Shanghai
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
Chinesepod: Rare backstage tour with Hank Horkoff
This quick tour of the Chinesepod offices in Shanghai with Hank Horkoff reveals many secrets of the highly popular Web 2.0 Chinese-language learning service.
Launched by a web expert (Horkoff) and a language teaching expert (Ken Carroll), Praxis Language Ltd has evolved into an office of Babel, with language teachers from Shanghai now using their Web 2.0 platform to offer lessons in Spanish, Italian, French and more languages on the way.
In this video you can see the school’s set up and studios, while also hearing a little bit about Ken Carroll’s idea that the web creates super-enabled teachers with star-quality. (We agree in your case, of course, Ken.)
A couple more videos coming soon on their novel language teaching ideas and interesting business model.
Disclosure: I have subscribed to Chinesepod since I started learning Chinese and find their podcasts extremely useful.
Adam Schokora
Adam Schokora is a Shanghai-based Chinese Internet watcher who leads Edelman Digital in China. He also contributes to a number of blogs, including the wildly popular Danwei.org, with posts on Internet trends, developments in digital communications, media and his internet video show “The Shanghai Beat”.
Twitter in China (Cloned of course)
The Pacific Ocean appeared to protect China from the Twitter craze hitting the US and Europe over the last year.
No more!
(Note for Luddite friends: Twitter is a San Francisco micro-blogging phenome that has thousands of people sending 160 character sms messages to each other. It is weird, yes, but also somewhat addictive.)
China has Twitter-ers both in English and in Chinese, but the local specialty of knock-offs has already kicked in. Adam J. Schokora of Edelman Digital speaks in this video about Twitter knock-offs Fanfou, Jiwai and the biggest of them all, Zuosa.
Schokora estimates that while there are only 7,000 Chinese-language Twitter-ers, Zuosa has more than 600,000.
Jiwai has the best looking homepage, but none of them have Twhirl-like offline client. How do you say “Business Opportunity” in Chinese?
To follow China Twitters in English, check out the Chinalist compiled by Christine Lu.
Paul French: Why Tom Doctoroff is wrong about China
Shanghai-based writer/businessman Paul French rants (and froths a little) in this video about why China marketing guru Tom Doctoroff is wrong about China.
Doctoroff is CEO Greater China of J. Walter Thompson, a blogger and author of the bestselling book Billions: Selling to the New Chinese Consumer.
UPDATE: Doctoroff accepted my invitation to reply and did so in this posting: Tom Doctoroff: Paul French is wrong about China (and Tom Doctoroff)
Why is French apoplectic?
French says that Doctoroff and other current-day China gurus from the west falsely claim pioneering roles in opening up China.
In fact, the real foreign pioneer in opening China’s market to western-style consumerism was the 1920s and 1930s Shanghai adman Carl Crow.
In particular, French said Doctoroff claims to be the first to launch Buick in China (which Crow did), the first to use a woman in a car advertisement (which Crow did) as well as a few other things that Crow did first. (The title of Doctoroff’s own book - Billions - echoes Crow’s book 400 Million Consumers)
Full disclosure of the French agenda: He wrote a (great) biography called Carl Crow, a Tough Old China Hand.
I also highly recommend reading Crows own essays on China Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom. Crow’s seminal work, 400 Million Consumers, will soon be issued in reprint by the China Economic Review.
Be great to hear from Doctoroff on this!
UPDATE: Doctoroff accepted my invitation to reply and did so in this posting: Tom Doctoroff: Paul French is wrong about China (and Tom Doctoroff)
Paul French
A north Londoner-turned-Shanghai-based writer and businessman who has had a colorful career jaunt around Asia, including a 14-month stint in North Korea setting up DHL operations.
French has written a number of books, including one on North Korea and a biography of Shanghai adman from the 1920s and 30s, Carl Crow.
French is fond of pointing out that Crow experienced - and wrote about - much of what present-day China observers claim as a unique first-time experience. (Look at this Paul French video)
Crow’s seminal book “400 million consumers” will soon be out in print once again and will show, French says, how little has changed in the way people observe China changing.
Shanghaiist
Met with Dan Washburn and Kenneth Tan of the Shanghaiist this morning for brunch.
Dan, a former newspaper writer in America’s Bible belt, came to China in 2002 and started an urban blog called Shanghai Diaries. Seeing the popularity of the site - and lack of such a site for Shanghai - Washburn approached the Gothamist team in New York.
Taking advantage of the City-ist network’s name, Dan started launched the Shanghaiist, which has turned into one of China’s most popular English-language blog/portals. There is no sharing of advertising across the city-ist network, but a number of the English-language portals in China have considered teaming up to make themselves a single sale for an ad rep. (Not a bad approach, in my view.)
As Dan concentrated in 2007 more on his book about golf in China, Par for China, Kenneth Tan joined the team to make sure the site is updated half a dozen times per day. Kenneth runs the site while selling men’s underwear from a disused bomb shelter in Shanghai’s French Concession.
Kenneth Tan of Shanghaiist
The primary contributor to the popular Shanghaiist blog, Kenneth Tan also runs a men’s underwear store out of a disused bomb shelter in Shanghai’s French Concession. Tan’s shop, Manifesto.com.cn, recently opened another outlet near the Forbidden in Beijing.
Singaporean-born, Tan has been in Shanghai since 2003.
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