Girl Girl Study, Up Up Everyday, My first week at the Inquirer

04/15/2007
My first week was a very busy orientation week. In the first three days, I had ten interviews every day, with all the important people in the news room. I was very sorry that I could not talk Bill, the editor in chief, since he was still in hospital after surgery. However, I finally met him last week.
Before I set out to the States I talked with my editor in chief, editors in each desks, and website manager. I asked them for what they wanted me to learn from the program and collected a lot of questions.

However, I did not want to throw all the questions to them now. I would like to find by myself first and then I could ask better questions.

Actually some interviews were so interesting that I could not wait for one more minute. After I talked with the people in the Philly.com, I rushed back to my apartment and reported to my website editor.

Andy is a wonderful mentor. Before I went to Philla, he had already written a letter to the newsroom to introduce me and encouraged them to say hello to me. You can imagine how I was surprised when I received letters from my future colleagues.

I replied by sending a video I made with my photos and it did help a lot. Now 156 people watched it and I bet most of them were sitting in this white building.

It was my first video. And then I made four. To me it was not only for fun but also to help me out of homesickness and loneliness. The newest one is for my fellows.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDmOyYTaTc8

Andy also asked people to donate their used cooking things to me since there were only few things in the kitchen of my apartment. Everyday when I entered the newsroom I found a pan, a wok or a pot on my desk.

Jennifer Lin, another mentor, a former Beijing correspondent with the Inquirer reminded me of the life in Beijing. Though she was still in a fellowship in University of Pennsylvania, we had several pleasant dinners and we will have more in the next week.

John Brumfield, the administrative person, who helped to find my apartment, is amazing. Every time I turned to him, he gave me the answer. Every time he saw reports about China, he would give them to me. He is efficient and warm hearted.

To my surprise, my first assignment was about basketball. A Chinese basketball player, who would go to the United States for the NBA draft, is the target of 76ers, the Philadelphia basketball team. As a business reporter, I had never covered sport and I had no interest in basketball at all. Now I learned a lot! The story was not done yet since the sport editor is still on vacation. He will be back tomorrow.

Besides homesickness, English writing is another big concern. I have no previous professional English writing experience and I didn’t worry too much when I was in China. The reason is simple. I write in Chinese so that I have a lot more readers and influence than any English media reporter could have in China. Better English writing or more bylines were not my number one goal for this program.

Now I realized I must work harder on my English listening and writing or I would be a burden not helper for the Inquirer.

I set up my aim: one paper everyday, one magazine every week. I put a slogan on the back of refrigerator: Hao Hao Xue Xi Tian Tian Xiang Shang(girl girl study, up up everyday), which haven’t been in my room since I graduated from elementary school.

Now I am working on a story about Chinatown Gate. It is really interesting. I got the answer of a question hunting me for 2 years: why Chinatown is so dirty?

However, I hope I can have more opportunities to work with other reporters so that I can gain my understanding of the American society. Last week I went with Bob Moran, the crime reporter, to the west part of Philadelphia where two murders happened in one week. To me, the most terrible thing of the story was that the murders were between teenagers with guns.

A exciting news! I will have my blog in Philly.com. I am still thinking of the name of the blog.