(v2.0)
(v2.0)
Section 2 of 3: Brief comments (Archive)
- Duke of Aberdeen noted that Swedish-originated Metro has raked in profits of HK$20-30 million precisely because it is apolitical, whereas Headline News will not be able to refrain from meddling in politics due to its parentage (the Sing Tao group).
- Florence Lai (Over the Rainbow) discussed about how the human resources for Headline News were allocated. Mostly, they will be Sing Tao people helping out on a temporary basis.
- Florence Lai (Over the Rainbow) is a reporter by profession, and she compared the two free newspapers according to reporting styles with illustrative examples. She offered the example of the decision to stop live horserace broadcasts at Radio Hong Kong, which is an objective fact. However, a traditional journalist cannot offer his/her own opinion on this decision because that would be subjective. Instead, he/she needs to speak to other parties to elicit their opinions. This is interesting because surely the decision of which third parties to talk to must be subjective as well.
- Miss Lee in Summer provided a common reader's viewpoint, and she is definitely not happy about the aggravation. She concluded: "This is a free society and commerce operates freely. You can publish whatever you want to, and I can refuse to read whatever I don't want to."These are interesting blog comments, but they seemed to be only scratching the surface. As a reader, I personally don't find the summaries terribly interesting and I would need to follow through on the links. But a non-Chinese-reading reader will not be able to follow through with those links. Somehow, my sense is that if one is really interested in the subject, this English-language blogpost at Dustless Workshop is superior to the reading of the bridge blogger's summary. Instead of bridge blogging, I would have done an English-language blog post instead to articulate my own and as well as other viewpoints.
As an individual person, I think that the more interesting blog post would be about my meeting with the Metro managemet in Santiago de Chile in which they explained their business model and distribution strategy to me. And I can also tell you more than two or three things about the readership characteristics of free vs. paid newspapers that may affect their survivability.
So how shall I spend my time? Bridge blogging? Blogging for myself? Or consultancy for money? Hmmm ... is there even a choice?
P.S. Dustless Workship: In reply to EastSouthWestNorth...plus some thoughts... "I personality found that very interesting, and should ESWN decided to write about the two topics he outlined, I will certainly be the first one to read them." Alas, that will not happen as discussion of the first topic implies betrayal of trust while the second topic involves commercial interests that I cannot just give away.
Section 3 of 3: Blog posts
(July 20, 2005) Search Engines vs. Search Engines in China A follow-up on yesterday's post and this time, the biggest enemy of Baidu turned out to be ... Baidu.
(July 20, 2005) A Competition in Guangzhou On the hottest day of the year, 33 couples entered a piggy-back endurance competition for the grand prize of 1,888 yuan plus an air conditioner. Photos included.
(July 19, 2005) Search Engines vs. Spammers in China This is a translation of a Nanfang Weekend article on the war between the search engines and the spammers. Nothing new here for anyone who follows this issue, but this one is from the Chinese perspective. The reporter states (without proof) that there are hundred of thousands of people in China engaged in the art of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) spamming.
(July 19, 2005) The Shenyang Fire Bombs The owner of a Shenyang building fights off law enforcement personnel with a barrage of Molotov cocktails. This is one of those stories that stinks to the high heavens because something is definitely being left out of the news reports.
(July 19, 2005) The Nancy Kissel Case - Part 25 Links to media reports on the twenty-fourth day of the trial.
(July 18, 2005) Brazil In The Time of Dictatorship The coverage of Greek politics and two songs of Chico Buarque during the Brazilian military dictatorship era, and the implications for contemporary China. These are strange and unobvious associations, but how can we have globalization without being able to jump across space and time?
(July 17, 2005) The Sayings Of The Sichuan County Government Chairman Sample: "When you do something and the masses are happy but the leaders are not, then this shows that you did not do it right. You do right only when the leaders are happy, because the leaders represent the wishes of the people." But what is the real story about why these sayings appeared on the Internet?
(July 17, 2005) The Real Story About The Terracotta Warriors Earlier, there was a news report about how the Xian terracotta museum will become a coal pit in a hundred years due to pollution. This is about how an interview of a scientist and a small experiment got twisted into headline news.
(July 16, 2005) The Evil Dragon Is Abandoned by Heaven According to Reuters, the gangster known as The Evil Dragon "was found via his Internet protocol address after police found out he often played games online." What is the real deal? Read what the Chinese-language media says: MSN, ISP, the online game "Heaven", Internet nicknames, trojan horse viruses, and a super GPS chip. It is guaranteed that you will have no idea about what went on.
