In part 2 of this interview, Rob Schmitz talks more about factory workers in China, the vast system of netting installed at factory dormitories to cut back on worker suicides, the problems with and opportunities for doing responsible journalism in China, and his book recommendations.

Listen here.

“Rob Schmitz is the Shanghai bureau chief for American Public Media’s Marketplace. He broke the story about Mike Daisey, showing that Daisey’s reporting on Chinese factory workers for This American Life was full of fabrication. He talks here with Angilee Shah about that story, about reporting in China, and about the problems trying to understand the vast, rapidly changing country. This is Part 1 of 2 — the rest of the interview next week.”

Listen to the podcast here.

But is it true? Are women really a fast-growing group of new gun owners?

Read on in Dame Magazine.

The Challenge of Covering a Fast-Changing China
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM
Presentation Room 11348 YRL
UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library [map]

How is China’s economy changing and how is this affecting its people and the world?  What are the biggest obstacles and most exciting aspects of reporting on this increasingly important topic?  These are the kinds of issues to be discussed in a conversation between journalist and editor Angilee Shah, and Rob Schmitz, American Public Media’s Marketplace China correspondent, who along with covering a host of important stories, related to everything from labor rights to education to the rise of consumerism, played the key role in exposing the fabrications in Mike Daisey’s account of Foxconn factories on This American Life and then was featured in that show’s much discussed retraction episode.

Here’s the official UCLA announcement.

Our first mass media press, therefore, also happened in China. The English-language Beijing newspaper Global Times sent a reporter to the panel, who in turn wrote a preview article of our book. The story, “China at face value,” begins this way:

“There has never been a lack of good books about the history of China, from detailed analytical narration of its 5,000-year civilization to numerous travelogues depicting the country’s vast, grandeur landscapes.

“Although the Middle Kingdom has always held allure to outsiders, ordinary Chinese folks, or laobaixing, are often seen as just faces in the crowd. However, those faces are given a chance to bask in the spotlight in Chinese Characters: Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land, a book co-edited by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a history professor at the University of California, and Angilee Shah, a freelance journalist and editor in Los Angeles.”

The reporter, Jiang Yuxia, interviewed me via email. She had some interesting and fair questions about how and why Westerners read and write about China. Here’s how that thread went:

Jiang: Why are you interested in working on a book about the Chinese masses and how long did it take you to finish it?

Shah: Jeffrey Wasserstrom and I began discussing a book of essays about everyday life in China about two years ago. We were really interested in doing two things: One was to tell great stories about real people who struggle and thrive in a changing country. We wanted to create a collection that readers around the world could relate to, that would show humanity and diversity. English-language readers, we thought, might have a richer view of China if they had more access to everyday lives.

We also wanted to draw on the deep knowledge of scholars and journalists who have ground-level views of life in China and highlight their excellent work. There are some familiar faces in this book, but also some very talented writers with whom readers might not yet be familiar.

There are 15 characters (as I’m aware of) in the book with diverse backgrounds. Did you have a clear idea what characters you would like to have in the book when you started working on it, or did you just take in all the contributions you could have?

Chinese Characters has 15 chapters and each revolves around one or more characters, so strictly speaking there are more than 15 characters in the book. We started by talking to writers whose work we really respected and enjoyed reading. We looked for people who had deep connections and unique perspectives on China and approached them about contributing. From there, we worked through different narratives to get a diverse selection of stories, all with very interesting plot lines but from different parts of China. So we ended with both geographic and socioeconomic diversity. For example, we wanted to have a chapter about someone elderly so that we could be sure to have a longer view; Harriet Evans’ chapter is about a 90-year-old woman in Beijing. We also wanted the perspective of someone younger; Leslie T. Chang’s contribution is about a teenager.

The book portrays a wide range of characters, from migrant workers to young students. Do you think they are representative of the Chinese masses or they are more like individual characters?

We would never claim that any one person or story — or even 15 stories — could represent China. One thing we hope this collection does is show that China is endlessly diverse, that it is a country where broad generalizations about Chinese people are usually wrong. We wanted very much to tell the stories of individuals close-up, and not be pressured to extract broad assumptions from those stories.

How do you avoid stereotyping the characters? For instance, migrant workers are often portrayed with a harsh life elsewhere.

The contributors to Chinese Characters spent a lot of time with the people they wrote about. It’s hard to make generalizations when you get to know someone very well. We hope that readers have this experience with the book as well. Michelle Dammon Loyalka’s chapter about a migrant worker who sorts recyclable goods, for example, is a nuanced portrait derived from deep reporting. Like anyone, his life has some harsh realities and some moments of joy. He is complicated, and certainly not a generic version of migrant life. We did our best to give each contributor the space to tell those complex stories precisely because we did not want to make stereotypes of real people.

When you are editing the book, are you more concerned with a unified writing style, or do you want chapters that are completely different each other?

The chapters are unified in the sense that they are all devoted to telling stories. But we were very careful to keep authors’ voices in tact. If we wanted to portray unique perspectives, we couldn’t very well expect them to all have the same tone and writing style. And we chose writers in part because we really enjoyed their prose. While the chapters have similar structures — they all have beginnings, middles and endings — they each have their own styles.

You have written a lot on China and know Chinese [people] well. Is there any character in the book whose story is shocking to you?

Shocking is not the right word. Perhaps surprising is closer. I think China is endlessly interesting. As a journalist and editor, I think I will always be, essentially, a student. All of the contributors taught me something new about China, and most took me to places I have not yet seen. James Millward’s chapter, for example, presents China from the point of view of guitar players. I don’t think I had ever read a piece like that before, or even imagined China from the point of view of a rocker.

