge would be consumer education.

The problem for us business journalists -- and for you business executives -- is the lack of good research about the retail industry in central and western China. Most research reports still focus on the coastal cities, and those that do look west tend to be very broad and infrequent.

This situation is bound to change over time, but, until then, international retailers are relying on custom research reports from some of the smaller research shops that have recently opened doors in China.

Unfortunately, custom research is time consuming -- and expensive.

As a news magazine -- and not a research firm -- we at Emerging China can't hope to fill this gap. But we will try to do our own small part to address it, with special sections on China's retail industry and in-depth reports about particular cities and industry segments.

Also keep an eye out for reports about China's market research firms.

If there is anything in particular you would like to see us focus on, please don't hesitate to write. In fact, we welcome letters to the editor on any topic.

Looking west at real estate

2007-07-12T18:14:00.000-07:00

Until the late 1990s, Chinese households and enterprises occupied state-owned property. Average residents had their housing provided for free, through government welfare departments and the housing offices of state-owned enterprises.

With the advent of privatization came one of the largest real estate booms the world has ever seen.

Shanghai is an obvious beneficiary of this -- new skyscrapers, shopping malls, and residential housing complexes are springing up both in the city and in the surrounding suburbs.

But central and western China now offer even more opportunities for real estate investment, and the reforms that have worked in the coastal cities are promulgating through the rest of the country.

According to a report by Beijing-based research firm Zhongjing Zongheng, just released in English last month, the real estate market has grown by 19.5 percent in the Eastern cities. But that pales before the growth in the inner regions -- 36.3 percent increase in central China and 32.1 percent in western China.

The research company predicts that the boom will last for another 20 years.

They may have a point, since city residents still account for only 42 percent of China's population, according to United Nations Population Fund, compared to an an average of 75 percent in the developed world.

That's a lot of growth potential.

Here at Emerging China we plan to devote a significant amount of time to cover the changing real estate market in China's central and western cities.

International companies are affected by this growing market in a number of ways. Foreign firms buy and rent property for their offices, and sometimes need residential space for their key employees.

In addition, many foreign investors are getting into the real estate as an investment, to the constraints allowed by law.

Finally, international real estate companies may have an advantage over local competitors when it comes to reliability, service, and their global capabilities. But, again, local regulations may limit the extent to which they're allowed to do business.

Regulatory changes are as important -- if not more so -- than market demands, when it comes to the Chinese real estate industry.

When we plan our coverage for the coming months, you can look forward to articles about the ways the laws are changing throughout China, and how foreign investors, renters and property companies are affected by the laws.

Next week, we will be posting an online calendar with a schedule of our special issues -- please keep an eye out for it.

Have a great summer!

The Biggest Business Story on the Planet

2007-06-28T18:19:00.000-07:00

After the Soviet Union fell apart, I went to Russia to cover the civil wars in the former Soviet republics. I covered the dot-com boom for Computerworld -- particularly the way that the Internet transformed the world's financial system.

For the past three years, I have been covering the way that the rise of China has been transforming the global economy -- and this is the biggest story yet.

The way that China is transforming from a command-style to a market economy without massive political upheaval and loss of life is an example for every country in the emerging world. It is a privilege to be able to chronicle the ways and the means in which this is happening.

But what we've seen so far, with the transformation of Shanghia, Beijing, and Guangzhou into world-class cities, is only a fraction of the story. Cities in central and western China have been quietly learning from the example of the coastal trendsetters and implementing laws and policies that make them equally attractive to both foreign investors and home-grown entrepreneurs.

In addition, the national government is quickly putting in place the infrastructure that the country needs to develop, including roads, railways, and airports.

Here at Emerging China we hope to cover the westward expansion of China's economy, the good along with the bad. If you would like to participate in our endeavor, as a contributor or as a supporter, please feel free to contact me at maria@tromblyltd.com.

Meanwhile, enjoy your reading.

It promises to be a great trip.

Journalists and bad job-hunting skills

2007-06-19T21:46:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

I don't know if this is the case just in China or everywhere, but a great number of journalists I interview lately have remarkably poor job hunting skills.

It seems that I'm spending this week - like most weeks -- up to my eyeballs in recruitment ads and job applications. This time, we're hiring for a bookkeeper/office manager and freelance writers and copyeditors for a new online magazine about central and western China.

I've been seeing resumes from people with nice academic backgrounds and truly horrible work histories. Sure, there's always the chance that they're evil people who can't keep a steady job because of their hobby of murdering drifters. But I tend to assume the simplest explanation -- they don't know how to job hunt.

This is sad because there are so many books and other resources for job hunters, and it all really boils down to research and networking -- two things that reporters should be excellent at.

I understand that the market is saturated and it's hard to get started, but there are a few things that I look for on a resume and from an applicant that I hardly ever see -- and the bad job market can't possibly be to blame. Among them are:

* Commitment to journalism. Even during stints as a waitress, does the applicant continue to write freelance articles, contribute to professional organizations, take courses, even volunteer as editor of the local library newsletter? Something? Anything? Or do they just give up? I don't want to hire people who give up easily.
* Basic professionalism. Is everything spelled right? Are parallel grammatical structures actually parallel? This is a no-brainer. Why would anyone turn in a journalism resume to an editor before it's been proof-read?
* Pushyness. If I don't have a job available or at the right salary, does the applicant negotiate? Maybe there's something else they can do to prove themselves, or while the right job comes along? I want a reporter who can't take "no" for an answer. If the reporter is really, really pushy I might even create a job just for her. It's a tough profession. I want tough people.
* Volunteerism. How willing is the applicant to do something that's not in the job descriptio? I want to see evidence of participation in professional organizations, or taking on extra assignments. If it's not in the resume, it's easy enough to demonstrate -- offer to help me out with a project. There's always things I'm working on that I need help with. Even if it doesn't directly lead to a job, it will certainly lead to good recommendation or referral.

On the other hand -- and I hate to admit this -- I have a soft spot for applicants with no job-hunting skills. I see someone with a decent educational history and job record but an misprinted resume and ugly shirt and an inability to look me in the eye, and I think, "If I hire this guy, he'll stick around for a while, because he doesn't know how to job hunt."

I'm not proud of this. And I feel guilty, and compensate by helping writers out when I can. I've been known to copyedit applicants' resumes. (Okay, that's not from guilt -- I just can't stop myself. I even copyedit restaurant menus.)

Freelance writers are even worse. Which is funny, given that they, in effect, are constantly job hunting.

Here's what I often see from freelancers:

* No website. In this day and age, how can you not have a website? The quickest, cheapest way to do it: get a free blog from Google (Blogger) or Terapad, which are the two services I recommend most often. Blogger, however, is blocked in China - which could either be a good, or a bad thing. Post your bio and your resume in the "about" section, and your clips as blog entries. You can back-date your blog entries, so you can post your clips by when they appeared. Depending on the kind of permission you have from your old editors, you can either post the whole article, or just the first couple of paragraphs and then the link to your original story. You can add a couple of articles a day until you've got a nice selection of clips to look at - which brings me to the next point:
* Just one clip per pub. Writers often provide a list of publications they write for, plus one clip each from a handful of them, presumably their best clip. I wonder: did the magazine drop them after one story? Were they so hard to work with that the editors never wanted to see them again? More than a nice clip, I want to see evidence that the writer had a long-term, successful relationship with an editor. In the past, when clips had to be copied, editors probably didn't want to spend their time wading through stories and just wanted to look at a handful of the best ones. Now, I want to see all the clips. Yes, the all the hundreds -- or thousands -- of stories. Maybe the best ones can be featured in a special section somewhere, but I want to be able to browse. Is the writer consistent? Able to learn new subjects? Have a broad background -- or have depth of knowledge in a particular field? These are all good things to know.
* Goofy email address. It costs $10 (or less) per year to register a URL. Gmail will cost your email for you, for free, at that URL. So you don't need to have a hot_john@spam_host.com account. You can use john@johnsmith.com, and still have Gmail's great interface. Many small businesses are using it these days to host their corporate email. Freelance writers should, too, or invest in an email hosting service.
* No testimonials. Many editors would be happy to give writers a quote testifying to their ability to meet deadlines or to produce usable copy. For some reason, however, most writers never ask. It's okay to ask. The worst that could happen is that the editor woud say no, and blame corporate policies. I want to help my best freelance writers stay in business, which means that they need a steady flow of work. And if they get too busy to write for me -- well, I'm sorry to see them go, but I'm also happy for their success. I bet other editors feel the same way.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for either freelance or staff work - or a summer intership -- look me up. I'm always checking my email.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Outrage continues to build about jobs outsourcing

2007-06-05T22:00:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

On Sunday, Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post made fun of PasadenaNow's plans to outsource local reporting jobs to India in his column, Hack for Hire.

He does it by trying to show how funny it would be if American reporters tried to cover news in India or China.

Of course, American reporters cover news from India and China all the time.

American journalist routinely parachute into foreign countries and write them. They are obviously taking jobs away from locals with much better understanding of local cultures. Sure, they write in terms that people back home can understand, but I would argue that it is much easier to learn to write in terms that Americans can understand than to figure out what's happening in, say, China or India.

And many American reporters cover the world without ever leaving home.

They pick up the phone and call people, or send emails to them. A few years ago, it would have been impossible to do this -- you would literally have to have someone on the ground, going around and knocking on doors.

Today, my reporters complain when their voice mails to Vietnam officials aren't returned the same day.

I did a story on the Iraqi stock exchange a year or two back. It was when there was still optimism in the country, and there was actual hope for the exchange. I did meet some Iraq Stock Exchange executives while they were on a trip abroad, but I never took them up on their invitation to visit Baghdad. The interviews for the story were conducted by phone and email.

I also wrote about Indian outsourcing for years before I ever actually visited India. But then, what technology journalist hasn't?

Usually, my conversations with sources in foreign countries are very specific: What do you think about the new regulations? What does your company plan to do next?

Occasionally -- very, very rarely -- I might ask sources to describe what something looks like. As webcams proliferate, I might soon be able to ask them to pan the camera across their office.

Electronic communication is already good enough for business, technology, and economics stories. With the rise of blogging, it's even become possible to do remote "man in the street" type interviews with ordinary citizens, by finding them through their blogs.

Sure, Weingarten may do a lousy job with his first attempt at covering local news in India. But if he were to do it, day in and day out, for a few months, he'd probably get pretty good. Sure, he probably won't learn Tamil in that time, but he will have probably collected the emails and telephone numbers of all the local players, so he can contact them after the meetings and find out the background of what actually happened and what it means.

An Indian reporter covering the US will have a much easier time of it. Indians already grow up with a steady diet of Friends, Hollywood movies, and all our other cultural exports. There's no language barrier, and public information is usually easily accessible compared to that in other countries.

Then there's the "hierarchy of majors" effect on US journalism.

Here's my theory (in case you haven't heard it yet):

The toughest majors are the math-heavy ones: physics, mathematics, economics, chemistry, engineering. That's where the preponderance of the smartest students ends up.

Then there are the tough non-math majors: premed, prelaw, the life sciences, government, history. There's a lot of memorization of facts and understanding of processes.

After that, you've got the language majors, comparitative literature, the softer side of the literal arts curriculum. A student might have to read a few books and write a few papers, but it's neither rocket science nor brain surgery.

Finally, you've got the communication majors. I'm not sure what they have to do. I presume they already know how to communicate before they ever get to college. It's the major of choice for college athletes and men and women going for the Mrs. and Mr. degrees. When I get a job application from a communications major, I better see a second major in economics or government or something -- anything! -- else.

So, on the one hand, you've got an excess of American communications graduates barely able to add two and two and planning to hop over to public relations the minute they get a chance.

And, on the other hand, you have smart, hungry, driven Indians who had to work like crazy to get into college at all.

You do have a problem with quality control. Even in the United States, reporters sometimes slide fake stories through. Oversight is much, much harder when the reporter is on the other side of the planet, especially when the editor isn't familiar with the story the reporter is covering.

I suggest the following quality control mechanism for overseas reporters (of any nationality):

* Full transcripts -- in English - of every interview. If a quote doesn't have a transcript to back it up, cut it out of the story.
* Full contact info for each source (including email addresses). Routinely email quotes to sources to check for accuracy. (Not the whole story, just their particular quotes.)
* All source materials (using Google translation if they're in foreign languages). If a fact isn't backed up by a source material, cut it out of the story. And, of course, if a fact isn't attributed at all it shouldn't be in the story in the first place.

