Lou Yi’s professional weekly diary

What I did last week:

Story for the Inquirer:
Last week I finished my story on Chinatown town watch and video taping them at the same time. This will be the second video story I’ve made for the website of the Inquirer. This time I am working to make two versions of videos, one for Americans and another for Chinese. Maybe I can help to open the Chinatown’s market for the Inquirer?
It is the fourth and may be the last story I’ve ever written about Chinatown. Chinatown is interesting but I still need to learn more about the mainstream society. I also need to learn more from other reporters from the Inquire, especially on how to get access to information or contacts with different ways or tools.

Blog:
Last week I’ve been aggressively writing and marketing my blog at the website of the Inquirer. I wrote everyday and forward my articles to people around me with brief of the articles, which is quite effective. I received responses from many people, including Katie. One day a man suddenly stopped me on the street and said:
“I like your blog!”
Updating blog helps to practice my English writing. I was reluctant to update my blog because I always hope to bring a perfect article without any grammar mistake. Now, I put it online right after I finish my article. Then I change it when I notice any mistakes. The more I write, the few mistakes I make.

Personal research project:
I will interview Milton Cole, the deputy managing editor of the Washington Post this Monday afternoon. I will interview Carl Lavin, the deputy managing editor of the Inquirer after I am back from Florida. With Carl Lavin, Ke Xu and Li Yuan’s help, I finally nailed down the interviews with people from the New York Time, the Wall Street Journal. I am thrilled but uncertain about the future interviews since we still don’t decide the exact time of interviews.

Observation on American printed media: My column on Caijing’s website
I finished another story about Bill Marimow last week. The story will be published on Tuesday. I plan to write at least 30 stories about American printed media’s transition and show the videos about them at the same time.
As the first reporter in Caijing magazine who writes column about my own overseas experience, I started my column in the middle of April. Today I open Caijing’s website and find five reporters’ stories about their oversea experience, including our editor in chief. I am glad that so many reporters share their experience with our readers.

What I learned last week:
Journalist’s transition to the multimedia era:
Must all the journalists learn to shoot with camcorders or write blogs?
No.
Actually the more I work on blog or video the more I disagree with such idea.
The answer is simple. It is too time consuming and very different from newspaper reporting. Even you are extremely smart and hard working, you still can not do a perfect job on three kinds of work. I am able to working on three kinds of things because I am not asked to write deadline stories everyday or do investigative reporting like I do in China. But sometimes I still feel overwhelmed.
I think the best way to solve the problem is to allocate different kinds of job to reporters with different professional skills. I heard that the Washington Post have three full time movie editors to edit video taken by reporters. I would rather edit my story by myself. But I think it is evitable that the let professionals to do the job in the future. Does that mean newspapers will recruit more people from TV stations?
I guess the editor have to re-describe their job too. When they think of a story, they don’t only think of the writing style, the details of the story or the accuracy. They have to think of a multimedia picture, allocate assignments to not only reporters, but also people from graphic desk, photo desk, movie desk (in the future), and online desk. I find the editors at the Inquirer are beginning to think of the online news reporting, and people from different desk are beginning to work together. There is still huge potential for editors to improve their capability of organizing and understanding of the multimedia way of story telling.

How to manage the newsroom effectively?
Last diary told a tip of philly.com’s management by sign on and sign off emails. This time I learned how to keep transparency from Bill Marimow’s email.
Anne Gordon, the managing editor of the Inquirer, left last month and Bill is now interviewing different applicants. We all want to know who will be the new managing editor. I even thought of asking him during my interview. Last week, I received a letter from Bill to the whole newsroom. He told us what kind of managing editor he think suitable to the Inquirer, How is the recruiting process and when he hopes to make a decision.
I am surprised to receive such a letter. Reporters at the Inquirer told me it is Bill’s style to try his best to bring transparency into the news room. He may not tell us the details of the recruiting but his letter does let us feel that we are part of the process.
Excellent!