What kind of characters do you think would be of great interest to the Westerner readers?

I hope that Western readers will gravitate to all of the characters, to be honest. The people in Chinese Characters are real, with talents and flaws and interesting lives. I can’t really make predictions about how each chapter will be received, but we hope that the stories are engaging and diverse enough that there is something there for everyone, from scholars and China-watchers to those who are just beginning to read about China. I also hope that readers will enjoy the experience and appreciate the literary qualities that these talented writers have developed so carefully.

Chinese Characters will be published this summer from UC Press. Learn more and sign up for newsletter updates at the book website.

But seeing slums from the perspective of those who inhabit them — and not just an aerial view — is crucial to gaining real insight into a place. As UCLA historian Vinay Lal asks, “How else is one to understand a civilization and a particular junction in time?”

Katherine Boo’s debut book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, offers readers the chance to see this India from the ground up.

Read on at Miller-McCune.

Journalists know something is true when two people say so, said Gideon Lichfield, media editor of The Economist, and Matt Thompson, editorial product manager at NPR and adjunct faculty the Poynter Institute. Scientists are much more rigorous. How can we make journalism more like science?

Lichfield and Thompson wore labcoats in their presentation to say that there are certain properties in scientific research that can really improve journalism. Science is collaborative; scientists know they are contributing to a huge body of work and recognize that they are building on others’ work.

“There’s no lone reporter in the wilderness just covering a story on their own,” said Thompson.

So a story from Politico might cite a report by the Center for Public Integrity. Google News, and its grouping of reports from various sources, makes it clear that there are clusters of reporters covering a particular or issue. Scientists have a Science Citation Index that makes clear that their work is building on others. Thompson and Lichfield proposed a ‘citation index for news.”

“We don’t know yet what a citation index would look like but the the beginnings of it are there,” said Lichfield.

Science is also replicable; scientists lay bare how they’ve come to their conclusions. When you read a news story, can you recreate the “trail of investigation”? Lichfield said no; we tend to protect our work. While there is a standard in news to make clear the sources of facts, the depth of attributions vary. From the presentation, for example, one slide put these citations together:

…said the official.

…the official told me.

…the official told me over drinks after work.

…said the official in a call with reporters.

Which tells you the most about how the information was obtained?

Science also uses a kind of “predictive test” which allows you to test hypotheses and come up with theories, but recognizes that there is no absolute certainty. Theories “remain falsifiable,” which is a trait journalism does not always have, said Lichfield.

Thompson pointed to the “Friedman Unit,” the ways in which famed columnist Thomas Friedman makes very predictive statements about what will happen over set periods of time. And this is something journalists and their sources do all the time: Are aging nuclear reactors the newest, biggest threat? Will a politicians statement lead voters away? When will the war end?

“We include all these predictions,” said Thompson, “but right now, that’s where we leave it.”

Lichfield and Thompson said that any tool journalists use to make their work more rigorous needs to have certain characteristics. Tools need to be self-justifying, with obvious usefulness. They need interoperability, or usefulness on multiple platforms. And they should be easy-to-use, even for journalists who are most resistant to change. (Storify is a good example of a news tool that meets all these criteria, the presenters said.) So what are some things news organizations are doing to add rigor and transparency to their reports?

• ProPublica provides “reporting recipes,” which explains to readers how a story was investigated and gives people a chance to repeat the process.
• The New York Times uses a tool called DocumentCloud When you hover over certain links, it takes you to an original source and the reporters’ notes.
• Academic papers and Wikipedia use footnotes, which add context and allow for easier fact-checking and, Thompson said, could help with the flow of narratives while still providing transparency.
• Politifact created the “Obameter” in which they tracked the President’s campaign claims and whether those claims were fulfilled. This kind of tool presses politicians and sources to offer “testable hypotheses” instead of “vague predictions.” When it was built, the Obameter was not the only way to evaluate the Presiden’t performance, but it offered a good example for a “prediction tracker” that encourages follow-up.
• Add data and precision. Many organizations are beginning to do this; Thompson pointed the efforts of StateImpact at NPR to integrate data into much of its reporting.

These kinds of changes are not always easy to implement, but they represent a shift of focus that Thompson and Lichfield can get excited about.

Read more from SXSW Interactive.

The geek in me is drawn to all the mobile application and gadget panels which will showcase eyes-light-up technology that promise everything from help losing weight to pocket-size medical devices that can collect and send data in amazing ways. The reporter in me wants to follow the journalism track all the way through and spend time with my colleagues in our little corner of the media world. But the storyteller in me is drawn most to the panels that blend the tech and human elements of health media.

Read on at ReportingonHealth.org

Movies, instead, are Singh’s job. As general manager of the Naz 8 cinema in Artesia, which is northeast of Long Beach, he runs an operation that screens Bollywood movies — as many as 12 shows a day, seven days a week.

Read on in the LA Weekly

Katharine Jarmul, 29, remembers the day they first identified the problem. She and three other women found themselves chatting in a circle at a meet-up in March last year. There were 30 or 40 people there, all discussing Django, a website framework built on the Python programming language. But, looking around the room, Jarmul realized that their little circle contained the only female programmers there. The few other women in attendance were recruiters or product managers, not the people who actually write code.

“We felt like anomalies,” Jarmul recalls.

The women felt the difference most keenly during breaks, when they couldn’t join in the inside jokes and casual conversations into which their male colleagues seemed to fall so easily. In a profession so dependent on teamwork and learning new technology, being part of the community is not just a matter of feeling comfortable. It’s essential to being competitive.

“I said very frankly, ‘Well, maybe we should stop complaining about it and do something,’ ” Jarmul remembers.

Read on at the LA Weekly.