It is a little bit of a pain to collect all this stuff. We use an online relational database in our office. But the investment in a good document tracking and workflow system is well worth it, in my opinion.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Busy season

2007-06-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

Last week, we had so many story assignments coming in that we ran out of writers (including our freelancers). Thus no postings from me for a while.

We've been running ads for more writers and copyeditors, but it will take time to train people and get them to the point where they actually save us work, not create more work for us to do.

For a new writer, we have to hold their hand through the entire reporting process, help them organize their stories, and then rewrite everything from scratch after they hand them in.

For a new copyeditor, we have to hold their hand through the copyediting process, then re-edit everything they hand in.

We don't have a choice, of course -- there aren't many experienced business writers out where we are, so training is essential.

I had much the same experienced when I worked in Russia in the early 90s, though back then I was training news reporters, not business writers.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to get involved and help us out, just drop me a line.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

How to avoid paying bribes

2007-05-23T22:12:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

At lunch today I had a nice chat with a lawyer friend about paying bribes. Now, I'm not about to comment on this issue in China (except to say that, for me at least, it hasn't come up).

But I'll share a bit of my experience in Russia and the former Soviet republics.

Again, I'm not often asked for bribes. When I am, I don't pay them. End of story.

But I've known colleagues who had to pay through the nose for everything. Every single stamp, ticket, piece of paper, or anything else they needed -- the bureaucrat's hand would come out. Even for simple things like hiring drivers or translators, they were forced to pay way above the going rate.

Some dealt with this problem by bargaining hard, others by sending local assistants to negotiate on their behalf. Others just resigned themselves to pulling out their wallets.

And I have other colleagues who are never asked for bribes. Instead, they get favors from bureaucrats -- favors that the bribe-paying guys wouldn't even dream of getting.

What's the difference? In my exprience, the difference comes down to how much they like the people they're dealing with.

Let's talk about Alex, for example. Alex was a freelance television journalist of European origin. Short, balding, funny-looking.

But he genuinely liked the people he met in the war zones. He liked the bureaucrats, he liked the mass murderers, he seemed to like everybody. Occasionally, we would get together socially with the people we were writing about and he would always participate in all the toasts, tell funny stories -- and basically act like he treated everyone like an equal.

Everybody we met wanted to do him favors.

You don't have to be a born salesman to do this, though.

Another colleague, shy and self-effacing, had a "shucks, golly gee, can you help me out here?" vibe coming off of him. And people did help him out. He wouldn't rush up and hug people and pat them on the back, he would hang back shyly, but you could still tell that he liked the people he met.

Imagine you're a big black man on an elevator and you're covered in tattoos and carrying a gun and a tiny white guy in a nice suit gets on. (Those of you who've been there know exactly what I mean.)

If the little white guy cowers and hides in a corner, or puffs himself up, or otherwise acts like he's scared of you and doesn't like you, you're going to be pissed off. If you're nice, you won't show it, but it would be pretty tempting to say "boo!"

But if the little white guy is relaxed, smiles, maybe compliments you on your guy, you'll feel warm and fuzzy towards him.

When American journalists go out and cover wars in third world countries, we're all the little white guy in the elevator. Including those of us who are big and black and covered with tattoos. We can't help it. We've got money, and little notepads, and they've got resentment and lots of guns.

It can be hard to like mass-murderers. And it can be hard to like bureaucrats.

But if you get past the murdering and the paper-shuffling, we're all just human.

Here are some tricks to help bring down those barriers:

* Do something purely social with the bureaucrats.
* Find a personal connection: does one of their kids go to school in the States? Do you know anybody there? Do you have any friends in common? Do you have common interests? Do you like the same movie or music?
* Do you have the same things? Do you hate the weather? Do you hate George Bush? Do you hate athlete's foot? Do you hate your boss?
* If you're single -- maybe they know someone they can introduce you to. If they're single, maybe you can introduce them to someone.

You don't have to do all of these things with every bureaucrat you meet. In fact, you don't have to do any of these things, with any bureaucrat. All you have to do is know that you could, if you wanted to. Making friends -- even once -- will help you change your attitude. You will know that if you made an effor to reach out, that you would see them as human. They will pick up on your attitude.

If your attitude is "I will never think of you as a human being -- you are nothing more to me than a lousy functionary/mass murderer/racial or ethnic stereotype" then you don't get very far.

So when you first arrive in a new country, do your best to get rid of that attitude. Make friends with locals. Make friends with local bureaucrats -- even if not the same ones you'll be dealing with.

Your attitudes will change. You will give off those little, unconscious signals that you see the other guy as an equal, that you think he's okay, that if you got together you might wind up friends.

And that makes all the difference.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

How (not) to write a China article

2007-05-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

Sinocidal (a.k.a. "Five guys hanging around in China") has a great post today by blogger ChouChou about how to write a China article.

Quick summary:

* Title: China/The Dragon/The East/1.3 Billion People/Red Star + Rises/Century/Awakes/Stirs/Does Dallas
* Interview a taxi driver
* Add in a contrast -- such as a statue of Mao with an ad for Coca-Cola in the background.
* End with a vague conclution about things looking bright -- or remaining unclear -- for either the country or for specific individuals in it. Or combine all of the above like this: “It seems that the future is looking bright for the 1.3 billion people who make up the world’s most populous nation. But for Li *** - who is still working at the condom factory for just two grains of rice a year - that future is still unclear.”

Fellow blogger Mike J. compared it to this McSweeney classic: Create Your Own Thomas Friedman Op-Ed Column.

I agree that there's a lot of formulaic writing out there.

In effect, what I think is happening is that writers are rewriting articles that have already been done, adding in their own color and quotes but without doing the hard work of actually discovering the trends on their own.

Back when newspapers were closed little universes -- their subsribers and only their subscribers saw their articles, and their subscribers didn't see articles from anywhere else -- it made sense for every newspaper to have its own "big picture" story about major news events.

Now, with everything available online all the time, there's no reason for anybody to be writing the same story that, say, the New York Times has already done. Unless they think they can do it better, or take a different angle, or otherwise add value to the discussion.

I believe that more and more news outlets are realizing this and cutting back on their "me, too" coverage -- which reduces the numbers of stories such as those that ChouChou was making fun of.

There are two possible consequences of this: an outlet can cut back on its foreign coverage, or, an outlet can redirect that coverage in a more useful direction.

Too often the former happens.

I personally feel that foreign news is becoming steadily more important to people with globalization, so newspapers should be looking for ways to make foreign coverage more specific, unique, and relevant for their readers.

Say, for example, you're the Springfield Times. You want to do a China story, and have a budget to send a correspondent there. You're afraid that he'll come back with the Sinocidal-style formula piece.

There are lots of ways to localize the China story, and make it useful and relevant for readers. Some examples (these are off the top of my head -- I'm sure there are many others):

* Springfielders adopt babies from China. How does this process work? Where do the babies come from? What are the conflicts and/or trends involved? (Requires visits to the orphanages involved, possibly home villages of the babies, home visits to the new parents, interviews with grown-up adoptees.)
* Springfielders get stuff from China. Poisoned petfood is just one example. Look at an industry important to Springfield and find out how China is changing that industry. If a plant moved to China, visit the new plant. What is it like? How does it compare to the Springfield plant? Are there any problems? Any surprises?
* Springfielders sell stuff to China. Maybe it's their time and expertise (English teachers or lawyers or architects abroad). Or intellectual property like music or books. Or actual physical stuff -- luxury goods, electronic components, medical supplies. Follow them to China and find out how they're used and who buys them.
* Springfielders lose money in China. For example, a company might see its product copied at a lower price. This can even extend to out-right theft, as in the case of software and movies. Springfield companies may even have problems with China-made counterfeit goods. So visit the factories of the counterfeiters -- the victims are usually more than happy to give you directions.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

You don't need to fly around the world to edit for a China pub, or, Reverse outsourcing

2007-05-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post

There is a shortage of English-language writers and copyeditors in China.

Especially experienced ones. The reason is that expats typically don't stay in China for a long time - it's stressful. They start missing their friends and parents. They want to buy shoes that aren't four sizes too small. They want real pizza. They miss Chinese food. (There's no Chinese food as we know it in China. Unlike India, which is full of Indian food. And Japan, which is full of sushi.)

Also, copyeditors tend to be quiet, meticulous people. They're good at punctuation and AP style. They tend not to hop on a plane and move to China.

The ones who do are the risk-takers, the earth-shakers -- but they often don't have the patience for good copyediting. As a result, China is full of English-language editors who are not really a natural fit for their jobs.

And there are plenty of English-language pubs here that can use a good go-over.

Skills needed:

* The ability to work across time zones, with people you've never met, who have trouble communicating in English.
* Must be patient -- you don't have to clean up the whole paper at once. Just leave it better than when you started. Gradual improvement is the key.
* It helps if you can switch between US and British spelling and grammar.
* It also helps if you're sensitive and willing to teach. Use grammar and usage mistakes as learning opportunities for your writers. They'll be greatful, and your work will get easier as their writing improves. If you're heavy-handed, they might start arguing with you -- and really, you can win a grammar argument with someone on the other side of the world who has his English grammar textbook open in front of him. (Some of the English textbooks used here are just horrible.)

How to get started:

* Do some networking. Volunteer to help edit websites for professional journalism organizations, or copyedit some industry newsletters. Do a long-distance internship or two. Build up a portfolio and a list of contacts.
* Work one-on-one with writers. There are Chinese writers (I personally know at least one) who are writing for US pubs about China and could use some editing help.

Benefits:

* China is growing very fast and needs more and more copyeditors. This is a career that will keep you set for life.
* You work at home, on your own schedule.
* You get to travel to China to meet your writers and bosses, and it's a tax-deductible business expense. Hey, your pubs might even spring for the tickets.
* You'll be part of covering the biggest story on the planet. Without leaving your home.
* You can work around your current job or class schedule or babies or sick parents.
* You can live on a tropical island somewhere and take your laptop to the beach where you work while you sip (virgin) pina coladas.

Look me up.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Email interviews a boon for overseas and foreign reporters

2007-05-21T22:15:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

I've long thought that email interviews were the lazy man's way of researching a story. You put gother a list of questions, copy and email them to everyone who might potentially be a source -- whoever writes back, you cut-and-paste their answers into your story outline, and you've got the article.

But now it seems that some sources prefer them, too. Check out, for example, this article by Washington Post writer Howard Kurtz: Interviews, Going the Way of the Linotype?

An email interview, even more so than a taped interview, protects both the source and the reporter.

For international journalists, email interviews have a few other advantages, as well.

For example, if you are in the United States, it can be very difficult to call China and some other Asian countries. One of my editors, used to have to get quotes from Asia on a regular basis, and completely gave up trying to do it by telephone.

When I was back in the States last summer and had to do China interviews, it was equally difficult. I tried AT&T among other providers. The calls just woundn't go through, and if they did, the connections were lousy, there were echoes on the line, it was really hard to have a conversation. This is really ironic, since I have no problems calling out of China at all. When I have an interview scheduled with a US-based source, I arrange to make the call. Sometimes, people do insist on calling me -- about 20% the connection is fine. The rest of the time, it's pretty horrible and I have to call them back. When I call out, it's crystal clear 100% of the time (I use CNC IP calling cards, and recommend them highly.) People can't tell that I'm calling from overseas.

But my point was -- email eliminates the problems with bad telephone connections.,

Email also reduces the problems of understanding people's accents. Most non-native English speakers write better than they speak -- and, if they wanted to be absolutely certain about what they said, they can have someone look over their email before they send it out (not to mention running a spell and grammar checker over it). There's no way to do that with a telephone interview.

Email also eliminates the problem of the reporter's accent. Foreign reporters can run their questions through a grammar checker, a colleague, and maybe even past their editors just to be on a safe side. And they'll never hear that annoying, "I'm sorry. I didn't understand the question. I still can't understand you, what did you say?"

Finally, email solves the time lag problem. You send out your quotes during the day, your time. The sources answer them twelve hours later -- during their working hours. You come in to work in the morning, and you've got your answers and can send out follow-up questions.