(July 16, 2005) The Nancy Kissel Case - Part 24 Links to media reports on the twenty-third day of the trial.
(July 15, 2005) Freedom of Press in Taiwan Of the seven cable/satellite news channels that applied for license renewal, five have provisionally failed for reasons such as invasion of personal privacy, emotional and inflammatory treatment of news items, insufficient of training on journalistic ethics and laws, etc. Is this a government crackdown? Not really.
(July 15, 2005) The Nancy Kissel Case - Part 23 Links to media reports on the twenty-second day of the trial.
(July 14, 2005) July 1 Afternoon March Estimates At the bottom of this previous post is the translation of an article about the fourth estimate from a HKU research team. So we now have CHRF 21,000; HKU-POP 20,000; HKU-Stat Dept 18,000; HK Police 17,000. When will Leung Kwok-hung hold his promised press conference to prove that it was 50,000?
(July 14, 2005) In Praise of Chinese Peasant Riots Why is there still no verdict for the libel trial for The Chinese Peasant Study? From the bottom, local officials can sense that a verdict against the two authors will lead to a 'mass incident.' From the top, they also feel pressure as top agricultural policy expert Chen Xiwen has acknowledged frankly that what the book says is "actually true" and he even purchased a few copies to give people.
(July 14, 2005) The Nancy Kissel Case - Part 22 Links to media reports on the twenty-first day of the trial.
(July 13, 2005) The Libel Trial for The Chinese Peasant Study The authors were sued by a local government official for libel, and there has been no verdict one year after the trial was held. This post contains the sum total of what had gone on with the trial. At the bottom of the page, there is a translation of lawyer Pu Zhiqiang's recent letter to the court asking for a verdict, one way or the other. Why the delay? The court panel is clearly not acting independently. On one side, local government officials want a quick victory for the plaintiff. On the other side, we have just seen the top agricultural policy expert just said (The Chen Xiwen Interviews) just said that everything in the book is true and that things are in fact even worse. So the panel of judges have been pushing for a settlement, but the authors are resolute because they want to use this a test case to open up the space for public criticisms of goverment officials and policies.
(July 13, 2005) The Nancy Kissel Case - Part 21 Links to media reports on the twentieth day of the trial.
(July 12, 2005) The Greatest Internet Crime Trial in China In the second half of this old post, I have added the trial outcomes as well as interviews with five defendants. This is an amazing business model. On one hand, this illegal pornographic website is based in the United States and fully protected by the laws there. On the other hand, labor costs in China are negligible because people are happy to work for nothing.
(July 12, 2005) The Nancy Kissel Case - Part 20 Links to media reports on the nineteenth day of the trial.
(July 11, 2005) My Dad Was A Corrupt Official A couple of case studies about the children of corrupt Chinese officials. Did they know what was going on? Did they feel guilt about spending the black money? Will they give any money back to the state to seek mercy for their parents?
(JUly 10, 2005) The Case of Meng Weizai A chronology of the debate over a seemingly trivial question: Did this man resign from the Communist Party of China or not? This case demonstrates the power of the Internet against the official state media, but not necessarily for the better.
(July 9, 2005) 10,001 Letters Chinese AIDS activitist Gao Yaojie has received more than 10,000 letters from people around China. What do they say?
(July 8, 2005) An Incident in Chengdu The Internet and digital cameras supposedly empower everyone to become civilian reporters. But are you sure that you want the full information from everyone everywhere about everything? This post is an empirical test of your resolution and fortitude.
(July 7, 2005) The Battle of Changde Book reports about how difficult it is to use photographs to document a deadly war with invisible bacteria.
(July 6, 2005) The Top 10 Fake News Of The Year In China This is the re-cap of the top 10 lists between the years 2001 through 2004, with my nominations for the first half of 2005.
(July 5, 2005) The Chen Xiwen Interviews Two Hong Kong newspapers had interviews with Chen Xiwen. Chen praised the peasants for their democratic awareness as well as the willingness to fight for their rights. Chen acknowledged frankly that what the book The Chinese Peasant Study says is "actually true" and he even admitted that the problems in reality are "far more than that." He credited the Internet for helping the Chinese central government find out what was happening locally. Who is Chen Xiwen and why are these interviews such a big deal? Chen is the vice-minister of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs and the number one agricultural policy expert in China.
