Newspapers
Ross Dunkley
A brash and veteran newspaperman of greater Indo-China, Dunkley has headed the launch of publications including the Vietnam Investment Review, Myanmar Times (English and Burmese-language editions) as well as the conversion of The Phnom Penh Post into a daily newspaper. (Planned for August 2008)
Dunkley often has strong views and has never been known to hold them silently.
HK Economic Journal gets a website
In the era of newspaper downsizings, somebody is stepping up to launch:
For the first time in its history, the Hong Kong Economic Journal, a small but highly respected Hong Kong newspaper, today launched a website.
Welcome to 20th century, guys!
(Irony alert: Richard Li, of PCCW and telecoms fame, is a major shareholder.)
They are looking for feedback, so let them know.
Journalism jobs in Shanghai
Maria Trombly, whose company covers a range of topics from Asian securities to payments and technology for trade magazines, is constantly on the lookout for freelance copy editors and reporters.
Now, she is also looking for a full-time entertainment industry reporter.
The jobs pay local scale — not US rates. But she says those working for her get accreditation, bylines, decent salaries (by local standards), full benefits, paid vacations, etc.
She typically hires people with industry backgrounds (tech, finance, pharma) and teaches them how to do journalism from scratch.
Interested in launching a journalism career?
Contact:
Maria Trombly
TROMBLY LTD
+86-21-6345-9216
+86-21-6387-7243
Mobile +86-137-6131-8333
maria (at) tromblyltd dot com
Copy editor jobs at Cambodia’s Phnom Penh Post newspaper
Are you young (or young at heart), ambitious and ready for a newspapering adventure?
Here’s your chance to follow in the footsteps of Southeast Asia’s great foreign correspondents at Cambodia’s most prestigious English-language newspaper:
The Phnom Penh Post, a bi-monthly newspaper that is shifting into a daily, is looking for 2 or 3 aggressive sub-editors who are not afraid to tear stories apart, but who also have a lot of patience in dealing with young reporters with limited English and nascent reporting skills.
As the veteran of another Asian newspaper launch, I am sure this would be a great launching point for a career in journalism (and fun).
Interested?
Contact
Seth Meixner, Editor
The Phnom Penh Post
Email: seth.meixner at phnompenhpost dot com
NY Times and the difficulties of going digital
I remain convinced that the NY Times, my former employer, will be one of the few newspaper companies to successfully make the leap into digital.
That does not, however, mean the shift will be easy.
The final paragraph of a memo sent a few days ago to the NYT newsroom (full version below the fold) tackles one of the toughest issues: Convincing traditional newspaper journalists to drop long-held practices and go fully digital.
It’ll mean examining some long-held practices to see if they still make sense. And it’ll mean finding new ways to fulfill an editor’s first responsibility: performing expert triage. Fundamental will be our commitment that New York Times-level quality should be the standard for work across all platforms and that our approach incorporates the Web not only as an essential part of our journalism, but as the first priority.
Such a strong statement about the importance of digital in most newsrooms would have been considered bizarre, at best, only a few years ago.
Congrats to Asian Editorial Award Winners
Congratulations to the many winners of awards at the SOPA editorial awards tonight.
SOPA honored Asia’s best journalists for their outstanding work.
(Apparently, however, the Society of Publishers in Asia did not seek proofreading help from the Society of Copy Editors in Asia.)
FEER blogged what many writers and editors in the audience must have been thinking: “There but for the grace of God go I.”
The Awards for Editorial Excellence have grown considerably in size and stature in recent years.
I have been involved in judging the awards for more than six years and remember when we had only a few entries from a several countries. Tonight’s awards were handed out at a pace of one per minute for great journalism done in countries across the region.
Keynote speaker Ching Cheong (in photo above), the Straits Times journalist jailed for 1,000 days in China, spoke about the importance of the values held in Hong Kong, particularly in relation to protest and free expression.
Earlier in the day I co-organized a lunch on the Future of Media in Asia that was packed with a very high level audience and included panelists who were wonderfully combative.
James Nachtwey: Praise for Journalist Fixers in Foreign Lands
Great words from James Nachtwey, one of the greatest living photojournalists, in his acceptance speech for the President’s award at the Overseas Press Club in New York. Nachtwey praised those who help foreign correspondents do their job:
As journalists who report from abroad, we all know the value of colleagues who often go unsung - the fixers and translators and drivers who take such great personal risks and who work with such devotion to make what we do possible.
Whatever abilities we might have, we absolutely need the assistance of people who know the language and the culture and how to navigate hostile terrain.
I don’t know how many times I’ve only been as good as my driver. They love their countries. They truly value journalism. When we leave, they stay.
I think it is only fitting that I dedicate this award to our colleagues from foreign lands who have given us all so much.