It's no good for breaking news stories -- but for those you have to stay up all night, anyway, so you might as well make the calls.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Looking back on the biggest mistakes of my career: Bad record-keeping

2007-05-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

Since I'm in the process of easing out of being a journalist, and easing into being a business owner, and this is a blog about international journalism, not about entrepreneurship, I'm going to use this forum to look back on my 15-plus years in the field.

Today's mistake: Bad record-keeping

This isn't the biggest mistake I ever made as a journalist. (I'll save the ones that got people killed for a little later on.)

But it is a mistake that bothers me more and more as times goes on. It doesn't bother me a huge amount, but just enough.

For example, I don't know where most of my old sources are now. I kept records on various little scraps of paper, on computer disks that are no longer compatible with computers (and are probably unreadable by now, anyway), and in memo books that are mouldering in miscellaneous attics.

Nobody working today should be making this mistake: keep all your sources in an easy-to-use electronic format, and move them all over whenever you upgrade software. The guy you interviewed ten years ago may have become the CEO of the company - and if you'd kept in touch with him once in a while, you would know that.

And not just sources are lost -- so are former colleagues.

I have a bad memory for names, and have forgotten those of many of the people I've worked with, and who have been influential in my life. I've forgotten the name of the Chicago Tribune international editor who suggested that I go overseas on my own rather than waiting for someone to send me. I forgot the name of the sports editor I worked next to for months in Moscow who has since married and moved to Cleveland. I forgot the last name of Jose, who wrote that fantastic piece about learning to deal with Russian bureaucrats -- not by crying (as a columnist at a competing newspaper suggested) but by learning to vomit at will. Jose, where are you now?

Okay, I went and Googled -- his full name is Jose Alanis. But I still can't figure out where he is now.
But there's even more stuff that I've forgotten. For example, I haven't kept clips of all my published articles and photographs -- some of them have probably disappeared forever. Or stored in a dark archive somewhere forgotten by all.

Some of these are historic photographs, too -- such as the one I took of Manana Gamsakhurdia wailing over the grave of her husband, the first democratically elected president of Georgia (who later became a tyrant, was deposed, launched a civil war, and, before he died under mysterious circumstances, gave me the last media interview of his life).

And I've also lost details of important events in my life. Details that I didn't bother writing about when I was living them that now I really wish I had access to. Someday, I might write a book about my times in the war zones -- or, at the very least, blog posts. I'll have to rely on my memory, and my memory stinks.

Please, young journalists, learn from my mistakes: keep good records. Keep a journal. Take plenty of pictures and store them in formats that will adapt as technology progresses.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club holds elections

2007-05-16T22:31:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

Here is our new slate of leaders at the Shanghai Foreign Correspondents Club:

President: Duncan Hewitt (Newsweek)
Vice-President, Events: Ola Wong (Sydsvenska Dagbladet)
Vice-President, Membership: Astrid Freyeisen (ARD German Radio)
Media Representative: Rebecca Catching (that's Shanghai)
Associate Representative: Amy Sommers (Squire Sanders and Dempsey L.L.P.)
Treasurer: Alex Kauffmann (What If!)

As you can see, it's a pretty eclectic, international collection of people. That is a wonderful thing about participating in foreign correspondent clubs -- you meet journalists from all around the world.

For any journalist starting out in their career overseas, I strongly recommend joining such a club and getting involved. Even as a simple go-fer, you'll meet top journalists from the world's best publications, and demonstrate your ability to hustle.

I missed the meeting due to a business conflict, so I'll make up for it by buying people drinks at the weekly beer get-together at Cotton's Bar.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Both high-end and low-end reporting jobs can be outsourced

2007-05-16T22:30:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

Low end reporting work: Get press release. Rewrite to AP style. Call the company involved for a follow-up quote. File.

High end reporting work: Research a difficult technical, financial, regulatory, medical or scientific subject. Call a dozen experts or participants. Write an in-depth, analytical story. File.

Both types of work can be done by telephone and Internet. Neither require on-the-ground reporting.

Here in Shanghai, we do cover a lot of Chinese stories. It helps that we have Chinese speakers on staff to read Chinese-language reports and conduct interviews. But we also cover all of Asia-Pacific, especially when it comes to the payments, securities and outsourcing industries. These are specialized fields where subject matter expertise is more important than nation of origin.

But, more than that, we also cover US and European finance and technology stories, using writers in China and India.

Part of it is the fact that, for specialized stories, geographical boundaries are meaningless. For example, even when I was reporting from the US, I often quoted technology users at brokerage companies in Europe and Asia, even when the vendors themselves were based in the United States. And the experiences of those users are more and more like those of users in US offices. If a bank in Japan, for example, has a problem with a particular online banking platform, banks in the US will probably have the same issues. (Except in cases where local conditions, such as double-character fonts, are at fault.)

The other part is that once you can talk to a bank or a brokerage in Japan or Korea or Australia or Germany, you can talk to a bank anywhere. If you've figured out what service oriented architectures are all about, you can use that knowledge in any story. A background in chemistry or medicine can help you tackle these specialized stories in any geography.

Finally, many stories no longer have a particular geography associated with them. For example, for a story about a particular company's plans for China, we might talk to their China managers and customers. We would also talk to senior executives in the United States, and experts and analysts in both countries.

These days more and more stories fall into the latter category as entire industries become globalized overnight.

Add to that the fact that executives rarely sit in one spot anymore -- they're flying all over the planet.

It's happened to me more than once this past year:

I call a US company to set up an interview with executives. The PR person organizes the call. I get up in the middle of the night to call in. During introductions, I explain that I'm calling in from Shanghai. Then the vice president explains that he's calling in from India. And the other senior exec is calling in from Japan. The only one on the call for whom it's the middle of the day is the low-level PR person organizing it. (Much hilarity and embarrassment for the PR person ensues.)

So it comes down to experience. Does the reporter know the industry? Know the technology? Have the financial or scientific background to tackle the story?

The same things are important as with US-based reporters: How many years have they been covering the industry? Have they written articles on similar topics? Do they have an educational background that prepares them for the work?

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

I don't think I'm a foreign correspondent anymore

2007-05-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

Today, I finally realized that I'm not a journalist anymore. Just now, about five minutes ago.

Great thing about keeping a blog -- years later, I'll be able to look up the exact moment at which my 15-year run as a journalist ended.

This weekend, I received my third offer this year to buy out my company.

Tomorrow, I have a choice between attending the annual meeting of the Foreign Correspondents Club and a business meeting --and I picked the business meeting.

On Saturday, I had lunch with a friend who told me that when he first came to Shanghai, he had all kinds of friends -- but the only friends he's got now are entrepreneurs. He was talking about the fact that entrepreneurs get tied to China by their companies, while everyone else leaves. But what he was also saying is that your friends determine who you are.

All my close friends now run companies. When I first came to Shanghai, all my friends were journalists. I'm not close to them anymore, but not because they left China. Some did, but others are still around.

It feels a little like someone died. Or, more accurately, like high school graduation.

I love journalism. I had a lot of different jobs before I became a reporter. They were all fun -- when work was good. But most of the time, work was just work, and the jobs were excruciating. I couldn't quit them fast enough. Reporting was the only work that was fun even when at its worst.

Pretty much any day over these past fifteen years I could have said -- and often did say -- "I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this."

It's been a fantastic run.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

How to get people in China to talk on the record

2007-05-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

The most common question I get from new hires -- and other reporters new to China - is how to get people to talk on the record.

Here's a typical example:

Assignment: are Chinese furniture manufacturers looking to buy US distributors in order to get customers, marketing and sales?

Easy peasy, right? There are millions of Chinese furniture manufacturers (more or less) and this is not exactly a sensitive investigative story.

Solution: I put together a list of questions -- are you? why? how is it working out? what's next for you? -- and put the first writer on the job. After a week of "no comments" she quit the job. Not a single quote.

I handed the list of question to two other writers. Another week passed. A week full of telephone calls -- and not a single quote.

Here is what I heard from my researchers (and I've heard the same from many other writers in China):

"People in China don't like to talk on the record."
"People in China don't like to speak to foreign reporters."
"People in China don't like to speak to Chinese reporters."
"People in China don't like to talk to strangers on the telephone."

I couldn't ask the questions myself -- my Chinese is minimal and while in the financial and tech industries pleenty of people speak in English, in the furniture industry, not so much.

So I picked up the phone. I got a list of Chinese furniture companies online from Alibaba.com, and started calling the contact people listed.

Typical conversation:

"Hello. I am American journalists. I want talk. You have don't have person speaks English?"

First company: passed me along to a sales assistant. I asked my questions. I got my answers.

Second company: asked me to email questions. They got answers right back to me.

Third company: after the first two broken Chinese phrases from me, I passed the phone to the researcher for the rest of the questions.

End of day: 10 for 10.

What was the difference? It wasn't that I was a foreigner -- plenty of foreigners have problems getting people to talk on the record. It certainly wasn't that my communication skills were that great.

It is a different of attitude. If your attitude is that people will talk, then people will talk. If your attitude is that people won't talk, then people won't talk.

In our office, we have a heavy emphasis on sourcing. We require three different on-the-record sources for every 500 words of story, as a general guideline. One source affected by the news (or user, or buyer), one source making the news (or the vendor), and one expert or analyst.

If you make enough phone calls, somebody is going to talk to you.

The trick is defining "enough."

"Enough" does not mean "enough phone calls so that the boss knows you tried."
"Enough" means "enough phone calls to get a quote."

If it's the first definition of enough, then you can keep calling until you're blue and you still won't have a quote. If it's the second definition, then that attitude is passed along to the person on the other side of the line, and you're going to strike payload very quickly.

One thing I love about employees who are new to reporting is that they don't know yet that "people in China don't like to talk." They can get lots of quotes.

And once you get enough people in the office working on the assumption that everybody will talk - well, all of a sudden, everybody starts talking.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Complaining about pay rates for freelance reporting and photography

2007-05-11T22:36:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

Last night at our regular drinking get-together at Cotton's Bar, about half-a-dozen of us expat journalists got together and complained about falling rates. Well, we also had a furious argument about whether the Economist was a real news magazine or not (my take: it tries to be, but I would give a grade of "F" because of its lack of sourcing, attribution, bylines, no error corrections, and total lack of readability).

It seems that photo journalists are in a worse boat than even us print reporters. Our rates for freelance pieces haven't budget for the last fifty years. According to the National Writers Union, top rates for national magazines in the United States were about $1.00 per word in the 1950s -- and still are.

This despite the fact that $1.00 buys a lot less now than it did back then.

For photo journalists, the rates haven't just stayed the same as costs have gone up -- they've actually dropped.

I think there are two forces at work:

1. More and more people are willing to do stuff for low pay or for free. As society gets richer, people have more time to devote to hobbies -- after work or on weekends and holidays, for example. In addition, you've got students, housewives and househusbands, retirees, and people supported by trust funds, parent, spouses, government grants, and foundations.

These people, who are looking for self-expression, tend to focus their time on artistic endeavors. Unfortunately for us working stiffs, this often includes journalism and photography.

For those of us looking to make a career at this, the best bet is areas that people don't want to write about for free. For example:

Kittens: People will write about for free.
Latest advances in veterinary billing practices: Not so much.

Politics: Oh, yeah. Everybody's got an opinion.
Financial technology: Just watch their eyes glaze over.

Relationships: Everybody thinks they're an expert.
Numbers: Nobody wants to write about things involving statistics. Good money here.

Consumer tech: Everybody has an iPod and an opinion about Microsoft.
Enterprise tech: Not too many people want to write about business mainframes.

There are two key differentiators between the first category of topics and the second.

The first differentiator is how appealing a topic is. Is it fun to write about? Do many people have opinions? Is it easy to get information?

The second differentiator is barriers to entry. In order to start writing about television, for example, you just have to watch some TV. In order to start writing about actuarial analysis models in the insurance industry, you have to learn something about actuarial analysis, maybe take some statistics courses, or at least get some related articles under your belt. It takes time to get into this beat. You have to start out by getting some training, attending some conferences, reading some books and subscribing to the industry journals. Then you'll have to ease your way into it, writing articles that are more and more technical. As your articles get more technical, however, you'll find that your word rates go up, and the number of competitors goes down.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Hiring American reporters versus Chinese and Indian

2007-05-11T22:35:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

I've managed journalists from pretty much everywhere -- the US, Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Central Asia, and, now, India and China.

In my experience, the differences between individual reporters far outweight the differences between countries. In otherwords, I've worked with some really really bad American writers, and some really good Chinese ones - and vice versa.