(July 5, 2005) The Nancy Kissel Case - Part 19 Links to media reports on the eighteenth day of the trial.
[Adminstrative note: I have decided to segment this blog into three sections: Sections 1 is for external photos and reading materials; section 2 is for brief links plus comments on interesting subjects that do not require the full treatment; section 3 is for the traditional long blog posts. The most important change is for section 2, which will cover many interesting subjects that I come across and that I would have omitted under the old format.]
(July 4, 2005) Reducing the Social Gap From the SOCO project that matched Hong Kong secondary students with poor children to the 10,000 Shanghai students who went to work in the tea fields at the foot of Huangshan, the issue is how to reduce the social gap, and hence wealth inequality.
(July 3, 2005) Students of the World Unite and Rise Up Were the students at the July 1 morning march in Hong Kong coerced to participate against their will? If so, there may actually be a positive outcome, based upon my experience.
(July 3, 2005) The Amnesty That Never Was Who spread the rumor that the Hong Kong government was going to offer an amnesty with respect to right of abode? Answer: Follow the money, of course.
(July 2, 2005) The Government Is MIA in Taiwan Translation of an article by media commentator Nan Fang-shuo in The Journalist about current politics in Taiwan.
(July 2, 2005) July 1 Afternoon March Estimates A continuously updated track report on the revisionism related to the number of marchers at the Civil Human Rights Front event.
(July 2, 2005) July 1 Afternoon March Photos Here are the photos from the afternoon march in Hong Kong. This was a protest march for universal suffrage and against collusion between government and businesses. The organizers declared 21,000 participants, but the police said 17,000.
(July 2, 2005) July 1 Morning March Photos Here are the photos from the morning march in Hong Kong. This was a parade, not a protest march. The organizers declared 30,000 participants, but the police said 20,000.
(July 1, 2005) Bunny Hops In Taiwan, a student did not bring her homework and was made to do 100 bunny hops. Read about the student's 'strange revenge', as well as other strange stories on educating the children.
(July 1, 2005) The Nancy Kissel Case - Part 18 Links to media reports on the seventeenth day of the trial.
(June 30, 2005) The Drug Dealer, Her Husband and Their Son A photograph series in two parts. The first part is a routine police bust in Shanghai; the second part is truly appalling.
(June 30, 2005) A Forced Eviction in Chongqing A photograph series of families forcibly evicted from their homes by a bunch of thugs.
(June 30, 2005) The 2004 Hong Kong July 1 March Crowd Estimates A continuously updated collection of quotes from various people about how many people attended the July 1 march in 2004.
(June 29, 2005) The Chizhou Incident A street riot in the city of Chizhou (Anhui province, China) after a traffic accident. Photos and translated reports.
(June 29, 2005) The Map of China The Taiwan issue has gotten many companies in trouble because they are bound to offend one side or the other with any map of 'China.' But one website has gotten away without any direct complaints from any side.
(June 29, 2005) Pigs, Dogs and the Chief Executive of Hong Kong What exactly did Long Hair write on the placard that got him expelled from the Legislative Council chamber?
(June 29, 2005) The Nancy Kissel Case - Part 16 Links to media reports on the fifteenth day of the trial.
(June 28, 2005) The Tower of Babel Given the fact that translation has often been done in the service or under the constraints of some ideology, it comes as no surprise that texts were often tampered with deliberately or unintentionally. But should you should leave it all up to Babelfish?
(June 28, 2005) The Nancy Kissel Case - Part 15 Links to media reports on the fourteenth day of the trial.
(June 27, 2005) The Shengyou Reporter's Field Notes What should a Chinese reporter do when an edict comes down to ban all coverage of a subject in the newspapers? Answer: Publish your field notes on the Internet for all to read! These notes explained where the famous 3-minute 'Washington Post' attack video actually came from.
(June 26, 2005) A Female Public Security Officer in China A front page picture caused a major brouhaha for a newspaper in China, because the photo of a model people's heroine was attached to a story about a corrupt police official sentence to 15 years in jail.
(June 26, 2005) Hong Kong By The Numbers Two factors may affect participation in this year's march. One is whether this gets turned into a protest against the election of Donald Tsang, and the other is the debate over the role of the Women's Association.