I wrote with similar sentiments in the Farewell to Reporting post on this blog marking my departure from the International Herald Tribune/The New York Times after twelve years of reporting:
Another daily contributor to our newspaper deserves my final and highest thanks: Local fixers and courageous sources.
Often motivated by the simple urge to show the truth to the world, they act in spite of government and other pressures.
Newspaper correspondents like myself travel with the safety of a foreign passport and backing of a high profile publication, but the fixers we hire do so at great risk to themselves and their families.
They place themselves in harm’s way by sharing information, arranging interviews and explaining complexities crucial to telling a story. Their lives can quickly become the collateral damage of journalism.
Thank you for taking those risks and thank you for all the stories. I hope I did them justice.
John Berthelsen of Asia Sentinel
John Berthelsen, now editor of Asia Sentinel, came out to Asia to cover the Vietnam War and then went on to work for the Asian Wall Street Journal for eight years with postings out of Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand. Following the Journal, he became the regional head of production for Dresdner Bank.
John Berthelsen on the future of Asia Sentinel
I recently met with John Berthelsen, the founding editor of the website Asia Sentinel to hear about the site’s plans and aspirations.
Launched in August 2006 by a group of veteran and prominent Asia correspondents (more background here), Asia Sentinel is intended to fill a void left by the closure of such publications as AsiaWeek and the weekly edition of the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Slate.com meets The Far Eastern Economic Review (the weekly version)
“Regional magazine journalism is dead, so we want to fill that void,” Berthelsen said. “Our target are the more in depth investigative pieces that nobody does anymore.”
Asia Sentinel’s ideal kind of articles:
1- The inside story of Thai coup: The King and the role of Prem, his longtime advisor.
2- Murder of the Mongolian translator in Malaysia (”We’re the only ones keeping this story alive and tying it to government officials.”)
Operational details: 
- 35 contributors from around the region. (Who get paid, Berthelsen said, “peanuts”)
- New stories are supposed to be posted twice per day.
- A tie-up with the International Herald Tribune gives Asia Sentinel a space for their headlines on www.iht.com
- 7,000 unique visitors per day. This is well short of the 30,000 per day which Berthelsen said would generate US$10,000 per month to make an advertising model viable.
Long-term view is for Asia Sentinel
Tie-up with a journalistic company looking for a presence in Asia. One model is to offer Asia Sentinel Consulting, along the lines of the Australian site Crickey.au, which offers a free news site, archives and paid in depth custom research.
Traffic frustrations
“We ran a great piece on the shambolic state of Indonesia’s air traffic system just one week before the Air Adam crash and it only got several hundred hits,” Berthelsen said. “Our Edison Chen coverage, on the other hand, shut down the site twice, with more than 13,000 hits in a single day.”
Other overlooked stories include a series of pieces on a US$200 million slush fund scandal related to Samsung. The top traffic topics now seem to be those involving Malaysia and politics.
Lessons learned about coverage: “Every now and then we clearly need to have sex, drugs and rock and roll.” (As of May 2, 2008, the Edison Chen story had 125,000 hits.)
View of the AsiaTimes, a website at atimes.com aimed at covering Asia news
“They are both polemical and act like a whale,” Berthelsen said. “They take in all plankton and do not practice the same standards of journalism as us.”
Reverse outsourcing: Facing forced layoff at NY Times? Telecommute to Singapore!
In a case of reverse outsourcing, The Straits Times in Singapore has issued a recruiting appeal to copy editors facing layoffs at The New York Times. (Image credit: Page 1 of Straits Times April 17 website) The NY Times announced plans to reduce the newsroom staff by 100 jobs and this week warned staff that forced layoffs now seem inevitable.
Newspapers may face crisis in Europe and the US, but the industry is booming in some Asian markets. Indian newspaper launches in recent months, for example, include Mail Today and Mint which aim for India’s emergent middle class.
NYT staffers may have some qualms. Singapore’s press freedom ranks below Nigeria and just ahead of Russia in the Reporters Sans Frontiers 2007 Press Freedom Index. The US State Department’s 2006 Human Rights Assessment said that Singapore’s “authoritarian style fostered an atmosphere inimical to free speech and a free press.” Many Americans also still remember the caning of Michael Fay.
How many NY Times copy editors will take up this offer to telecommute to Singapore?
—— Forwarded Message ——
From: Warren Fernandez Jude
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 18:50:15 +0800
Subject: Fw: and the misery continues…
Would you know anyone within the NYT who could help us put out the word that we would be happy to take on some copy-editors, which we are in dire need of.
Ideally, they would operate in our newsroom in Singapore, but we are open to the idea of some working in the US, as Paul Zach does.
Many thanks
Warren Fernandez
Deputy Editor
The Straits Times
Tel: 63195343/63195312
Fax: 63198274
email: warren (a t) sph.com.sg
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