But there are some general differences.

WRITING ABILITY

Sometimes -- but not always -- the American writers have more experience with business reporting, or, at least, know what a news story is supposed to look like as a result of having seen a lot of them.

The only difference I can actually point to is in writing style -- native English speakers produce stories that are more readable and more grammatically correct than non-native speakers.

In the first category I would put the Ameicans, the Canadians, the Indians, and (yeah, okay) the Brits (funny spelling be damned).

In the second are the Russians and the Chinese and the assorted Europeans.

JOB SKILLS

The more experienced someone is, and the more jobs they've held before, the happier, in general, I'm going to be with their work.

In the United States, kids get their first jobs at 12 (paper routes) or 14 (other jobs). They have part-time jobs through high school, to get money for junk food or clothes, to save up for college, or to buy a car. During college, US students hold work study jobs during the school year and full-time internships during the summers.

By the time and American graduates from college they'll have held at least two jobs -- often many many more, if you add in temp jobs.

I probably held a couple of dozen jobs by the time I graduated from college. I would sign up with temp agencies during short breaks or between other jobs, and did something different every semester and every summer. That adds up quickly. I've worked as a programmer, as a teacher, as waitress, as a circus roustabout, as an envelope stuffer, as a typesetter, as a receptionist, as a bear, as a book editor, as a newsletter editor, and, of course, as a newspaper reporter.

Then there's the volunteer work for my high school paper and for the literary journal.

I don't list all these jobs on my resume -- I don't want people to think I'm a total nutjob. But I'm probably typical. After all, young people don't know what they want to do, they change their minds, they have dramatic episodes and quit perfectly good jobs, they run away and join the circus, and so on.

But after you go through all this, you pretty much know what you want to do. And you know what you have to put up with in order to be able to do it. You know how long it takes you to do things. You know which jobs you shouldn't take, and you know the conditions under which you just cannot work.

By comparison, I've had several employees who had never held a job at all before coming to me. And they weren't all Chinese, but most were.

They didn't know what they wanted to do. How they worked. They didn't know what kind of behavior was expected, and what was inappropriate.

One assistant answered the phone by telling the caller that I was in the bathroom. Then didn't take a message. My employees routinely take off without warning -- then reappear again, just as mysteriously. They have problems with girlfriends and boyfriends, problems with coming to work on time, problems meeting deadlines, and problems scheduling their work.

But it's not clear-cut. Three of my freelance writers are middle-aged American men who still don't know what they want to do with their lives. All three are veteran journalists with impressive resumes, but still have problems with deadlines, scheduling, and organization. (If you're reading this and think I'm writing about you -- it's not. It's somebody else.)

So you can't make assumptions. You can't say: "I'll only hire Americans because they do a good job." Or: "Chinese employees don't know how to act in a workplace."

Some of my Chinese hires, with no previous experience at all, have taken to their jobs easily and quickly, working independently and aggressively.

So it's all down to individual people. As is everything.

ATTRITION

The biggest difference between expat and local hires, in my opinion, is attrition rates. In Shanghai, turnover is high for every nationality, every job category, every company. For expat hires, however, the problems are magnified significantly.

By definition, expats in Shanghai aren't at home -- and eventually, they'll want to go home, for the sake of theirkids, spouses, parents, or just basic home-sickness. There are some permanent expats, but they're few on the ground -- especially in Shanghai, which is not exactly the most livable fo cities.

Expats also have more opportunities. On principle, everyone I hire is part of the same wage structure -- their salaries are based on their value to the company. This means that, for the most part, I pay expat employees the same as Indian and Chinese employees.

Many foreign companies, however, pay expat employees American salaries (plus expat packages, in some cases).

As my company grows and I need more and more senior and experienced people, I expect our salaries to rise as well. But I expect that, for expat hires, my company will be a training ground rather than a destination for quite a long time.

By comparison, for local salaries, our company's wages are pretty competitive. Combine that with a decent working environment, flexible hours, bylines in American magazines, and the work looks pretty good for the long term.

I have some Chinese employees who have been with the company for a while and I expect that some of them will stay for a long time. They represent the company's institutional memory and our work ethic and culture. They are the heart of the company and I hope to see their numbers increase with time.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

I'm not the only one looking to hire from India

2007-05-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

The AP ran this story yesterday -- Calif. Web site outsources reporting -- about a California online newspaper hiring reporters in India to cover local news in Pasadena.

Here's a writeup of the story from Journalism.co.uk: Local news reporting outsourced to India.

Blogger Billy Dennis at Peoria Pundits says this is a "sign of the apocalypse."

As usual, I'm divided on the issue. On the one hand, as an American journalist, I know that the employment situation in the US is already bad enough for reporters. This isn't going to make things any better.

But, on the other hand, too much reporting in the US is already done by telephone and email, by new kids fresh out of college who don't know much about the communities they cover.

So why not give the jobs to kids in India? They'll work harder, for less money, appreciate the jobs more, and stay longer -- maybe even long enough to get to know the community (at least, in a remote and virtual way). They probably need the jobs more than we do, too, supporting a large extended family, often sending money to rural areas where people still live a subsistence life and those meager dollars can lift a family out of poverty, send young siblings to college, keep an elderly parent healthy and fed.

(I just returned from a trip to India, where I visited one of these villages after touring a bunch of tech outsourcing companies.Whoa.)

And it's not that we don't have jobs in the US. We have plenty of jobs -- just not the jobs that we journalists may want. Despite all the outsourcing, the employment rate in the US stays low. Our economy is chugging along. (And, I expect, will for a long time.)

But I'm an optimist. And, also, I'm an immigrant. I don't see any moral superiority in keeping jobs in the US.

For those who do, I say: get out of the office. Meet your readers and your sources in person. Turn your job into one that can't be outsourced to someone on the other side of the planet.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

If you're looking for a job, please don't ask me for an 'informational interview'

2007-05-10T22:42:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

I interviewed a man for a job today who was Canadian-born Chinese, with decent Chinese skills and some decent journalism experience for city magazines here in China, and a business degree as well.

A perfect candidate -- employers should be falling all over themselves to offer him jobs.

But it took me a while to figure out he was job hunting - in his initial contact with me, he kind of beat around the bush and said he was just calling for "information."

Apparently, someone gave him some bad advice about setting up informational interviews.

Now, I have nothing against informational interviews. If someone calls me up because they want to know what a job in journalism is like, no problem. I'll take time to talk to them.

And if someone wants to interview me about my company -- sure, I could use some press.

And I love job seekers. Here in Shanghai, turnover is the single biggest problem for every manager and we're all recruiting, all the time. I never pass up a chance to meet with a job seeker, unless they're completely and obviously wrong for the job (say, a conflict of interest) in which case I steer them in some other direction.

But someone who beats around the bush -- that doesn't make me happy. It feels like they're wasting my time. I found out that this guy was job hunting pretty quickly, though, when he sent me his resume -- and I immediately invited him over for lunch.

But another person called yesterday requesting an "informational interview about my company." What the hell is that? Did she want to profile us for a story? No. did she want to know what it was like to work as a journalist? Probably not. She introduced herself as a working journalist. Was she looking for a job? I asked her right out, and she said no.

Was she too shy to say she was job hunting? Well, the last thing I need in my office is shy reporters.

Come on, guys. I'm hiring. Everyone in Shanghai is hiring. And if they're not, they'll be hiring in a month, when all their current staffers quit. We're seeing astronomical growth rates here.

If you're looking for a job, say so. I'm happy to hear from you. I'll even buy you lunch, or take you out for drinks. Seriously. And if you're good and you're willing to work cheap, I'll find something for you to do even if I don't happen to have a job opening right this moment. (Who wouldn't?)

I don't mind if you only stay for a short time -- I've gotten used to the turnover issues. It's just a fact of life in Shanghai.

So a few people have been using my company to find out whether they want to be journalists or not, or to learn how to write business stories for US publications before striking off on their own. That's fine. A couple of people have gone on to PR, and another is planning to. That's fine, too.

My basic point is that you don't have to lie to me when looking for a job. If you are a reasonable fit for the work -- if you'll do a good job for me at a pay rate that makes you good for the company, then I'll hire you.

My personal philosophy is that if you can't be honest with a future boss, then you're probably not going to be happy working for them.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Why I love IDG

2007-05-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

The great thing about journalism is that I get to tell the truth. I regularly tell people who don't believe me about instances when editors backed me up, even if it meant upsetting a source or advertiser. I haven't had a single story spiked due to advertising pressures in all my years as a reporter.

I like to think that this is because I've worked for some pretty good publications.

One example is this week's brou-ha-ha at PCWorld, another IDG pub. The editor in chief wanted to run a column unflattering to an advertiser (Apple). The CEO of the company didn't. When push came to shove, the editor stood his ground, and the CEO got the boot.

Disclaimer: I worked at IDG's Computerworld for a year at the turn of the century, and have done some occasional writing for several IDG publications since then (and still do).

Here's a nice overview from CNET.

Here's the online discussion board at PC World, where readers wrote in horrified about the firing.

Here is PCWorld's own story, and here's the story that caused the flap to begin with: 10 Things We Hate About Apple.

It's things like this that make me very, very happy to be a journalist.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Fake Chinese reporter makes $500,000 from bribes -- and gets life

2007-05-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

The Associated Press ran an interesting story yesterday about a Chinese crook who passed himself off as a reporter or editor from the People's Daily. Usually these kinds of bribes are for running favorable stories, or not running stories that are not so favorable.

In this case, though, the guy said that he could use his influence with top officials -- the People's Daily is the main publication of the Communist Party of China -- to get people promotions.

But what I would like to see is the names of the people who tried to bribe this guy. Will they be seeing any jail time?

I would also want to know how he got caught. Did people complain? Did they call the newspaper to check whether he was a real reporter? Or did they get suspicous when their promotions didn't come thorugh?

I'm also surprised he kept going. You would think it would be easy to get lost in China -- 1.3 billion people, all of them surnamed Wang or Chen. With half a million US dollars, that's a lot of fake identity papers you could buy.

The guy must have been really good to pull in this much money, too. I wonder how many other fake reporters are out there, pulling in the big bucks with these kind of scams.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Journalism career planning: moving from editorial to publishing

2007-05-09T22:43:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

There are three possible stages in a journalist's career, and each transition is very painful and difficult.

The first stage is that of the reporter. You are responsible for your own work, and nobody else's. Occasionally you work as part of a team, or use a researcher or other assistant. But you're most often on your own. The goal is to report and write the best possible story within the constraints of your publication's editorial guidelines.

If you stay a reporter, your career moves include switching to a better beat, or moving to a larger media outlet. You can also write books, give speeches, or appear as a guest on television programs.

Except for the rare star, your salary options are pretty limited.

Those who become frustrated with not being able to achieve the status they're looking for, or get tired of the stress or not making enough money to live on, often switch to public relations or teching.

The next stage is editing.

Editors move from copy editing, to editing specific sections, to being managing editor, then to editor in chief. Editors can also move from smaller markets to larger or more prestigious or better-paying ones.

Except for copy editing, these are mostly management positions. You assign stories, train writers and other editors, deal with schedules and financial budgets.

Writers who switch to being editors are often very sad to give up the craft of writing, and may return. Some keep their hand in by writing editorials and occasional columns -- the productive approach. Others deals with it unproductively, insisting on rewriting their writers' stories the way they would have done it, even if it doesn't make the product any better.

Editors are also not on the front lines of journalism, and may miss the rush and excitement of covering big stories, and may resent their reporters.

Editors are also invisible -- they rarely get awards or write books about their experiences or get interviewed on television. They don't see their names on top of articles, just in the mastheads, which nobody ever reads.

Finally, when journalists become editors, they lose the camaraderie of the reporting craft. In the "us against them" world of journalism, editors are the ones who spike stories, make unnecessary changes, deny travel requests -- pretty much everything bad that happens to reporters comes from editors. (Or seems to.)

As a result of all of this, leaving reporting for editing is an emotionally difficult decision. Many editors were never reporters, going into editing straight out of college. They probably make the best editors -- they picked this career to start with, and they have few or no regrets about not writing.

I'm currently in the process of making this transition, and I do have to say that I like editing better than reporting. I love reporting and am good at it, but I'm certainly not better than all my writers put together, and I very much enjoy the process of producing something much larger than what I could do alone.

Reporters who make the transition within an existing organizational framework get support -- other editors to lean on, maybe even classes and other kinds of organized training.

When you run a foreign bureau, these resources are usually not available, unfortunately.

The last phase of a journalism career is publishing. Typically, publishers are hired from the ad sales side, and occasioally from distribution. It's rare that an editor makes the move to publisher.

Publishers need to be able to raise money -- either from advertising, from circulation, or from donations. these are not skills that editors have. In fact, editors are generally kept deliberately isolated from the business side of operations. And for good reason. But it makes for a very difficult transition.

When Nation editor Victor Navarsky made the move to publisher, he took a business class at Harvard Business School to help deal with ths. (You can read more about this in Staying power, a piece in the Guardian that ran in 2005.)

An MBA wouldn't hurt either, according to ASBPE's Reinventing your publishing career.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Back from vacation, and back on the job

2007-05-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

I just got back from vacation yesterday, after a week spent on a beach on Hong Kong's Lantau Island.

Well, it was a vacation for my kids, at least. I spent some of my time reporting and writing articles about stock exchanges and alternative trading systems in Asia.

Ironically, given the fact that the Hong Kong Internet system is generally much better than that in China, I could not visit many sites from my hotel, including the SPJ's blog posting pages (which is why I haven't posted anything in a week). I also couldn't read Dilbert or Doonesbury.

The hotel's Internet security system wouldn't even let me proxy around it -- and I tried hard. I really wanted to get my daily Dilbert fix.

Nothing else seemed to have been affected -- I guess my hotel had a very effective but very weird firewall.

But except for the hotel-specific Internet problems, and my distance from my staff, it occurred to me how easy it would have been to just stay on the island. Lantau Island is one of the least populated parts of Hong Kong, but only a half-hour ferry ride right into Hong Kong central, at a cost of about US $2.50. The telephones are great, the weather is perfect, the scenery is spectacular.

I can easily do the bulk of my work there. And there's a pretty decent Italian restaurant next to the ferry landing, and a Turkish place that seems to be a favorite expat hangout, as well as two grocery stores and a very nice English bookstore that sells both new and used books.

If anyone is interested in becoming a financial technology journalist who lives on a beautiful tropical island, drop me a line. I can give you some advice.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Another glimpse into the works of state-owned media in China

2007-04-30T22:47:00.001-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

For another view of working in China, by 24-year-old Charlie Gidney, who writes for the China Daily, check out his blog Positive Solutions.

In Sunday's post Boxes he talks about the various constraints that the English-language state-owned media are under.

I can't imagine what it must be like, starting your journalism career at a censored publication.

In my 15 years as a journalist, I can't remember a time when one of my stories was canned because of political or advertising considerations.

Though, of course, there have been plenty of instances when a story was sent back because an editor wanted me to do additional reporting or fix writing problems.

I am surprised by how often this question comes up, however -- and how frequently people don't believe my answer.

There is plenty of control in the US media, of course, but I believe it tends to have more to do with distribution of resources. Certain topics get more reporters thrown at them than others. (And I'm not talking about the television networks, but of the print media where I've worked --- news wires, newspapers, businesss magazines.)

As a result, as far as individual reporters are concerned, they can just go out and do their job. And leave it up to the editors to argue with the publishers about how much coverage certain areas require.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Back to Hong Kong -- and this time, it's personal

2007-04-30T22:47:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

In three hours, the kids and I are leaving for Shanghai's Pudong airport to catch a flight to Hong Kong. I was just in Hong Kong last week, but that was for a financial conference.

This week, it's for vacation. It's the second year in a row that I'm taking an actual vacation with the babies. We're planning to spend a week at the beach, with maybe a day trip to Ocean World, their big amusement park. Last year, we went to the Hong Kong Disneyland.

I don't normally take vacations - until last year, I couldn't remember a vacation I'd been on -- except for one trip to Florida's Disney World when I was in college. I got sunstroke.

When I was in Russia, my idea of using up vacation days was a week at the Afghan border visiting the Russian border guards. I guess I've never felt that I needed a break from work. I loved my work. If I had free time, I would use it to do more work.

So now I schedule vacations. It's hard. I have a hard time justifying spending the money. And of taking the time away from the office.

Also, I have a hard time saying no to assignments. This week, I'm going to be working on three stories while on my vacation, totalling somewhere around 4,000 to 5,000 words.

I borrowed the nice laptop from the office to take on the road with me and it immediately crashed. So I'm going to have to take the little itty bitty one without an ethernet jack -- just a wireless modem. I hope I'm going to be able to use it somewhere. I forgot to call today and check which kind of connections the hotel had.

Maybe this is the excuse I need to buy a new -- or newish -- laptop. If I do, I'm getting a Mac.

These are the kinds of problems foreign correspondents have these days. When I was starting out, I wouldn't even think of going on the road and expecting to be able to work and report on and file a story from some little island somewhere. I used to carry pencils instead of pens because they were more reliable. I used to carry a camera that required no batteries of any kind except for the light meter, and even that you could fake if your eye was good -- or you took pictures at every conceivable setting. (My eye wasn't that good. I did plenty of bracketing.)

Once, in Chechnya, I got to file by fax, and that was great. I didn't have to dictate my story into the phone, yelling at the top of my lungs so that the editor could hear me. The actual phone line was secondary -- he could have probably heard me by leaning out the window.

Tomorrow I will need to pick up some IP phone cards in Hong Kong -- they're a way to make really cheap international phone calls. My entire office lives on them here in Shanghai, and the quality is usually better than AT&T.

And I'll be all set. Except for the lack of sleep part.

Oh, another editor just droped me a line ... I'm also going to be working on the pet food poison story this week.

Okay, time to go get some sleep. Only two hours left until I leave for the airport.

Signing off in Shanghai - sleepily,

Maria

A Russian artist in Shanghai

2007-04-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

I met an interesting artist today at a private showing at a friend's house. He was in China for just a few days, on his way home to St. Petersburg, Russia from Osaka, Japan.

Georgii Kovenchuk's paintings have been condemned in the old Soviet Union for their "formalist" stance, show a strong, bold use of color and shape. Here is one of a white lily from the Gallery Kadieff in Helsinki. And here is "Woman on armchair."

At the party, Georgii was joined by one of his old friends, a Chinese artist who came to St. Petersburg to study in 1955. The Chinese friend still remembered a smattering a Russian, and we had a fun time trying to communicate. Later on in the evening, one of the other guests spoke Chinese, and for a while we had a relay going - the Chinese artist would say something in Chinese, the other guest would translate it into English, and I would relay it into Russian for Georgii -- and then back again for the response.

Georgii had some run-ins with the Soviet authorities because he wasn't interested in the Soviet Socialist Realist style of art. But he told the story that when he had trouble getting into art school -- his father was serving 25 years in a Gulag, accused of being a British spy because he had been a POW in a German camp that was liberated by British forces -- it was a KGB official who helped him get in.

These days, he says, he can say whatever he wants, and, better still, he is able to travel overseas. He has lectured in the United States, and has had gallery showings around the world.

He had some slide shows on his laptop but his computer had crashed and he was feeling pretty down about it. Fortunately, I have magic fingers when it comes to technology. I plugged the laptop in (thus solving the "it doesn't even turn on anymore" problem) then booted in safe mode, which allowed it to run long enough to see the pictures. The problem was viruses on the hard drive -- easy enough to fix, when he gets home, by installing an anti-virus program.

To thank me for my help, he gave me a wood cut as a present, which I plan to get framed tomorrow and hang on the wall. If I had known ahead of time there was a computer with a virus problem, I would have brought an antivirus disk with me and cleaned the computer up for him. Now I feel sorry that I couldn't do more to help.

The party itself was in an old lane house in the French Concession part of Shanghai. The hostess, Maria Laletina, shares my first name - at one point, there were four different Marias present, creating a little confusion.

The narrow house had five stories, with a room on each floor and a steep, twisty staircase. It was a beautiful, gorgeous house, the kind of place I would love to live (instead of the modern apartment in a high rise, where I actually live -- I didn't choose it, it was chosen for me).

Shanghai is starting to develop a very vibrant, multi national artistic community which I have been ignoring for the most part, sticking to business and economics instead.

I'm a little hyper-sensitive and most art makes me feel unsettled and unhappy. Kovenchuk's - such as the bright pieces that were hanging on the walls of the apartment -- had a grounded, happy feel to them with an undercurrent of depth and peace. It was a nice feeling.

I left early because I had to work. China has a funny habit of shutting down for a week at a time several times a year for government holidays -- but forces its people to work on the weekends to make up for some of that time.

Also, I'm trying to clear off as much out of my plate as I can, to get ready for my own vacation next week. So for me as well, it's a long, wearing weekend.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

The man who launched a dozen magazines

2007-04-27T22:48:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

Thursday night was our weekly Cotton's Bar drinks get-together. One of our new visitors was a man who launched twelve magazines.

Twelve magazines!

And in not a single case did a journalist make the move to publisher. I only know one man who did -- Graham Earnshaw, formerly of Reuters, who's now the successful publisher of the China Economic Review.

I need to talk to him again about how he did it.

Does anyone else know of any journalists who have made a transition to publisher?

The man who started the twelve magazines is now running an Internet-based business teleivion program in Japan and is in the process of expanding it to China and other Asian countries.

There's a lot of that kind of thing going on over here -- new channels, new publications, new everything spring up all around.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Back from Hong Kong

2007-04-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

I was in Hong Kong this week for a conference, thus no postings -- for some reason, I couldn't reach the SPJ.org website from my hotel.

I do love to travel, but traveling is a lot more fun when you only have a little work to do. Just enough work to feel useful, on some interesting assignment that gets you in to see people that you wouldn't ordinarily see as a tourist, and to places you wouldn't ordinarily go.

But not so much work that you feel dead afterwards.

My work-related travel used to fall into the former category.

Lately, however, more and more of it has been of the "feeling dead afterwards" variety. Yesterday, for example, I spent the day at the Four Seasons hotel in downtown Hong Kong, attending sessions about global regulatory changes in the securities industry, and then had lunch with industry experts. In the afternoon, I had back-to-back interviews with senior executives from Hewlett-Packard.

Then I checked back in with my office, handled a few minor administrative matters and gave writers advise on stories they were writing.

In the evening, I flew back to Shanghai. I got back to my house around 10 p.m. at night -- and then put in another full day's work, deadling with administrative matters and editing a big story on the Chinese securities industry. Unfortunately, the story had to be pretty much rewritten from scratch, and I didn't finally get to call it a day until 4 a.m.

Is it worth it? Yeah, I think it is. I enjoy the work very much, I do like the travel, and I'm slowly learning to delegate more.

Someday soon I expect that I'll be in control of my schedule, and will be able to plan my days so that I get adequate and regular sleep, and sufficient downtime to spend with my kids or at the gym.

Tonight, I've got meetings, more editing to do... my business manager just came into my office and told me to go home and take a nap. Do I really look that bad? I guess I do.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Back from Hong Kong

2007-04-26T22:41:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

I was in Hong Kong this week for a conference, thus no postings -- for some reason, I couldn't reach the SPJ.org website from my hotel.

I do love to travel, but traveling is a lot more fun when you only have a little work to do. Just enough work to feel useful, on some interesting assignment that gets you in to see people that you wouldn't ordinarily see as a tourist, and to places you wouldn't ordinarily go.

But not so much work that you feel dead afterwards.

My work-related travel used to fall into the former category.

Lately, however, more and more of it has been of the "feeling dead afterwards" variety. Yesterday, for example, I spent the day at the Four Seasons hotel in downtown Hong Kong, attending sessions about global regulatory changes in the securities industry, and then had lunch with industry experts. In the afternoon, I had back-to-back interviews with senior executives from Hewlett-Packard.

Then I checked back in with my office, handled a few minor administrative matters and gave writers advise on stories they were writing.

In the evening, I flew back to Shanghai. I got back to my house around 10 p.m. at night -- and then put in another full day's work, deadling with administrative matters and editing a big story on the Chinese securities industry. Unfortunately, the story had to be pretty much rewritten from scratch, and I didn't finally get to call it a day until 4 a.m.

Is it worth it? Yeah, I think it is. I enjoy the work very much, I do like the travel, and I'm slowly learning to delegate more.

Someday soon I expect that I'll be in control of my schedule, and will be able to plan my days so that I get adequate and regular sleep, and sufficient downtime to spend with my kids or at the gym.

Tonight, I've got meetings, more editing to do... my business manager just came into my office and told me to go home and take a nap. Do I really look that bad? I guess I do.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Looking for a managing editor

2007-04-22T22:25:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

Two different investors are offering me money to go directly to print with my new magazine (Emerging China, which covers business in central and western China) instead of starting just online first.

Even though it will be more work, we will probably do that -- more advertising revenue, better credibility with readers, more respect. :-)

That means that the position of managing editor will be more important than it was previously, and will be paid slightly better as well. So this means, instead of "starving to death" wages, we'll be paying "street-vendor fried rice wages with an occasional drink at an expat bar."

Chinese language skills are not required, though, obviously, they'll be a big help. More important is a good grasp of business news style and the ability to manage inexperienced writers of various nationalities (Chinese, Canadian, French, German, and Russian).

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Blog envy

2007-04-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

I went to the Shanghaiist drinking beer thing tonight at Henry's Bar and Grill. I took pictures. Mostly, of guys standing arounding drinking beer. And one picture of a toilet in the ladies' room (Henry's has one of those things with heated seats and a built-in bidet -- very, very rare in Shanghai, where usually you're lucky to just get a seat and actual toilet paper).

Note to self: in the future, I'm going to try to get some action shots. So, instead of folks standing around talking, holding beers, and a separate shot of the toilet, I'll try to, say, combine the two.

I mean, I used to be a real photographer. I've got a picture of myself in Afghanistan in a photo vest wearing a bunch of camera equpment. (I carried a Nikon FM-2, which was famous for taking any kind of abuse and not requiring any batteries, and a Hi-8 the Sky TV guys loaned me.)

Anyway, I noticed that everyone at the bar had a cool name for their blog. Dan Washburn's Shanghaiist, for example, And the ImageThief was there (Will Moss, with his wife, Olivia) and AsiaPundit's Chris Myrick, and Pacific Epoch's Sage Brennan.

"Journalism and the World" is such a prosaic name for a blog, by comparison. Maybe we can call it "JoWo." No, you can't really pronounce it.

I'll have to think about it.

After a few beers, Chris mentioned that an outfit in Singapore was giving away ten free brides. Now I can't stop thinking about it. Is it like a bride of the month club? Do you pick the bride, or is it a surprise? Do you have to pay for shipping and handling? That's usually what gets you. They say "free bride" but when you add in the postage, whoa!

Foreign correspondents are notoriously bad at relationships. Ten free brides sounds like just the thing.

Even if 90% leave, disgusted by the fact that I'm always on the road -- and go out drinking with juornalists and bloggers at least twice a week -- I'll still have one bride left.

I'm thinking, Russian. She'll be over-educated, be willing to stay home and cook, and will teach my kids the language. The whole gender thing shouldn't be a problem - I'm from Massachusetts.

The only downside is that I won't be able to impress her with my guitar playing. You see, while a war correspondent, I learned a bunch of Russian war songs. Old Cossack ditties, and a WWII song or two. When I play them for non-Russians, they're usually suitably impressed. But a Russian would immediately see that I'm getting the words wrong, and that I'm not hitting any of the notes.

The other great thing about Russian women (and yes, I'm generalizing here) is that they treat their spouses like children. I could use some of that.

My Russian bride when I'm getting dressed: "Do you call those clothes? Here, put this on instead. I'll buy some new clothes for you while you're at work."

My Russian bride when I'm leaving for work: "Did you remember your lunch? Here, I'll pack it for you. And here's your cell phone. And don't forget to pick up some cabbage on the way home."

My Russian bride at dinner: "Oh, you're looking pale and thin. Here, have some borsch. Have some more. Is that enough sour cream for you?"

I would never have to go clothes shopping or cook anything ever again. She would take it as a personal insult if I even tried.

I had friends like that while I lived in Russia. Even though they were successful career women -- a couple of them were also war correspondents -- they would take one look at me and their mothering instincts would kick in.

It was nice.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Cotton's Bar is my new hiring hall

2007-04-19T21:42:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

Tonight at the foreign correspondents' get-together at Cotton's Bar on Anting Lu, I offered jobs to three people.

The first, Connie, was sharp as a tack, smart, organized, a finance student at Fudan University who's interested in a journalism career -- the perfect job candidate. The second was an old friend who's written for me before, Travis, now interning for the New York Times. (Do I have an eye for talent, or what?)

The third guy, I think, was named Bill. He introduced himself as a Russian spy. I think he was Canadian. It was around midnight by this time, and several Bloody Mary's and beers later. He and his friend .. Josh? ... were independent video guys.

Fons (Tuinstra, the speakers' bureau guy and the FCC founder) and magazine publisher Edmund Chow and I had been discussing a Japanese-American Internet video project having to do with interviewing business leaders in China.

Both Bill and ... Josh? ... were looking for work. I think. Bill was interested in print reporting, as well. I think.

Note to self: stop offering jobs to people after the second beer.

Actually, it might still work out. If Bill remembers me after he sobers up, and finds my card, and stops by the office, and turns out to be half-way intelligent, I might take him on board after all. I'm perennially short-staffed and I saw him chatting away in French to French financial journalist Benoit Florencon, and in Russian to Denis Antipov, a database developer for magazine websites. From what I could tell, Bill's Russian and French were both pretty damn good. And he claimed to know a bunch of other languages, as well. Hey there.

One of Bill's friends, an Australian, was just about to start a biking trip to Tibet. Unfortunately, he arrived just after Edmund left. Edmund is always on the lookout for travel writers.

At just before midnight, I had to call it quits. Editors were waiting for rewrites. When I left, the Australians and the Germans were still drinking with the Australian and the French guy.

Celebrity novelist Wang Lili couldn't make it tonight -- she was in Australia. But she sent me an email and Fons an SMS about her trip. She's about to interview a mayor down there.

Fons suggested that I run for the FCC board. He's the second person to tell me that this week. I do like the attention. But what would I do, except get people drunk? Oh, and offer entry-level jobs.

I can see my platform now: "Vote for Maria. She'll buy you a beer. And then exploit you."

Actually, it sounds dirty. Maybe it will work.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Go to Germany for ten months

2007-04-18T22:53:00.001-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

Just starting out in your career? Looking for a way to go overseas?

The folks over at the Council for International Exchange of Scholars asked me to let everyone know about a Fulbright grant for young journalism professionals.

"The Fulbright Scholar Beginning Professional Journalism awards offer young American journalists at the beginning of their careers the opportunity to spend 10 months in Germany conducting research and working in German print or broadcast media. Applications are now being accepted for the five awards available in 2008-2009. Beginning professional journalists or recent graduates in journalism or related fields are eligible to apply. Applicants must be U.S. citizens and have a level of German sufficient for research and work in German media. More information about this award can be found online at http://www.cies.org/award_book/award2008/award/Beg8256.htm."

In my experience, there are never enough people applying for these things, so if you fit the criteria, you've got a good chance of going.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Chinese media reaction to Virginia Tech gunman story

2007-04-18T22:53:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

For a little while yesterday, there was a rumor that the gunman may have been a Chinese student who got his visa in Shanghai.

Chris O’Brien, a "language polisher" for the state-owned Xinhua News Agency dissects the reaction of the official government media on his blog, Beijing Newspeak. The comments section is also interesting, with some state TV folks weighing in as well.

(Thanks to Fons Tuinstra for pointing me to this blog.)

Danwei's Joel Martinsen also had an excellent and detailed post on this subject: Chinese media reacts to Virginia Tech shootings. The Peking Duck and the Shanghaiist also weighed in on this on their blogs, with some interesting links and commentary.

I don't cover politics, so I'm not going to talk about this further, just to add that the Beijing Newspeak blog is really interesting. A lot of folks who come over to China to work as aspiring journalists first get jobs as "language polishers" for the local media. Read this blog if you want to find out what that's like.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

I miss my junk TV

2007-04-18T22:50:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

Writing about financial technology all day and editing Asia payments stories, when I relax, I want to relax all the day. I want to vegg out in front of the TV and watch re-runs of Friends and the Simpsons. I want to watch The Office. And catch the latest police procedurals.

In China, this is all possible -- but not without breaking the law. There are a few movies available legally on DVD, and I buy them when I can -- they're only a few RMB more expensive than the pirated ones, so why not?

But the bulk of what I want to watch is not available here. You're never going to get me to admit, on the record, to buying pirated DVDs (I swear, I'm only holding them for friends). But not being able to watch TV and movies is for me one of the biggest disadvantages to living in China -- right up there with the lack of decent Chinese takeout and bad air.

ImageThief recommends a novel solution to China's IPR crisis: he things the US government should subsidize the distribution of American media as a cultural kind of Marshall Plan, in a post titled "American IPR hawks, remember the little people."

I hope someone is reading that.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Pulitzer board picks China stories second year in row

2007-04-17T23:36:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

More proof that here in China, we're covering the biggest business story on the planet. This year, for the second year in a row, a Pulitzer was awarded for China coverage. This year, the Wall Street Journal got the prize. Here's a link to the winning stories.

Congratulations, WSJ.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Shanghai or Beijing?

2007-04-17T22:54:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

When first coming to China, we had to make a decision: Shanghai or Beijing? (Other cities weren't even under consideration.)

I picked Shanghai because it has a stock exchange, and Beijing doesn't. I cover the securities industry. And I hate politics.

But I do have to admit that Beijing has more character. Everything in Shanghai looks as though it was built yesterday. And, well, it was.

I like my neighborhood dives to have that lived-in feel. There are a couple of places like that in Shanghai - but a lot of places like that in Beijing. Also, Shanghai's foreign restaurants seemed aimed at expats on expense accounts. Beijing's seem oriented more towards students and tourists -- two groups without as much money. And there are tons of Russian restaurants (Shanghai only has one). I'm a big fan of Russian food and music, my ethnic heritage showing through.

For the most part, journalists who come to China go to Beijing to cover politics, Shanghai to cover business. To me, it's similar to the difference between Washington D.C. and New York City.

Several other bloggers have been weighing in on this.

Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard wrote about the issue on his blog in "China's Future: Shanghai Or Beijing?"

Dan Harris of the China Law Blog also commented on this, and his posting drew a lively debate.

But the biggest story -- for me, anyway -- is the rise of China's second tier cities. Nitasha Tiku wrote about this topic on Inc.'s Fresh Inc blog: "Going Global, Part 8: Second-Tier Cities, First Rate Growth."

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Sleep sweet sleep

2007-04-16T22:55:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

Working in two -- or more -- time zones takes a toll. I need to stay up late many nights to talk with editors, interview sources in the US and Europe, rewrite stories on deadline, and deal with US-based staffers.

For a couple of weeks now, I've had several days in a row with four or five hours of sleep a night. I'm not a person who thrives on little sleep. I'm a person who thrives on lots of sleep. Nine hours a night, preferably.

There have been plenty of nights when I'm going to bed after the sun has come up.

After a while, I start feeling sleepy all the time, and drink gallons of Diet Coke to stay functional. A couple of weeks ago I ate something that disagreed with me, and stopped drinking the Diet Cokes to avoid aggravating my stomach even further with the caffeine. Once I was off the stuff -- the withdrawal symptoms were buried under the sick feelings -- I didn't want to be back on. I've been drinking only an occasional soda -- and no more than one a day -- for the past two weeks.

As a result, I feel sleepy all the time now. If I could spend 24 hours in bed, I probably would. Not forever. Just long enough to work off my accumulated sleep debt.

Today, I took the afternoon off and spent it in bed. I had meetings this evening, and meetings scheduled all day tomorrow. So I think I'll turn in early tonight -- in the early hours of the mornng. Well before sunrise.

I've been working like this for over three years now. My dream is to get on a regular schedule, where I get to be awake during the day and asleep at night.

I love being overseas, but the lack of sleep takes its toll.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

What I look for in a resume

2007-04-14T23:08:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

Since I'll be hiring for a few positions over the next couple of months, I'm already looking at resumes.

Here is my -- very subjective -- list of things I look for:

* Nice layout. Now, this has nothing to do with how good a reporter an applicant is. After all, they're not the ones who are going to be putting stories and graphics on the page. But I can't help it. I spend a lot of time looking at and thinking about layouts, so cluttered pages really set my teeth on edge. I like to see a crisp, clean layout. I don't like to see too many fonts, too many sizes, too many margins, too many style elements or, god forbid, colors. I hate seeing italics, widows or orphans, and indents that don't line up. And there's no excuse for bad layout, especially with the resume templates that come free in every copy of Microsoft Word.
* Consistency. If you use all four digits for a year in one place, I like to see it that way everywhere. If you use sentence fragments in bullet points and end them with periods, I want to see those periods at the end of every sentence fragment. When things aren't consistent, they jump out at me -- even before I read a single word. Inconsistent style, to me, indicates a lack of attention, a certain degree of carelessness. My reporters write about business -- I want them to be super careful with the smallest details.
* Grammar and spelling. Now, I'm willing to let this slide a little bit for non-native English speakers -- not everyone has a native English copyeditor friend. But there's no excuse for not using a spelling and grammar checker. Most of my resumes come in as Word documents -- and I have the spell check function turned on. If I see those colorful little wavy underlines, I can tell at a glance that the reporter hasn't run a spell check. Bad move.
* Conflicts of interest. If someone is applying for a job as a freelancer, and they're working at a PR agency or a company that we regularly cover, that's a big red flag. I normally send off a "sorry, but no thank you" letter right away. If there's a conflict or potential conflict, the applicant better explain it in the resume or the cover letter -- are they switching careers, for example?

Okay, for non-native English applicants I pretty much stop there. I don't expect someone from China, for example, to have a great deal of experience -- or to know how to write about it on a resume. I expect more from American applicants, however.

* Evidence of accomplishment. If a resume lists nothing more than titles and dates, that's a big warning sign for me. Did this guy do nothing at his jobs? I would like to see at least a couple of sentences about beats covered, major stories, high-profile interviews. I would like to find out what they learned at those jobs - and what mistakes they made. I don't like seeing "resume words" here - I prefer plain English, with nice, declarative sentences.
* Evidence of ambition. I want my reporters to be hungry. I like to see a resume that shows that the applicant routinely goes beyond the call of duty. I want to see extra-curricular research projects, active participation in professional organizations, membership in workplace taskforces. Even if you were only on an office committee to pick a new coffee filter, you're still ahead of the guy who sat back and let someone else pick the coffee filter for him.
* Evidence of dedication. I was a dutiful immigrant daughter in high school and college, and mostly focused on computers and engineering. This left only a little time to work for my high school and college newspapers. As a result, I'm somewhat intimidated by and envious of people who did the whole Chloe Sullivan thing. (From Smallville -- you know, that Superman TV show?) But I do like getting those resumes. And even someone who came to journalism late should have shown some signs earlier in life of wanting to do this, such as editing a church newsletter or being the webmaster for a club. Maybe reading Superman comics or keeping a diary regularly for 20 years doesn't deserve a place on the resume, but it could go in a cover letter.
* Evidence of brains. I'm prejudiced against communication majors. I think that a communications degree is the lowest form of education. Engineers need to be good with numbers. Chemistry majors have to understand chemistry. Biology and history and foreign language majors have to memorize stuff. English and philosophy majors have to read a lot of books. What do communication majors have to do? I don't know. I'm used to explaining the inverted pyramid in 15 minutes, with another half an hour for how to structure a feature story. What do they spend four years teaching, anyway? So I want to see a resume that shows that the applicant majored - or at least minored -- in a difficult subject. The harder, the better. If it's related to the beat, that's better still. The very last thing I want to see is a masters in journalism. If you're dead set on grad school, get a masters in economics and write for the local paper while you're there. Maybe take a couple of journalism courses just to learn what the inverted pyramid is all about -- or just read a book. It's not rocket science. I'm currently hiring for a financial reporter and a medical reporter. I want to see majors in business or economics or math for the former, and biology and chemistry for the latter. If you can learn those, learning how to report will be a breeze. And given the employment situation in the United States these days, only a total idiot would be studying journalism and nothing else right now. Major in something serious -- or at least minor in it. Don't take "math for poets" -- take the heavy-duty stuff. It doesn't have to be an economics degree, though that's great if you want to be a business reporter. You could major in government, sociology, history, criminal justice, languages, the natural sciences -- whatever it is you want to start out writing about. Something that shows you can learn, that you've got a head on your shoulders.
* Evidence of persistence. This is the main skill required in reporting. Calling back, over and over, until someone finally gives you that quote. Scouring the Internet until you finally find that press release or financial report. Writing and rewriting a story until an editor is happy. I hate employees who keep coming back to me complaining that they can't find the materials they need, or can't find anyone to talk to. I've got just one answer for them: "Keep looking!" I have this really horrible habit: if someone can't find something online and gives up, I can usually sit down at the computer and find it in three minutes (okay, I cheat -- I usually have a good idea of where to find things before I even start, but it still looks imperssive). Then I do a little dance (really, I do) and sing a little song about it. It is humiliating. Oh -- and it can be embarrassing for the employee, too. Anyway, a little bit of persistence would have avoided embarrassment all around. So I would like to see evidence of persistence in the resume. So if you called 100 people for a story, put that in. Though, usually, people demonstrate persistence by hounding me after they send me their resume. If someone calls or emails me more than five times, I usually offer them a job. Even if I have to create one for them. A reporter who doesn't give up is the greatest gift an editor could possibly get.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Managing foreign staff -- using Google Translate

2007-04-14T22:56:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

Today a writer who speaks no English sent me an email in Chinese. I read it using Google Translate and sent him a reply -- using Google Translate to translate my answer into Chinese. He had pitched a story about the labor problems McDonald's has been having lately (they were recently cleared of paying too little to their part-time student employees).

I am potentially interested in the story, if he can add a second-day lead to it, and get people to talk on some very specific topics (I sent him a list of questions).

The email is part of a long email conversation I've had with him. So far, I've understood what he was telling me -- and he seems to understand what I'm telling him. At least, he's been responding very appropriately to my requests.

My business manager tells me that the translation that Google does into Chinese sounds like a foreigner wrote it, but is understandable. Whoo hoo! That's exactly the effect I'm going for, anyway. :-)

Is anybody else doing this?

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Beware of your blog

2007-04-14T21:50:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

Today, a job applicant sent me a resume in English (and very nice job, well formatted - the resumes I'm getting have improved a lot, just in the three years that I've ben here in China). She also sent me a link to her Chinese-language blog. I sicced Google on it and it was a dramatic, existential, cry-for-help type of thing.

Note to potential job applicants: If you send me a link to your blog, make sure it's all dry and boring. My ideal blog topic? You read economics stories and point out math mistakes.

I don't mind if there's occasional personal life in the blog -- just enough to make you seem human. Here's the kind of entry I have in mind:

Today, the doctors told me I might have cancer. The results won't be in for a week. The agony of not knowing is unbearable. Meanwhile, I have story deadlines. Thank god for work! Nothing takes my mind of my troubles better than writing a thousand words on agricultral subsidies.

Or:

My boyfriend called me today. Drama, drama, drama. He wants me to leave work early to go to some concert. Then to a nice dinner in a fancy restaurant where he says he has an important question to ask me. Well, I do like eating. But... leave work early? No way! Then, get this, he says I love my job more than him! Well, duh! So long, loser!

If I Google a writer's name and a personal blog comes up I might glance at it briefly to check it out - is it well-punctuated? Does the writer confess to any crimes or profess a hobby of stealing office supplies? Is there massive plagiarism or copyright violation going on? But otherwise I'm not going to read it too much -- a personal life is a personal life.

But if you email me the link to the blog as part of your job application, I'm going to take a pretty close look at it. I mean, just the fact that you're sending me a link to a personal blog means that you're having trouble with the whole "work is work and personal is personal" concept.

This is the same reason I have problems with including hobbies on resumes -- unless, again, your hobby is something job-related like statistical analysis.

I have to confess, though -- I'm not consistent about this. If I'm hiring for a senior-level management position, I want to know about a person's personality. If I'm hiring for an entry-level job, I mostly want to know that the person is professional.

I guess, after you've had a few years of work experience, I'm going to assume that you know how to stay focused on the job.

But with entry-level staff, especially those who have never held a job before, the ability to keep your mind on work is very critical. I've had employees -- both in first-time jobs -- who would take off early (or disappear for weeks) -- because of personal problems. Personal problems that wouldn't even phase someone older. Such as fights with boyfriends.

Employees with more experience who have a personal problem will schedule things in advance, take sick days or make up the work on their own time, and not tell me too many details unless I ask. Basically, they arrange things so that they impact work as little as possible.

I don't mind hiring people who don't live for their work, who have hobbies and real lives.

But I do live for my work and, I assume, most people who rise high in organizations are the same.

So when you send me a resume and supporting materials, I want you to be able to convince me that, for eight hours a day, you can at least pretend to be living for your work.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Living vicariously through other people's blogs

2007-04-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

I've often fantasized about the cool life I would someday lead... in Moscow, in Paris, in Kabul. And I regularly reminisce about the cool times I had -- in Moscow, in Paris, and in Kabul. But, depressingly, when you're actually living it, live becomes very ordinary very quickly.

The first day in Moscow was: "Wow! I'm in Moscow! This is so cool!"
The second day in Moscow was: "Geez, the traffic is not getting any better, is it? And what's with the weather?"

I'm sure, years down the line, I'll be telling people about all the cool things I did in Shanghai. But, right now, living it, it all seems very ordinary and routine. Yes, launching a magazine, yes, meeting with investors, yes, going out for drinks with editors and novelists and publishers and entrepreneurs. In retrospect, it sounds great. And that was just yesterday.

But when I was living it, yesterday, it was all: "Another meeting, another beer, hope I can get some sleep tonight."

Next week, I'm flying to Hong Kong for a conference. It's going to be so cool -- until I actually get there. Then the cool will be instantly gone and it will become "same old, same old."

For example, Hong Kong air is sweet and fresh -- compared to Shanghai's polluted, smoke-filled, urine-soaked diesel fuel stench. Five minutes after getting there, and I won't notice the difference anymore.

Am I the only person who enjoys live most either before or after actually living it?

Anyway, some people have really cool lives, and I've been envying their blogs lately.

For example, there's the Maitresse, a freelance writer who blogs about literary life in Paris. I look at that blog -- and its graphics -- and I think to myself, "that is a cool life."

Even here in Shanghai, reading the local blogs, everything looks cooler once its on the Internet.

For example, the Shanghaiist just posted a report about a UFO citing here. I didn't see the UFO. And I just checked out the window -- nope, nothing. And Asiapundit seems to have a much cooler reading list than I do.

Oh, I do have to add -- Asiapundit has a very very cool baby. I babysat for him and his wife on Sunday, and their baby girl was just adorable. And holding that baby was much cooler than just remembering it afterwards.

Hmm... maybe I should spend more time with my own kids? Well, my daughter does have a newspaper and an online interactive game that goes with her imaginary world... Maybe I can set up a nice content management system for her... a little bit of mother-daughter bonding.

And my son, the future space station designer, has developed an interest in astrophysics. (I spent a year as an engineering physics major, still love that stuff.) Maybe it's time to explain relativity to him. He's 9, he's old enough.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Why Britney Spears' bare bottom is a good thing

2007-04-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post (and comments).

Yesterday, I met a man who bemoaned the state of US media, and its obsessive focus on the minutia of celebrity lies and other distractions.

Or at least I think he did -- I launched into my speech without letting him finish making his point.

You see, he reminded me of a day back in grad school. I was studying Central Asian languages -- Uzbek, Tajik, Farsi -- and area culture and history at Indiana University, and one of our professors was an anthropologist. He explained that anthropology was the science of "studying down." Powerful people -- governments, corporations, universities -- send researchers around to study the powerless -- tribesmen living in remote villages, inner city youths, their own employees.

Then the powerful use the information they gain to become more powerful. This is, apparently, an ethnical problem for some anthropologists.

I suddenly had a realization -- there is one profession that studies up. Where poor people collect pennies and nickels and pay for researchers to go study the habits of the rich and powerful. That profession is journalism. (I immediately quit grad school and went off to Detroit to fill in as UPI's bureau chief there, back when UPI was still a going concern.)

Most of us remember those National Geographic photo spreads of naked natives in Africa and South America. Well, now those naked natives can log on to the Internet at their local Web cafes and see pictures of us naked. And by us, I mean Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and the whole gang.

What's not to like about that?

Powerless people want to know things about the powerful. Yes, some want to know useful, serious, practical stuff -- where do they invest their money? How do they make decisions? That sort of thing. This is where the Wall Street Journals and BusinessWeeks come in, and a fine job they do.

But other people would prefer to infiltrate the powerful elite by social climbing. They want to know who the powerful hang out with. Where they socialize. What they wear. Not everybody is going to act on this information by getting the right clothes, hair and accessories and going out and bagging a movie star -- but we can all dream about it. And all those tabloid magazines -- the People and US and and all the rest -- give us the tools, the knowledge we need, should we ever decide to do it.

And those of us in the lifestyle business -- the makers of handbags and jewelry, for example -- can learn how to market them, where to sell them, and how to get celebrities to wear them.

Information is power. The more powerless people can learn about those in power, the more they can level the playing field. Economically. And socially.

And that can't be a bad thing.

And if the price we pay is being forced -- by the media, of course, and purely for research purposes -- to click on the link to Britney's photos and Paris' video, well that's the price we have to pay for informational equality. I, for one, am willing to sacrifice my eyeballs. Yes, by buying US and People, and economically supporting the paparazzi, I am striking a blow for the disenfranchized everywhere.

Yes, the rich and powerful can no longer live their lives of luxury in secret, manipulating the world behind the scenes. The photographers and the snoops are there in force, ferreting out all the secrets, both trivial and important.

And more power to them.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Hiring again

2007-04-11T22:59:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

I'm starting yet another recruiting cycle tomorrow. This month, I'm looking for a new full-time finance reporter. Next month, I'll be hiring someone with a biology or life sciences background. Both are entry-level positions -- low pay, long hours.

I haven't even put our the formal announcements yet, but resumes are already coming in.

Today, the CEO of an international events company told me that I'm aiming too low. Instead of increasing head count by one or two people a month, I could be working on an international level, starting new magazines with the resources of a multinational behind me. (He meant, his.)

Tomorrow I meet with another publisher, who also wants to offer money.

So I'm thinking: could I be more effective if I had more money to spend, or would it just get in the way? If I hired more programmers to do the development work, instead of spending time myself playing with the databases (I do love playing with databases). If I hired assistants to handle my email and other routine administrative tasks. If I hired a writer to do my blog. :-)

I know some dot-coms just floundered when they had too much money. Working within their own resources made them discliplined and focus and helped contribute to their long-term success. But others got cash infusions and just soared.

Is there any way to know which category you're in, except through hindsight?

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

Letting go of war

2007-04-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

There was a great story in the LA Times today -- Reporter recalls the layers of truth told in Iraq (thanks, Lauren, for bringing it to my attention).

The part that particularly struck me was when Borzou Daragah, the LA Times former bureau chief in Baghdad, wrote about lying to his closest and dearest about how much danger he was in. He also talked about war reporting as an addiction.

I also noticed that he skimmed over the part about how he first became a war correspondent - specifically, the practical aspects of how he went about getting his first assignment. I don't know if this was intentional on his part, or if it just wasn't germane to a general-interest story, but I also feel reluctance to say, in print, how I got my first war reporting assignment.

I don't mind telling people in private, when it's clear that they won't go to the frontlines themselves. But I'm always worried that somebody might read it, decide that they can do it too, and then get themselves killed.

For example, people who hate mass murderers should not go to a war zone. You're going to meet a lot of mass murderers. And if you hate them, they'll take offense, and have you killed.

Being curious about them is fine, I think. Being a war geek is fine -- thinking that guns and helicopters are cool, or being a fan of strategic military planning, or whatever. Being an insane thrill-seeker is fine. But if you make them feel bad about what they do, they're going to kill you to make that feeling go away. Now, most people don't like mass murderers, and have a hard time hiding this fact when they meet them face to face.

One solution is to become schitzophrenic. When you're there, say, "Oooh, cool gun! What kind of bullets does it shoot? Got any tracer rounds?" And then when you get home, you write, "Then the so-called 'Butcher of Blkjalkistan' carressed his AK-47 SM and told me, 'I like to practice killing on local livestock. We get great barbecues in our unit. I try to kill at least a few things every day, and we're running short of innocent civilians.'"

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

My "movie star" theory of expat dating

2007-04-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

I recently met a couple of expat women here in Shanghai who've given up on datting. I'm sure there are plenty of women (and men) back home as well who've given up, but when you're overseas the problems feel worse. You have less in common with the people around you, there are no family members to set you on well-meaning blind dates, and there are few permanent social networks, like churches and sports leagues. Those that do exist are filled with people who are only in Shanghai temporarily, and too tied up with their own problems to worry about their single friends.

For women expats, the problems are particularly acute because of the economic (and height) differences with local men.

There are two ways to look at this. The doom-and-gloom, wait-to-get-back-home approach is one. I prefer the "Hollywood movie star" theory of expat dating.

According to this theory, being a Western woman in China and trying to date is a lot like being a Hollywood star back in the US. If you're a male star and you walk into a bar, all the girls are all over you, telling you that you're the sexiest, asking you to sign their boobs and giving you their phone numbers. If you're a woman -- say, Nicole Kidman -- all the guys are too scared to go up to you. Except for a couple of weirdos, and some old ladies who ask you if your hair color is natural.

If you're a female movie star, you've got a lot of competition -- all the women in the world want to date male movie stars.

But you know, if I was Nicole Kidman (in my pre Keith Urban but post Tom Cruise days) I wouldn't sit around and bemoan my fate. After all, I'm Nicole Kidman! If I walk into a bar, sure, everyone is scared of me. But all I have to do is crook my little finger and any guy will come running. After all, I'm Nicole Kidman!

So we Western women have to learn to do what Hollywood movie stars do.

First, they meet guys at work. After all, movie stars have a particular set of problems, and who better to understand than other movie stars? I think that's why, even when they have all the women in the world to choose from, many male stars marry female stars.

Then, you date other guys in the industry. The producers, the directors, the key grips, the backup dancers. In expat terms, for a European or American women, this might mean reaching beyond the national groups you are closest to in culture to, say, South America or Eastern Europe.

Then you broaden the circle further. Hollywood stars date newspaper editors and lawyers and athletes and musicians. Broadening the comfort circle for Western women, this might mean going beyond your cultural comfort zone even further to say, other Asian countries -- where the culture is Westernized to some extent, like Japan or South Korea.

Then, finally, movie stars sometimes date the "girl next door" or "guy next door." Usually, there's something particularly cool about the person, though. Here the cultural gap is the widest, but people sometimes still make it work. In China, this might translate to dating Chinese intellectuals or business executives. The benefits here include the fact that the regular guy or gal doesn't have the personality problems and hangups associated with being a celebrity (or an expat). In China, you also get to practice Chinese. And there is a little leniency about your own bad behavior -- after all, you're a movie star (or a foreigner) -- weird behavior is even expected.

When in Russia, I made a point of dating guys from every republic I worked in, and it was great. Occasionally, a guy would try to compare me to local girls -- but it was usually in a positive way. I was more fun, more outgoing, more adventurous. Also taller, richer, and with an American passport, but nobody was gauche enough to mention this.

Did it bother me that maybe one reason guys was interested was because I was American? Not too much. After all, the reason guys are first interested in pretty girls is because they're pretty. And girls are first attracted to guys because of their looks or jobs. But the reason they stay is because of deeper qualities. The looks, or the job, or whatever, just helps open the door a little bit.

So how do female movie stars get all those guys within and outside the industry? They have to be proactive and let guys know they're interested. I guess it feels a little too much Elizabeth Taylor at
first, but what guy wants to be shot down by a movie star? It's too humiliating. Especially if it happens in public. After all, every guy secretly dreams of being with a movie star -- being turned down will mean that those dreams are gone for good.

Similarly, I think many men dream of meeting a glamorous, globe-trotting American or European woman and being whisked away to a life of adventure and excitement. (I'm not talking about my life here, of course.) But if they go up to that woman and she says no, then he will feel even poorer and more boring than he felt before.

But if the Hollywood movie star sends a friend over to tell him she thinks he's cute or asks him for an innocuous favor -- and then flatters him shamelessly afterwards -- well, he might get up the nerve to ask her out.

Signing off in Shanghai -- with high hopes --

-- Maria

Nice bit of investigative journalism by Chinese reporters

2007-04-07T23:09:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

Here is the translation of a report about a bit of investigative journalism into KFC and McDonald's wage problems in the south of China. (Thanks to Fons Tuinstra for bringing it to my attention.)

It details how a journalist and student interns went undercover to expose some bad labor practices.

I personally would have liked to see a bit more meat to the reporting -- more interviews with other employees, a bit more comparative data about what other restaurants (both foreign and local) are paying their staff, more from government officials, maybe a labor union perspective.

But given that the whole idea of investigative reporting in China is still in its infancy, they did a pretty decent job.

For those who think that American brands are being singled out -- first, everybody goes after the biggest names. There are few well-known Chinese fast food chains. Second, foreign media pick up on stories that involve international brands. If the same newspaper did exposes of local street vendors, for instance, nobody would care except for people who live on that street. Neither the national Chinese media nor the international media would pick up on it the same way that they did the KFC-McD's story.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

The perils of investigative journalism in China

2007-04-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

In the previous post, I included a link to the EastSouthWestNorth blog, which translates some of the more interesting stories from Chinese newspapers into English.

Certainly puts the business reporting that I do into perspective.

From recent posts:

The Fenyang Mining Disaster (04/07/2007) (Shanxi Daily)

On April 2 afternoon, the reporter came to the Sankeng mine again. He was jostled by unidentified men who threatened to bury him and his driver in a ditch. Out of safety considerations, the reporter left the scene. Then a crazy car case occurred with a black Santana.

CCTV Reporters Assaulted in Qinhuangdao City (04/07/2007) (NetEase)

According to Wang Liping, at around 9:20am, the three were filming from a bridge overlooking an iron factory at Zhugezhuang town, Changli county. They were blocked by a white van in front and a black Honda sedan in the back. More than ten identified men then dragged the three of them out of the car and took away their camera, mobile telephone, car keys and driver license.

(Apple Daily)

Yesterday morning, was filming the rule-breaking, polluting iron factories in Zhugezhuang town, Changli county, Qinhuangdao city. Suddenly, a white van stopped the progress of their vehicle. Then another black sedan arrived. More than twenty persons dragged the three CCTV reporters out of the car. Worse yet, some of the men dragged the female reporter to the river side (more than 10 meters deep) and attempted to throw her into the river. When a male reporter attempted to come to her assistance, he was kicked several times in the chest. During the tussle, the female reporter was injured in the hands, face and waist. During the beating, the men were yelling: 弄死一個是一個 (One dead is one down).

Signing off in Shanghai - where the scariest thing that ever happens to me is filing tax forms

-- Maria

Bribing reporters now illegal in China

2007-04-06T23:13:00.000-07:00

Note: This blog post also ran in the Society of Professional Journalism's "Journalism and the World" blog. Click here to see the original post.

On Tuesday, the Chinese government issued a degree making it illegal to bribe journalists to run (or not run) stories. Here's the China Daily story.

I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand: bribery - bad. Ethics - good.

On the other hand - freedom of the press.

There are plenty of journalists who take money from sources in the United States. In Singapore, I met a few who claimed they were able to keep things "separated in their heads" so the money wouldn't influence their coverage.

And then there are publications that out-and-out sell advertising space. We all know who they are. Everybody knows. And it's obvious to the readers that they do it. These are mostly small pubs focused on narrow business segments or on the small towns where they're based, but it happens at bigger pubs, too.

One magazine I freelanced for (waaay back) told me to call advertisers first for quotes.

And, one year, I wrote a few dozen "advertorial" articles about advertisers for a suburban Detroit paper. Yes, it was clear to me that these were advertorials (there was a little label to that effect somewhere on the supplement) but I'm sure plenty of readers thought this was straight editorial -- though unusually up-beat and cheerful.

I do believe that the free press is worth having, warts and all.

I believe that if a newspaper or magazine fawns too much over its advertisers, circulation will drop and it will go out of business. Also, it will lose its best staffers and eventually wind up with the rejects that nobody else wants to hire -- and nobody wants to read. (As well as a few good people stuck there by temporary necessity, but furiously looking for a way out.)

But I am pleased that attention is being paid to the problem -- maybe, in a few years, there will be a population of experienced, ethical Chinese journalists that foreign publications can start hiring from.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria