Maria Korolov (Trombly)

Description vs. prescription

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 03:10:00 +0000

I love the fact that there are always two kids of everything in the world... the binary system is so neat and orderly.

There are two kinds of grammarians: the prescriptivists and the descriptivists. The prescriptivists lay down the rules, then want other people to follow them. When someone splits an infinitive, for example, or ends a sentence with a preposition, the prescriptivists get very upset.

I fall into this category most of the time. As an editor, I spend a lot of time putting commas in their correct places and mediating subject-verb disagreements.

Descriptivists, by comparison, say that language is whatever it is that people talk and write. That language changes, and it changes all the time. And different groups speak slightly different languages, and as they move between groups, people will change their speaking and writing patterns -- just as they would, say, change their workout clothes for a business suit.

If you were to pick any two language points on the planet, it is possible to move from sub-group to sub-group until you're no longer speaking one language, and speaking another. (Before mass media, this was even more pronounced -- every village would have its own language, an amalgamation of the languages spoken by surrounding villages, plus their own unique take. Now some of the border languages are dying out. Sad.)

When I'm not an editor, I'm a language relativist. Obviously, at work, I think that AP Style is the be-all and end-all of existence. But, off duty, I don't believe it has any intrinsic superiority over, say, the slang spoken by rap artists or the various creole languages created by immigrant groups.

I believe the purpose of language -- as the purpose of fashion -- is not just communication but also group affiliation. This is why words that communicate perfectly well -- like "ain't" -- are so soundly condemned (by, say, rich people): they signify affiliation with an enemy tribe (for instance, poor people).

Now, plenty of educated, rich people split infinitives and end sentences with prepositions. So I'm siding with the descriptivists here, and saying, "Let them split!"

But there is one line over which I will not step -- I mean, there's one line that I won't step over -- "between you and I" will never replace "between you and me" to me.

In politics and leadership there are prescriptivists and descriptivists as well.

The former group lays out the theories and the rules, and sticks to the theories even as things go to pot. And when they go to pot -- as they are wont to do -- they blame not the theories but the people.

Descriptivists, by comparison, are natural populists. They can tell what the people want, what the people need, and get out ahead of the crowd. They are often derided for not having the courage of their convictions. But they do have courage, of a different sort: the courage to say that they are wrong, that times call for different measures.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and today's current financial meltdowns are both examples of what happens when leaders follow their convictions, their ideals, their political and market theories even as they depart further and further from reality. And, at some point, all theories start to depart from reality.

I love my work -- do my employees?

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 01:06:00 +0000

My theory is, in China, the higher up you are the less work you do -- poor people on farms, in mines work the hardest.

If you're unemployed you scramble the hardest to feed yourself and family.

In the US and Europe, the poorest people don't work at all, get subsidies, the highest-paid people work super hard. I'm not saying that they do their jobs well -- just that they work a lot of hours.

In rich countries, work becomes its own reward -- a symbol of success and status. People complain about how many hours they work -- but, really, they're just bragging.

In China, I think, there's still the sense that people have to be forced to work, that it's low-status and demeaning.

In my office, my Chinese managers occasionally ask me why we don't fine employees for coming in late, not writing enough, stories, and so on.

Apparently, this is a common practice in Chinese companies (and in foreign ones here, too: see "Ghastly" conditions at HP, MS, Lenovo factories).

At first, I didn't understand this. What kind of horrible employer would dock employee pay for minor infractions? Safety violations, maybe, where the employees' own lives were at stake. And if you're an hourly employee then sure, you lose pay when you clock in late. You don't lose a day's pay -- you just lose the hour you're late. It's commensurate, not punitive.

I believe it will take time to change these attitudes but, most importantly, it will take the creation of a real safety net. Ironically China, even though a technically still a communist country, doesn't have many of the protections we take for granted in the US and Europe. There are no wholescale welfare support systems for the disabled, the sick, the elderly, the very young, the unemployed, or the very poor.

One of my European friends here said last week that his highest goal was to have influence. That's a pretty active goal. He wants to change things, to make an impact, and to be in a position where he can do this. Maybe the CEO or a VP of a company, he said. (I believe he's already reached this point -- but that's neither here nor there.)

In China -- especially with the older generation -- it seems that the main driver is respect. Not the Aretha Franklin R-E-S-P-E-C-T kind of respect, but the Godfather kind of respect, where people come and pay you obeisance. Or give you bribes, if you will. And you wave a little finger, and flunkies rush around to do your bidding. It's a passive kind of goal.

I think it's changing. The younger generation, which has grown up with shows like Friends, is starting to embrace the idea that interesting work is its own reward, and is even worth a loss of status -- think of Chandler quitting his accounting job and taking an unpaid marketing internship.

In the west, people routinely take time off to follow their dreams. To write their novel, to travel, to start a business. As a general rule, they are admired for their bravery and respected for their passion. And people envy the fact that they're getting to do something that they love.

I have a hard time seeing a senior Chinese executive taking a year off to, say, try to make a go of it as a short story writer.

An American executive would have no problem doing that, and would probably blog or write a book about how he was able to connect with his inner self and forge renewed bonds with his family and friends. And his dog.

Until that happens, I'll have to find new ways of motivating Chinese employees. The status, say, of having their names in print in US publications. Or good old money.

The new scarcity: valuable work

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:54:00 +0000

In the past, wars were fought over resources. The definition of power was the ability to collect a great deal of physical wealth -- land, gold, slaves -- and order people to work on your behalf to get you more.

Two rulers would go to war and the winner would have more of everything at the end.

It started to change a few hundred years ago as the colonialization period was coming to its end. Some wars began to be fought for access to markets, not access to goods. Instead of taking stuff away from others and forcing them to work, rulers wanted to give stuff away (in return for money which, is, basically, an IOU) and to have their own people work.

Today, most wars are over markets, not resources. The US occupied Iraq -- but handed the oil fields back to the Iraqis. The main US beneficiaries of the war were defense contractors, who got the chance to work.

The most powerful, influential people I know -- Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the guys at Google -- aren't known for their hoards of physical goods or armies of servants taking care of their every personal need. Sure, they may have these things but nobody would care, or, worse, laugh at them.

They do create interesting and popular products but there are plenty of people out there who who make things that everybody plays with -- Rubic's Cube, anyone? -- without getting the same degree of respect.

I would argue that the respect comes more from these guys' ability to create valuable jobs for large numbers of people.

Valuable to society, in the sense that society is willing to pay for their work.

And valuable to the employees themselves, as the jobs are challenging and interesting.

As birthrates continue to fall across the world, as expanded industrialization drives prices for commodity goods lower and lower, and as the market for virtual goods such as music and movies, as well as goods that exist only in virtual worlds, continues to expand there will come a time when everyone has everything that they need.

Even today, in some western countries, a person can opt out of the rat race, through age, disability or emotional problem or simply a well-crafted excuse and live on government subsidies. Their standard of living may be lower than average as a result, but the payments are usually enough to cover basic needs. I have relatives and friends in the United States who live on government pensions or disability paychecks and live better than royalty did a couple of hundred years ago.

After all, they enjoy modern conveniences -- hot and cold running water, electricity, television, radio -- that weren't even available a hundred years ago. Their health care needs are covered. They can lie on their couch. Pick up the phone any time and order takeout. And watch TV.

A couple of hundred years ago, only the nobility could afford to lie around, have food brought to them, and be continually entertained.

It was the pinnacle of existence.

Today, in most civilized countries, it's the bottom.

I know some people who do little if anything to support themselves and spend their time drinking, flirting, watching television, playing around with hobbies to pass the time.

A few centuries ago, they would have been considered the luckiest people in the world. Today, they're lazy bums.

In the past, workers would riot and rise up when they were forced to work too much by their overlords. Today, workers riot because they don't have enough jobs.

Jobs are today the only real scarce resource. The men and women who are able to create jobs are the new heroes.

We're already starting to see situations where people are competing to work for free: internships at high-profile media companies and in politics pay little or nothing at all, and can be extremely competitive. And freelance writers are often paid in copies of the magazines for which they write, and, on occasion, are asked to buy a minimum number of issues.

There are also places where people actually pay to work. For example, you can have a working "vacation" on an archeological dig, or a family farm, or in some non-profits.

There are companies that charge students significant amounts of money to place them into internships in China.

This is a very new phenomenon, but as the basic standard of living continues to rise (temporary economic blips notwithstanding) -- and there's only so many physical things that you can buy before you run out of storage (and of time to play with them) -- then we might start seeing even more of these "paycations"? Reverse jobs? Fee-based internships? Trial careers?

I like that last one. Trial career.

For example:

BE A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT FOR ONE, TWO, OR THREE MONTHS!

For just $1,990 a month, you too can be a foreign correspondent! You get your correspondents' visa, ten hours a week of intensive Chinese language lessons, and actual reporting assignments in China. Our bureau chief will help you come up with story assignments, find sources, and organize the story. Our copyeditors will get your story ready for publication. And your byline will appear in magazines in China and around the world: you will be an actual foreign correspondent.

In your downtime, you will be encouraged to enjoy the many perks of being a foreign correspondent, such as the ability to drink, unembarrassed, in bars and pubs around town. You will be able to ask total strangers deep, penetrating questions.

Journalist visa, lodging and language classes included. Transportation extra.

No foreign language skills necessary! Reporting experience helpful but not required.

A walk down the fake DVD lane

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:01:00 +0000

Back in the old days ... 2004 ... we had to buy our foreign-language books in hotel shops -- and had as many as five different novels to choose from, if we were lucky, right next to the tour guides and "Your first 1,000 Chinese characters" and "Chinese in 1 million easy lessons."

There were fake DVD shops on every street corner, but they all usually had the same dozen or so foreign movies, and half the disks didn't work. Foreigners in the know went to the Ka De Club, located on a succession of small side streets.

Its location was a closely-held secret, passed around by word of mouth. You would walk through a bland doorway into a small dingy room with an old TV set, a tiny middle-aged woman eating noodles, and a shelf of dusty Chinese DVDs. She would stare at you blankly until you said "Ka De Club?" Immediately, someone would appear to whisk you out the back, down a dark hallway, and into a new room -- brightly lit, packed solid with foreigners, with shelves lining the walls filled with all the latest movie and TV releases, music CDs, and tables stacked with thick binders in which you could find almost every classic movie that Hollywood -- or Europe -- ever made. You'd flip through the books -- each page full of movie covers -- and write down the code numbers. Then staffers would disappear with your list and return with your stack of DVDs. There were little piles of scrap paper and pencils on each table.

The DVDs were pricey -- 10 yuan each -- but the Ka De Club had a fantastic return policy. No receipt, no problem. In my experience, they would gladly refund the money or replace the DVD, no questions asked. Well, not my experience personally, of course, but in the experience of certain friends with much looser morals than mine.

But for the most part, all the DVDs worked. And when a particular DVD was known to be bad -- for example, a movie that just came out and was only available in a lousy camcorder version -- the staff would warn you about it.

For the record, I was horrified -- horrified! -- to learn that there was fake DVD selling at Ka De Club and followed the store from location to location for entertainment purposes only, and not to support the piracy industry in any way.

At one point, Ka De Club landed on Dagu Lu, a short stretch of street parallel to Yanan Lu, one block north, running one way from Chengdu Lu (with the north-south elevated highway) to Ruijin Lu No. 1.

This was vastly more convenient than other locations -- I could walk there from my apartment. So could a lot of other people. And at this point, it seems, the authorities stopped caring. The store was wide open -- no back hallways, no secret codes.

Eventually, Ka De Club moved again, but this time I didn't follow it to its new location. Ka De Club was replaced on Dagu Lu with Movie World and, directly across the street, Even Better Than Movie World! -- the two surrounded by an Indian restaurant, a Middle Eastern place, a gay and lesbian bar, and cafes. The selection was almost as good as Ka De Club, and the prices were lower -- just 8 yuan per disk. (From what I hear.) And with all the cafes and restaurants, it was a good place to hang out for an afternoon.

Today, I returned to Dagu Lu, walking over from the Cantina Agave on the corner of Changle Lu and Fumin Lu (the salsas tasted a bit funny, and the atmosphere so-so, but a step up from Taco Popo at any rate).

Ka De Club was back! Now, with a fancy new "Le" in front of its name. And it was huge. It had replaced the Movie World that was there before -- but Even Better Than Movie World! was still across the street, and joined by Big Movie and Movie Planet (I might have the name of this last one wrong). So now there four -- four! -- giant DVD shops, starting to look like those big book warehouse stores in the States like Borders and Barnes & Noble. New releases. Old releases. TV shows. Music. I even saw pirated books. Everything arranged nicely on shelves, covers out, easy to browse.

But for some reason they were all missing Mythbusters, my son's favorite TV show.

Ech store had a computerized catalog at or near the checkout counter, so it was easy for the clerks to check. And the prices -- just 7 yuan for a standard DVD. Sure, still higher than the street-side vendors. But there's a certain indescribable joy in being able to walk up and down aisles full of big, bright DVD collections and know that you can buy any of them -- or all of them -- depending on how much you can carry. The entire Friends collection? Forty DVDs -- less than 300 yuan. Compare that to the list price of $300 on Amazon (and even on sale it's $170).

I might be tempted -- except I've already switched to watching all my TV on surfthechannel.com.

Rebranding

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:20:00 +0000

A Massachusetts court signed off on my divorce last week - after about three years of separation in which my ex and I weren't in the States long enough at the same time to get it done.

This means that, on January 30, I officially become Maria Victoria Korolov again. And I am never changing my name again -- in the new Internet age, its becoming harder and harder to maintain a consistent identity if you keep changing names, email addresses, Twitter accounts....

There's probably a way to cross-post to both Twitter accounts... maybe through FriendFeed or Facebook.

My personal email address is now maria@korolov.com, but I'll probably continue to maintain the old one -- maria@trombly.com -- for the indefinite future. In any case, both are simply forwarded to my company account, maria@tromblyltd.com. A bit of advice for married female entrepreneurs -- think twice before naming your company using your husband's last name!

But it works out, irony is conserved, since my ex took my maiden name as his middle name when we got married, and now its too much of a hassle to change it back, so he's stuck with Korolov.

Meanwhile, I've already set up the Korolov Group as a separate US entity affiliated with Trombly Ltd. by virtue of the fact that I own both of them, to handle the US side of operations.

I've got the korolov.com domain as well -- if there are any other Korolovs out there who want to have a @korolov.com email address, just let me know, and I'll set it up. The email for the domain is hosted by Google, so it only takes a couple of seconds to do, and there's no additional cost for me.

Finally -- email inbox success

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:49:00 +0000

I've finally found a system that works for keeping my inbox at a manageable size (one screen or less), a variation of the GTD system.

Step 1: Do I need to respond to this email?

Many emails are sent to me for my reference -- or are spam. If they're spam, I lick Gmail's spam button and they go away. If they're reference, I click on the "archive" button. I don't bother about labeling reference emails -- I can always find them later by searching by keyword or date.

Step 2: Can I take care of an email quickly?

Many emails just need to be forwarded to the appropriate person, or briefly acknowledged and archived.

Some require me to do something at a particular time in the future -- to conduct an interview, for example, or write a story. All this requires is a calendar entry, an acknowledgement email, and, if necessary, an addition to the workflow database.

Step 3: Can I take care of this email as one of the group?

With some emails, it's easier to take care of many at once rather than do them one at a time. For example, when I receive a business-related invoice, I need to print it, add it to my accounting database, and file it away. Doing this one at a time is a pain, so I save them up and do them all at once.

For these emails, I set up a label -- "Print and file" or "Add to Website" or "Pay" -- and then archive them. When I'm ready to print -- or work on the website, or pay bills -- I open that folder, handle these emails one right after another, and then take off the label to get them off the to-do schedule.

To keep myself reminded of them, I also mark them "unread" -- that way they show up nicely when I'm checking my email, a regular reminder that I've got tasks to do in these categories when I'm ready for them.

Almost all my emails fall into one of these three groups. The rest usually have to do with stories I'm currently working on, and may require a little bit of thought, or some hard work.

For example, in my inbox is a reminder from my business manager to call the consulate and check on my visa. There's no particular time I need to do this, but I do need to take care of it in the next couple of days. Once I do, I'll archive that email.

Another email is a draft of a story from one of my writers, and I need to go through it and get my questions back to her within two days. I don't have to do it right now, but I might work on that later tonight.

Hey -- I just took care of another email, by deciding not to do anything about it.

Down to ... drumroll, please ... seven emails!

Life is good.

More on WordPress -- it's starting to look pretty ... pretty

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:49:00 +0000

I checked out SquareSpace -- nice web interface, but seems a little lacking in functionality.

Then Ottawa-based web guy Gesman pointed me to a WordPress design site specifically for magazines and news organizations.

This is EXACTLY what I was looking for - thanks, Gesman!

The designs are gorgeous and don't look like blogs at all. I particularly love the way the categories are organized on the front page.

Content management systems -- the good, the bad, and the ugly

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:15:00 +0000

Today (well, it's after midnight, so it was yesterday) I attended a Meetup of the Northampton Web Developers/ Web Designers Meetup Group.

Excellent, excellent meeting. Many web developers there -- most looking like young, Silicon Valley Web 2.0 types. Mostly a male crowd, four Macs to one PC in terms of the laptop ratio.

The presenters -- all local developers -- talked about the pros and cons of Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and self-developed content management systems.

I need a new content management system very badly. The Trombly Ltd. website is built using Dreamweaver, with templates and iFrames linking back to Dabble DB database exports. I love Dabble DB -- it's one of the best, and easiest to use, online relational database systems out there.

We use it for invoicing, workflow, content management, HR, CRM -- everything and anything. It requires no programming, and can hold an amazing variety of different content types and can produce online submission forms and gorgeous reports.

When iFrames aren't enough -- for example, if we want Google to be able to search the data exported by the database, or for Google Translate to work -- we use PHP to generate static pages, refreshed daily and also on demand. That's how Emerging China and China Speakers Bureau sites work.

This is getting expensive -- PHP programmers don't come cheap. I was hoping that Drupal would offer a solution that was not programming intensive but more flexible than our iFrames setup.

However, according to the presenters, none of these three content management systems would be able to take in input from our database (in the form of RSS or JSON feeds) without some serious coding, at the very least.

So we'll be stuck with having our editors copy-and-paste materials from the database into the content management system when they're ready to publish stories online.

If we're going to be doing that, I'd want a system that is super easy for them to use -- and easy for us to set up and maintain ourselves.

I Twittered throughout the Meetup (http://twitter.com/Maria_Trombly) and one of my China-based subscribers, PandaPassport (a.k.a. Rick Martin in Dalian) suggested that I take a look at SquareSpace.

I asked the Northampton developers if they'd heard of it (they hadn't) so I went to check out the site. It's expensive -- especially compared to WordPress, Joomla and Drupal which are all free because they're open source. (I do love my iPhone -- all the functionality of my laptop. Okay, it's a rather old laptop, but still....)

I'm going to be giving SquareSpace a try. They've got a 14-day free trial, and a beautiful intro video on their home page.

I particularly liked the way they were able to edit all the style elements of the page through a drag-and-drop interface (like my iPhone).

By comparison, the Drupal presentation went more like this (I'm quoting from memory here, so this is very approximate):

Me: Do you have to be a programmer to use Drupal?

Rick Hood of Flow Media Design: No, of course not. Drupal is quite easy to use. Only takes a few minutes to install. All you have to do is upload the file to your web hosting provider, create a files subdirectory, set up a MySQL database -- a simple interface in your CPanel -- and you're all set. If you need to customize it beyond the basic templates and modules, you will need to write PHP code, though.

Me: Uhum.

Rick: (Spends an hour explaining in detail all the PHP files that govern templates and design elements in Drupal)

PHP, by the way, looks NOTHING like the normal programming languages I learned in high school and college -- Assembler, Basic, Fortran, and Pascal. It looks like the top line of your keyboard exploded -- the line with all the symbols.

Well, I'm going to give SquareSpace a try and I'll tell you guys how it works out.

In W. Mass,

Maria

The future of the Internet is coming on

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:18:00 +0000

I don't know if anyone remembers this, but there used to be days... the days of BitNet... when using the Internet meant a command-line interface on a mainframe terminals.

Then there were the bulletin boards and their menu-driven interfaces. Anybody out there remember menus?

Between the bulletin boards and the World Wide Web, there was a transitional stage -- America OnLine. You had to dial up and log in, as if it was a bulletin board. But once inside, there was a graphical user interface -- in other words, you could point and click. There was online content -- newspapers, magazines. There was shopping. There were discussion forums, and there was email.

It was more complex, and more involved, and more engrossing than the alternatives.

At first, AOL was a "closed garden." Only members could get in. And they could only send emails to one another. Then the email system opened up, and AOL emails could go elsewhere on the Internet. Then the rest of it opened up, and AOL became just another Internet portal.

The World Wide Web was different from AOL -- AOL had buttons, and the WWW had links, but in many ways it was very similar.

Both were graphical user interfaces. And people could go shop, communicate, research, and get entertained.

At each stage of its evolution, the Internet has become more engrossing, a richer experience, with more choices. Also, at each stage, nobody expected it to change. Back when there were bulletin boards, people expected the bulletin boards to last forever -- except they would be slightly better bulletin boards.

Today, many people expect the current version of the Internet to last forever, except maybe with faster connections, more videos, and slicker websites.

It's not going to. Our websites are about to disappear as quickly as the old bulletin boards did. Well, they'll be stored in online archives somewhere.

But really, when's the last time you checked out a Compuserve forum?

The next version of the Internet will look a lot like Second Life. It won't be Second Life -- Second Life is a walled garden, has interface and scalability problems, and is difficult to use.

But it will, in many ways, be like Second Life. You will be able to walk down virtual streets that are ever-more-accurate representations of physical reality -- or down imaginary streets that have no counterpart in the physical world.

Your online representation -- currently just your email address or instant messaging handle, LinkedIn profile, MySpace page or personal website -- will be augmented by an ever-more-realistic three-dimensional avatar.

The entire planet -- and our space satellites -- will have virtual equivalents. In addition, there will entirely new virtual-only worlds.

Second Life is a poor imitation. Slow, cumbersome, and cartoonish. But for anyone looking to get a jump on the next iteration of the Internet, it's great place to learn how to do it.

Tempted to cheat on my chosen career

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:28:00 +0000

I believe that, on average, the sharper your focus, the further you will get in life -- whether in your career, your business, your hobbies, or anything else you're after.

Unfortunately, picking a career is no easier than picking a mate -- no matter how attractive your spouse, there will always be other people who are prettier, sexier, nicer, or just plain different.

You can't get away from it.

Some people deal by becoming promiscuous. They work on a hundred different projects, each going off in a separate direction. By playing the field, they get to enjoy variety -- but it's much harder to enjoy any success.

And, even as people in perfectly happy marriages can be tempted, so people with perfectly wonderful careers can sometimes be seen sighing over the green grass on the other side of the fence.

In my case, this past week, I've been tempted by the thought of a career as an urban fantasy novelist.

Sure, I love being a business journalist. And I absolutely love running my own company. But I have a secret desire to write novels about witches and demons.

I know, from a practical sense, that I've never written anything longer than a hundred pages -- and that was a struggle. I prefer, short, tight deadlines -- the tighter, the better.

I also don't like working alone. I prefer to be part of a large team of people. No, I prefer to be the head of a large team of people.

I also like making money. There are only a handful of novelists out there who make real money. Writing -- like music and acting -- is a career for people who don't mind spending most of their time waiting tables, or living off their significant other.

Finally, I like making a difference. What difference could I possibly make writing frothy, escapist books about witches and demons?

I'm like the guy in the bar complaining that his wife doesn't understand him -- when he knows that the opposite is true, that, in fact, she understands him all too well. And that the woman he just met is a soulmate -- despite not having any in common with her at all.

I'm the guy in the bar. And urban fantasy is that woman in the bar. She's fresh and dewy -- she's Samantha in Bewitched. She's fun and doesn't take life seriously. She drinks sweet fruity cocktails. And she compliments me on how creative I am.

Meanwhile, my old career has been with me for 15 years. Made me reasonably happy most of the time. Is likely to continue making me reasonably happy for the rest of my life. And we've produced some good stuff together.

Of course I'm not going to throw that away.

But it's nice to flirt and to fantasize once in a while.

In my fantasy, I live in a house in the middle of fields and woods. In fact, it's my actual house in Massachusetts, where I hardly spend any time at all -- it's in the middle of nowhere and I start going crazy with boredom within a week.

In my fantasy, I write on an Apple laptop -- maybe a pink one, like Reese Witherspoon had in "Legally Blonde." In real life, of course, I would rather shoot myself than get a pink laptop. A Mac, maybe, but definitely not pink.

And I write light, fun fantasy about urban witches.

I've got one idea about a former executive secretary who slows learns that she can sense an object's history just by touching it. At first, she uses her powers to help her boss, but then quits her corporate job to raise foster kids and fight evil.

And another idea about a woman whose parents immigrated to the US -- from another dimension. And she's got secret magical power and uses them to maintain peace in the city where she lives -- even as others of her kind use their powers for evil.

But now that I'm thinking about the serious implications of doing this, there are ways to set it up like a business, with teams of contributors...

Okay, gotta go... I smell the potential of money to be made.

In Shanghai,

Maria

How to kill your journalism career: The story of J.

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:48:00 +0000

We cover a lot of countries here at Trombly Ltd. Some of these countries speak other languages. So we're always looking for reporters with go od language skills.

J. was perfect. Young, ambitious, had the languages we needed -- plus, with journalism experience.

She wrote ten articles for us. Sure, her work needed work. She needed to improve her reporting, story organization, and grammar and style. But she was well on her way to becoming a solid international business journalism. Plus, we were getting in assignments on the movie industry -- just up her alley.

On Wednesday, I took her to a meeting with a local media executive who liked her background and was interested in helping us put her on TV.

On Thursday, I offered her a part-time assignment editing gig for one of our publications, on top of the other work she was doing, and started up the process for getting her a key to the office and a pass to the building, and a new set of business card with her name on them. Later on, if everything went right, we would have gotten her accredited, and she'd become an international correspondent.

And by "international correspondent" I mean someone who works for the top tier of publications. These are the publications that pay enough so that you can travel, buy a house, have children anywhere in the world.

This is a small group of publications, mostly based in the US and Europe, with a few in Asia, and they're shrinking. Moreover, the budget these publications allocate to international reporting isn't getting any bigger, either.

It's a hard market to break into. You have to have the experience they need. You have to demonstrate ability and connections. And you have to be able to gain their trust. After all, it's hard for an editor to manage a reporter who's based on the other side of the planet.

If the reporter is still one desk over, you can easily see whether he's on the job, how many phone calls he makes. When he goes out on assignment and brings back into, you know whether he did a good job covering the event because you've been working in this area for a long time, and may have, perhaps, covered it yourself in the past. Sure, frauds still slip through -- like the New York Times' Jason Blair -- but then your readers will usually let you know.

With foreign reporters, you don't know the beats that they're covering. You don't know the topics that they're covering. And your readers usually can't act as a fail-safe fact-checking mechanism because they don't have first-hand experience of what the reporter is covering, either.

As a result, publications typically send trusted, senior writers to overseas assignments. These guys are expensive -- but they know what they're doing, and they don't need constant supervision.

These are hard-to-get, high-profile, glamorous assignments. You don't just walk into them. You spend years working your way up.

There are short cuts, however, and our bureau is one of them.

We hire young, inexperienced writers. We train them, and we supervise them. We help them find people to talk to. We help them figure out which questions to ask. We help them organize their stories and improve their English grammar. We help them decide which stories ideas are interesting -- and which ones are the same old, same old.

Finally, J. had learned enough about our databases and processes to work on her own. Her task was to find someone to comment about a particular news development. She had a number of people she could try to reach -- and she only needed one quote for this particular story, a 250-word brief.

She had everything she needed to make the calls.

But instead of calling, she pulled a quote from an old article from another publication, translated it into English, and put it into the story. More than that, she didn't just plagiarize the quote -- she added in the story that the source talked to her, personally.

We caught the problem immediately -- before the story even went out for copy editing.

There was no reason to do this. It would have only taken a few minutes to actually call the source and get the quote. Maybe a little longer if the first guy wasn't available. Maybe a couple of hours if she had to call several different companies.

Why did she do this? Not just "accidentally" copying something and "forgetting" to attribute it properly -- that happens, we catch it, issue warnings, help the writer avoid such mistakes in the future. (If they keep making these "mistakes," though, they're out.)

This was an out-and-out lie.

I would guess that the lie saved her, most likely, 30 minutes of reporting time.

And, most likely, it killed her career.

I may have given her a second chance, but my business manager and Shanghai bureau manager forcefully overruled me. The risk to the company's reputation was too great - and the risks of setting a precedent too severe -- to allow her to remain in the office at any capacity.

We also pulled her previous ten articles and re-checked the sourcing of all stories. For two stories, we opened her company email account and checked for email confirmations of the quotes.

Then we notified all the clients whose stories she worked on -- all US-based business publications -- and explained what happened.

It is possible that J.'s career will recover from this. There are other news organizations in China, and she might also be able to report for smaller news organizations overseas, especially ones who require her language skills.

She's very lucky that her fraudulent story wasn't printed. If it had been, we would have had to run her name along with the correction -- and any future editor who Googled her would have known what she did.

In Shanghai,

- Maria

A busy May

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 03:55:00 +0000

Sorry about not posting last month -- it was a busy, busy May. The company continues to grow -- and new people have to be trained, new clients dealt with.

I was on local TV -- the International Channel Shanghai -- and taped the first episode of a new ITV-Asia program, Emerging China, for which I'm the host.

There were business deals with new partners. More details to come later, but it looks like I'll be running a second company soon in a different, but slightly related, line of business.

And I'm getting ready for my annual pilgrimage back to the US to meet with clients and see the old folks. We're flying out July 15 -- the e-tickets are already in hand.

Then, last night, I went out to an evening with some business friends (following up on an earlier meeting that night with another business groups - my Friday nights are packed!) -- and the discussion quickly turned to non-business issues. I needed to get back to my computer near 9 p.m. -- 11 p.m. at the latest. Those deadlines came and went.

I haven't just hung out and talked like that -- just talked with a bunch of cool guys -- for ages.

Not since the last webloggers meeting, in fact, which was a couple of months ago. And that in itself is sad -- my main non-business social outlet is a webloggers group.

Back when I had a marriage, my marriage counselor told me that I needed to learn how to get in touch with my feelings, learn to relax, embrace the softer side of life.

That didn't get too far.

Maybe it's time to rethink this. And get a hobby. Based on my high appetite for risk, I'm considering something like race car driving, or sky diving. But I might start out with rock climbing or downhill skiing.

In Shanghai,

Maria

How to invest your money and beat the stock market

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:06:00 +0000

When people find out that I'm a business journalist, they invariably ask me for stock tips.

After all, I'm probably sitting on tons of juicy corporate insider dope that my editors won't print so as not to offend advertisers, right?

First of all, not true. Any inside dope I've got, has been printed. I've been lucky with editors all my life -- in 15 years as a journalist, I've never had a story pulled due to advertiser influence. It's true. I've had stories pulled because they sucked, but that's a different matter.

Secondly, I'm not allowed to give stock tips. There are regulations out there about insider trading. If I do find something out, I either have to tell everybody, or nobody at all.

Finally, if even the employees at Enron didn't know that their company was going down the tubes, how would a journalist who spends a few minutes on the phone with an exec and some analysts know anything at all? Those employees pretty much lived at that company. They knew what was going on. They heard all the gossip. But they still lost their shirts.

But, despite all this, I still know the secret of how to beat the stock market. It's the only strategy that works.

We journalists don't write about it much because it conflicts with the news cycle.

Here's the problem: there's only one good way to invest your money. Everybody knows what it is. But you can't run the same story every day. You need to say something different, something interesting, something new. So we write about what various sectors are doing, how the economy is shaping up, give advice on what company to put your money in. Most of this advice is no more useful than the latest Britney Spears gossip.

But people want it, so we write it.

Take, for example, this month's cover story in Fortune: "What Warren Thinks..." It's not online yet, or I'd give a link to it.

Here's Buffett's advice on investing:

...they should just stay with index funds. Any low-cost index fund. And they should buy it over time... It's a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market.

Then, if you turn the page, the very next article is titled "Where to Put Your Money Now" -- advice to investors on how to outsmart the market.

Journalists are not evil. But sometimes it does look that way, doesn't it?

So here's the best strategy. Only one guaranteed to beat the stock market:

1. Index Funds

Index funds sound boring. Basically, they're a fund that includes every company of a certain type. Your best bet is the biggest fund that there is. You want to bet on the whole US economy, not just on one company. Or on the whole world. Over time, the whole world is getting more efficient, more productive, and richer. Index funds reflect this. And the best thing with index funds is that you're not paying multi-million-dollar salaries for fund managers who do no better than monkeys throwing darts. Sure, by chance, some managers do well some of the time. But they're no more likely to do well the following year than anyone else. In fact, the more clever the story behind some manager's strategy -- whether it's a mutual fund, hedge fund, or some crazy new plan -- the more likely it is to lose you money.

Stick with index funds. Go for the cheapest ones. If you don't like saying "cheap" because it sounds... well ... cheap, then say "no load index fund." Now you're no longer cheap, you're a savvy investor.

2. Invest Over Time

If you want to sound fancy, you can call it "dollar cost averaging." For example, you might want to take $100 out of each paycheck and invest it in your index fund.

The key here is not to look at the news. Don't put in more when the market is hot. Don't put in less when it's down. Just set up the investment strategy and then don't look at it again... oh, for the next thirty years.

At the end of the thirty years, you'll find that you've beaten the market. Why? Because when the market is down, that $100 bought you more stock. When the market was up, that $100 bought you less stock. In other words, you were automatically investing more during the best times to invest - when the stocks were less expensive.

If you try to do this deliberately, chances are you will fail. People have a hard time guessing what the market will do, and even the best fund managers get caught up by investment fads and bubbles -- and by panic, as well.

By not looking at your investment, you take the emotions out of the equation.

There is one big drawback to the "index fund-invest over time" strategy. You have nothing to talk about with your buddies. Some guy will say, "I bet everything on big oil and war profiteers, and now I'm up $10 million!" and what have you got? "I'm in index funds." That sounds so lame. (Now you see the problem that journalists have.)

If you're desperate to play the market, then take some of your entertainment budget and play with it. Think of it as going to Las Vegas -- you'll lose everything, but you'll have fun doing it and you'll have some stories to tell. Except to your spouse. He or she won't want to hear these stories.

Then, when you tell your friends that you lost your shirt betting on pork bellies you will have literally lost just the price of your shirt.

Still in Shanghai,

Maria

Nostalgic for My Shanghai

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:31:00 +0000

I'm going to be heading off to the U.S. on July 15 -- and coming back in the fall -- but I'm already nostalgic for the Shanghai of today.

I was down in the French Concession area this afternoon, one of the nicest parts of Shanghai.

After having a quick bite at Abbey Road with journalist friend Bill Marcus -- of Marketplace fame -- I walked up Dongping Lu to buy some bread on the way home.

I walked into Paul's, a new French bakery chain in town. I love their Xintiandi location -- small, but drowning in a sea of real crusty French breads. Not the typical Wonder white-bread-style bread you get here in Shanghai. During nice weather, you can sit outside, sidewalk-cafe style.

The location on Dongping Lu is a full-scale sit-down restaurant. So although I walked in for a loaf of crusty whole wheat bread, I immediately saw that they had one croissant amande left in the bakery display.

I first had one of these when visiting a friend in Paris. They're sweet, filled with almond paste and sprinkled with sliced almonds and a light dusting of powdered sugar.

As I rode the taxi home, I was overcome with a wave of nostalgia. Shanghai will never again be the way it is today. The beautiful weather, the cafes popping up all over town. The laid-back lifestyle.

Bill says that the longer people stay in China, the less they work. Finally, they're just coasting along, moving around from one wifi-equipped cafe to another, blogging and twittering, pretending that they're doing something, until finally they're living on no money at all.

You can do that in Shanghai.

Bill is not an example of this -- he actually seems to be working pretty hard.

But I do know guys -- and gals -- who come to Shanghai with sky-high hopes and business plans then somehow get off the career track. Or never get on it in the first place.

Pretty soon, they're doing a little teaching or copyediting or corporate copywriting for a few hours a week. Just enough to pay rent on their part of a bachelor pad, and to buy a few beers and coffees during the week.

Next thing you know, they're in their mid-40s with potbellies, still coasting along on the coolness of being expats.

One mid-40s guy I know copyedits a couple of hours per week. The rest of the time, he told me, he spends dating. His dates are all hot young Chinese girls. He himself looks like the Big Lebowski, from the film of the same title. Well, a little dumpier.

Another guy -- in his late 40s -- somehow married and reproduced without leaving the Shanghai slacker mode. He teaches English some of the time. The rest of the time he spends working on his business plan. With each iteration the business plan becomes more grandiose, all-encompassing, and impossible to actually execute. If you want to hear about his idea, he'll make you sign a non-disclosure agreement. Don't be surprised if his idea seems familiar to you -- I've seen it on House.

Then there's a group of guys married to rich women. All in their mid-40s. Most pot-bellied. (To be fair, so am I.) Some seriously balding. (Not me. I've got tons of hair. Long. Blonde. Lustrous.) They tell people that they're running online businesses. These are one-man operations, involving an occasional consulting gig. Maybe some search engine optimization. Or web design. Their wives do the heavy lifting, bringing-home-the-bacon wise, leaving the hubbies to the cafes and beer gardens. Have wifi, will drink.

If you think you recognize yourself in this description by the way -- it's not you. It's somebody else. It's that other guy -- you know, that guy you hate.

I love these guys. They always have time to hang out. They're cool and laid back. They'll sit around and argue politics and solve all the world's problems over a couple of slices of pizza and some beer. They never have to rush off for an appointment, and never seem to have any deadlines to meet.

I'll miss them when I leave.

Once I move my family back to the States, I'll be back in Shanghai only on business. I'll probably pack my days here full of staff meetings, and interviews, and bureaucratic get-togethers with government officials. There will be stacks of papers to sign, new hires to interview and train, budgets to go through, cashflows to plan. I won't have as much time to just hang out in cafes, enjoy the free wireless, and blog about life in Shanghai.

It's too bad -- it's a beautiful life. Someone should make a movie about it.

Still in Shanghai,

Maria

Journalism vs. PR

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 06:45:00 +0000

Just came back from a nice lunch at KABB, in Shanghai's people-watching mecca Xintiandi. Hose Mitamura (author of China s Environment 2008, available from Amazon) and I discussed the differences between journalism and PR.

As my staff constantly reminds me, I tend to believe passionately in whatever I heard most recently. In my case, this is Law and Order -- I was watching reruns of the show the night before.

(I'm not going to say how, except to mention that I was shocked -- SHOCKED -- to find that there were illegally uploaded TV shows available through surfthechannel.com. Don't people know there is intellectual property violation going on? The horror!)

Anyway, on Law and Order -- and in every show that depicts an American-style legal system -- every legal case has two sides. There's the prosecutor, who tries to make the accused look as bad and guilty as possible, within the constraints of the law. And there's the defense attorney, who tries to make the accused look all harmless and innocent. There's a judge there, to keep things moving along, and the jury makes the final decision.

That's the media landscape in a nutshell as well.

The journalists try to print as much of the scandal and wrong-doing that they can dig up. Sure, they present ordinary facts as well -- so do prosecutors. But we all know what we're there for -- the blood and gore.

The PR guys try to make their clients seem sweet and wholesome. They also present some actual facts, but these are shaded in such a way as to tell the most flattering story about their client.

Sure, a good defense attorney will advise a client not to commit the crime in the first place, or, if the crimes are ongoing, to stop as quickly as possible. But once the crime is done, the defense lawyer is supposed to go all out to get the client off -- whether or not the client deserves to be punished.

So, a PR agency will usually advise clients to clean up their acts. But, barring that, the PR folks will do all they can to keep the bad acts from being publicized -- or, if they're already out, to put the best possible spin on them.

In this analogy, the jury is the reading public and the judges are the libel courts.

I don't mind working with PR people. They perform a useful public function. They get me in touch with company executives. They hook me up with customers, and send me background information and research reports. They suggest story ideas.

I regularly read PR blogs. One of my favorites is the China Law Blog. Yes, it's a PR vehicle for the law firm that sponsors it, Harris & Moure. But there's excellent information in the blog as well. PR Newswire is also a great source of information, sources, and story ideas, and they have a Chinese version through a partnership with Xinhua. Their Profnet service is by far the best way to find sources. I occasionally browse through their database of experts, but, more often, I post queries about articles I'm working on. Especially for tech-related stories, this is a great way to immediately get interviews with high-ranking executives at major companies, since their PR agents subscribe to these queries.

So I love PR guys. I used to be married to one. In fact, my ex still works in PR.

Would I want to be a PR guy? Be forced to say nice things about people? Never. Shoot me first.

Fortunately, PR work and journalism require such different personality skills, such different characters, such different approaches to morality, that there doesn't really have to be a conflict on a personal level. I can't do their jobs -- they can't do my job. And we wouldn't want to.

It's the old "Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean" thing.

I believe that the greater good is that which benefits society as a whole. This means, exposing corruption and injustice whenever it happens. If a few innocent people get hurt in the process -- well, that's just too bad for them.

Other people believe in the rights of the individual. Better that a hundred guilty people go free than an innocent guy go to jail. This is also a noble sentiment. In fact, if I was a lawyer, I might be torn about deciding whether I wanted to be a defense attorney or a prosecutor.

One of the things that appeals to be most about journalism -- and about prosecutors -- is that we are heroes. The mafia lawyers and the corporate attorneys -- they make the big money, but they don't get much respect from the public.

With PR, it's the same way. Sure, they have better haircuts. And better clothes. And better food at their parties. Their drinks are more expensive, and their cars are newer and flashier. But who really respects them?

The worst that can be said of good journalists is that in our zeal, we sometimes step over the line.

That brings me to the final parallel between PR and law. In the legal profession, the worst that can happen is for money to cross the line between the defense and prosecution. Whether it's the defense attorney paying off the prosecutor, or the prosecutor paying off the defense, if there's an exchange of cash there's corruption going on and the minute it comes to light the careers of everyone involved are over, and the respective organizations will suffer major PR blows.

On the media side, any exchange of money or favors between PR folks and journalists -- regardless of the direction that the money flows -- is a scandal. The bigger the money, of course, the bigger the scandal. If someone buys me lunch to pick my brain, no problem. If we're discussing possible stories over dinner, however, them I'm picking up at least half the tab.

I've worked for many media organizations. I've never seen a case in which they paid money to sources, or in which they accepted payments for PR people in return for editorial coverage. There was one case, of a very small-circulation local business magazine, that preferred to quote advertisers in stories and write flattering pieces about them.

In the competitive American media climate, it is hard for publications like that to become successful -- after all, who wants to pay for articles that are composed exclusively of advertising blather? Especially if there's an alternative publication that gives you the straight scoop, the solid dope, the inside dirt. Which one of us wouldn't take the dirt over the puff piece any time?

Since, over time, the average media climate tends to become more competitive, not less, I would guess that the demarcation line between PR and journalism will become increasingly clear in every region.

And this means that people who are just getting into the media field should be clear from the start about which side of the line they want to be on.

There's nothing wrong with being either a journalist or a PR guy. But the folks who try to cross the lines are vilified by both sides, and by the reading public.

When the public gets upset at either PR people or journalists it's when they confuse the functions that the two groups serve. At various times, the PR guys are the bad ones because they're trying to make evil corporations look good. At other times, the journalists are the bad guys because they're only looking for bad news.

In some emerging markets, where the media and PR functions are conflated together, the end results can be extremely messy. But I believe that over time, as the two functions are separated due to market pressures -- as well as increasing professionalism on both sides -- this situation will be resolved as well.

It pays to be clean.

In Shanghai,

Maria

One week of Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:34:00 +0000

I've been using Twitter for about a week now. I keep all the tweets in a column on the side of my browser windows (using Twitbin). It feels like being in a chatroom populated exclusively by your friends -- the friends who Twitter, that is.

My Twitter handle is Maria_Trombly if anyone wants to follow me.

I'm not the only journalist who's using Twitter this way.

ReadWriteWeb just ran a nice article titled How We Use Twitter for Journalism.

In Shanghai,
Maria

Summer has come to Shanghai

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:18:00 +0000

Today I left the house and stepped into what, in Massachusetts, would be considered a pretty hot summer day - 77 degrees Farenheit (25 Celsius).

So much for the one week of nice, spring weather. From now, it's only going to get worse and worse. I plan to stay inside for the next two months with the air conditioning cranked up, stepping out only in the evenings.

In other good news, I made the top-ten most sought-after speakers list at ChinaBiz Speakers, China's premiere -- and, as far as I know, only -- speakers' bureau. You can check out my speaker's profile.

The speaking business is actually picking up. There was that trip to Bangkok, to talk about Chinese pet food. And a talk on marketing to a local business group.

Earlier this week, the folks from the International Channel Shanghai send me a DVD of the five days I was a guest on their Culture Matters program -- I've got permission to post excerpts and will do so as soon as we get the 2.5 hours of film edited down to 15 or so minutes.

I still haven't seen it. If I think my voice sounds weird on tape, how much worse is it to see yourself on TV?

In Shanghai,

Maria

Editorial Process Outsourcing

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 06:26:00 +0000

I don't see a lot of hits for "editorial process outsourcing" in Google -- but this is exactly what we do.

Publications have been doing outsourcing for a long, long time. Mostly, they just outsource the development of content. They use freelance writers and freelance photographers, and they buy photos and articles from agencies.

Editorial process outsourcing takes this a step further, by providing additional services on top of the content itself.

For example, Relaxnews is a Paris-based outfit that provides high-end lifestyle content -- they can do a complete magazine for you, writing, art, photos, layout, the whole thing. I'm currently working with one of their former editors, Fanny Landrieu, to start a similar agency in Shanghai.

This is different from bespoke news agencies, such as Israel-based Abbey Content, which provides editorial services for US newspapers, and U.K.-based International News Services Ltd., which provides high-end financial articles and other content written specifically for individual clients.

We did start out as a bespoke news agency, covering the emerging markets for individual US publications. Today, however, we provide more services -- we run entire bureaus for our clients, including accreditation, recruiting, training and managing staff, covering beats, assigning articles, copyediting and fact-checking.

Here at Trombly Ltd. (at tromblyltd dot com) we cover mostly emerging markets for US business publications. In addition to providing articles, we also do photos, fact-checking, and copyediting for our clients, and are rapidly moving up the value chain to provide more services. With writers and editors in China, India, the Philippines, we cover Asia extensively, but also handle Russia and Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Middle East through an ever-expanding pool of trained freelancers.

In the U.S. and Europe, many providers do even more -- they will produce an entire publication, or supplement, for a client.

This is not something that's talked a lot about. Publications tend to want to control the content they publish. As a result, many of these outsourcing projects are limited to special sections, supplements, or advertorial inserts. Outsourcing these sections helps to distance them from the main editorial content of the publication, which is especially important for advertorial sections.

But outsourcing can also bring in additional expertise that in-house staff might not have, and can reduce fixed costs. At a time when advertising can increase or decrease sharply, outsourcing parts of a publication can reduce the number of staff on long-term contracts, and reduce the need for layoffs during downturns.

Yesterday, I met with Kerry Kennery, of ITV-Asia, for lunch. Before starting up his online business channel, he used to launch magazines for a living. He's got about a dozen magazines off the ground in his previous life. He says that magazine publishers need to be aware of the business they're in -- they're in the advertising sales business. Everything else can be outsourced.

Too many publishers, he says, spend too much time micromanaging content.

I agree with him. Publishers are highly-paid people. Their time is worth a lot -- they should be spending it where it's going to have the most impact. That means, meeting with potential advertisers.

Editors and writers are low-paid people. They're artistic, creative types. Pick the best team you can for the budget you've got, set clear objectives, then let them go do their thing.

As an additional bonus, the less interference from advertising into the editorial process, the better the editorial content will be, and the more trust the readers will have in what they read.

In the old days, a publication had to keep everything in-house because the logistics of coordinating advertising and layout and distribution were unwieldy unless everyone was in the same building.

Today, with electronic delivery of documents and virtual workflows, there's no reason for publishing companies to remain vertically integrated.

In Shanghai.

Recognized on the street

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:49:00 +0000

The Culture Matters show aired last week. People could watch me every night at 6:30 p.m., then again the next day around noon.

Finally, this past Sunday, someone recognized me on the street. It was someone I already knew, though -- Megan Shank, an editor at the Chinese edition of Newsweek. People at my kids' school saw it, though -- the producers of the show came to my house for some background footage and filmed my kids playing their instruments -- the guitar and the violin. They also showed by son, Basil, making a salad.

The producers tell me that they'll be posting the show online soon. Then the kids will be really famous - I'm sure they can't wait.

Meanwhile, one of my fellow guests -- famous Shanghai blogger Wang Jian Shuo - wrote about the experience of being on the show. If you scroll down through his post, you'll see a couple of photos of me with my hair down.

The show's stylists brushed it out (it's normally a little wavy). I've decided to trust the experts -- I now wear my hair this way for all public speaking occasions.

I just wish I'd known we were going to film five days worth of show all at once -- I would have brought some changes of clothes with me. Instead, it looks as though I only own one shirt.

I'm a geek at heart. I'd rather spent a day at a computer store than clothes shopping, but I do own more than one shirt. But not too much more. Today, I promised my business manager that I'll buy more clothes.

This is what's known as a "geek tragedy" -- having to go clothes shopping.

Riding the elephant

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:37:00 +0000

I took some time away from work to see some elephants, as long as I was in Thailand. I was with Tim Phillips, editor of Petfood Industry magazine, and Julie Lezner Kirk, an expert on petfood safety and traceability, who also spoke at the conference.

This is a picture of me riding an elephant. In this shot, I'm behind a waterfall.

Speaking in Bangkok

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:32:00 +0000

Today I gave a talk about global and Asian petfood industry trends at a conference in Bangkok. One of our clients is Petfood Industry magazine, and we've been covering the melanine-laced petfood scandal since it broke last summer. If you forgot, hundreds of dogs and cats were killed or sickened by petfood made with wheat gluten and other fillers that were laced with melanine, a chemical that makes it appear that the filler has higher protein content than it really does. Melanine is normally harmless, but can be poisonous when mixed with certain other ingredients.

I love being up in front of large groups of people, and some of my presentation was video taped. I'll be posting it later, if I ever get a copy.

Should you be a writer or an editor?

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 03:53:00 +0000

A beginning freelancer asked me today whether he should be a writer or an editor -- and whether he could do both.

At the end of the conversation, he decided what he wanted to do, but I've heard the question several times, so I'll post my answer here.

Editing and writing are two completely different jobs, and appeal to different types of people. Sure, they both involve words, and grammar. But that's about it for similarities.

Before you decide what you want to do, ask yourself a few questions.

Do you like finding things out?

Finding things out -- and tracking down the right people who know those things -- is one of the fun things about being a reporter. Editors, for the most part, sit back while someone else has all the fun. If you agree with this, then you probably won't be happy sitting on the editing desk.

Do you like helping people and watching them grow?

Editors get to teach writers, train them, mold them in the publication's preferred image. If you enjoy watching people develop their professional skills, if you have patience with newcomers, then you'll probably enjoy editing. But if you're the kind of person who can't tolerate stupidity and incompetence, if you get frustrated when people don't listen to you and don't do what they tell you, if you get sick and tired when people make the same mistake over and over again, then maybe you won't be happy as an editor.

Do you like seeing your name in print?

Writers get to take credit for their work. Editors are named on the masthead, in an acknowledgments section, or, if they're lucky, in an "edited by" credit at the bottom of an article. If that's too much anonymity for you, and you get upset when other people get credit for all your hard work, then editing might not be for you.

Do you like doing something different every day?

Reporters are encouraged to try new things -- track down new story ideas, talk to new people, experiment with their writing. Editors are supposed to take all this experimentation and mold it down into something that will fit in the publication. An editor's job is pretty much the same, day to day. Yell at writers for missing deadlines. Clean up style and grammar. Yell at writers some more. Work on story budgets and other administrative tasks. Yell at some more writers. If you like predictability, be an editor. If you like variety, be a writer.

Are you a big picture person or a detail guy?

A writer gets to look at a mass of confusing information, interview transcripts and research notes and distill it into a coherent idea that ties everything together -- then writes that idea up into a coherent narrative that flows smoothly from point to point, making things ever clear and more understandable to the reader. An editor takes this finished masterpiece and pokes holes in it, looking for every place where the argument doesn't hang together, where the paragraphs are too long, where the sentences are too awkward, where the commas are misplaced, and where names are misspelled. Only you know whether you are frustrated in the details -- or find your calling in them.

Are you a team player or a loner?

Reporters are, for the most part, lone wolves. They go out on the hunt, and bring back the story. Editors spend their time working with others -- with writers, with other editors, with their bosses. Editors have to nurture the writers they work with, massage their egos. Writers do, occasionally, have to be nice to sources -- but only long enough to get the interview. They're allowed to -- even encouraged to -- savage those same sources in print.

Are you shy or outgoing?

Editors do have to work well with others, but they are not required to have a large, aggressive personality. They can by shy and polite and do very well. Reporters, on the other hand, are supposed to get out there and push everyone else aside so they can get the story. A shy reporter isn't going to last long.

Plenty of people make the jump from reporter to editor -- and vice versa. Often, however, it's a painful process and many wind up going back when they discover their personality isn't suited for the new job.

Others stick it out, in misery, because the need the job, the money, or the better working hours that they get as a result of the change.

But, if you are a writer, there are plenty of ways to advance in your career without becoming an editor.

They include:

Moving to a larger market
Writing books
TV or radio appearances
Getting an "editor" title while actually continuing a reporting job
Becoming a columnist
Writing your own newsletter

Cultural wars: the parent trap

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:10:00 +0000

Last Friday night, a bunch of us journalists slash bloggers slash entrepreneurs -- and, in Shanghai, who isn't these days? -- were sitting around talking about cultural differences.

We had a guy from a Chinese province who had moved to Shanghai, who was worried about taking care of his parents. A young guy who moved to Singapore, who was probably trying to get away from his parents. An older guy from Taiwan who had moved to the U.S. before moving to Shanghai and who was very concerned about taking care of parents well, and me, daughter of Russian immigrants, who was planning to be taking care of her parents someday.

The guy from Taiwan said that a big difference between Asia and the U.S. is that Asians care about their parents. He mentioned something about "family values."

Now, we all know that Americans are prone to stick their aged relatives in nursing homes at the drop of a hat -- the horror! The horror! I was mortified when my American inlaws put their grandmother in a nursing home. I volunteered to take care of her myself, just to avoid the shame and embarrassment to the family.

I think they thought I was crazy.

I finally figured out why on Friday night.

For older generations, brought up in times of economic hardship, children are their survival -- the family is who will take care of you when you're old, or sick, or need money, or need a job. It makes sense that my parents would turn to me first if they needed anything like that.

But I, who grew up in the U.S., have no memories of economic hardship -- and no economic worries about the future. Sure, I'm worried that the Social Security problems might cause me to postpone retirement, but given the voting strength of the elderly, it probably won't be postponed too much.

I don't depend on my children for my survival. The only reason for my family to exist is to fulfill our emotional needs. After all, even if the worst comes to pass, and my kids end up in foster care, they'll still get food, shelter, and clothing. I have to do better than that -- I have to make sure my kids are loved, and cared for, and appreciated, and nurtured.

When I'm old, I'm going to want a good, close relationship with my children. I want them to love and appreciate and nurture me. But I don't need them to wipe my chin if I drool. Instead, I plan to hire someone who loves wiping drool to do that for me.

After all, there are plenty of people who get a kick out of caring for others. Doctors. Nurses. Home health aides. And, since they're caring for strangers, they get to go home at the ends of their shifts and leave the worrying for the next guy who takes over.

Children -- even caring, compassionate children -- would be worrying around the clock. I don't want them to do that, even if my children do grow up to be doctors and nurses. Which they've already told me that they don't plan to do.

So when I grow old, I want my kids to visit. A lot. I want to see my grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But I don't want them to have to physically take care of me, except to the extent that they want to, in order to help out.

So when it comes to the cultural divide, I'm straddling the economic barrier. On the one hand, I can understand where my parents are coming from -- and will do my part. My parents risked everything to get us to the United States. I owe them.

On the other hand, I've grown up trusting the broader society to take care of most of my physical needs. I'm comfortable with doctors, lawyers, police officers, bankers -- people and institutions that my parents are extremely wary of. I'd rather put my life in the hands of trained professionals than caring amateurs.

It's not a cultural divide. I share my parents' culture. I am shocked by how Americans treat the elderly.

But when I get older, I want to be treated American-style. Loved by my family. Kept alive by the pros.

Signing off in Shanghai,

Maria

International Channel Shanghai in my house

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 06:20:00 +0000

As I type this, a crew from the International Channel Shanghai is here at my house filming me blogging.

It's for a program on blogging that will run in the middle of March.

They taped five shows the day before yesterday, Friday, at their studio, but for some reason wanted to see me at home, and see my kids.

- Maria

Culture versus economics

noreply@blogger.com (Maria Trombly) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:28:00 +0000

As a business journalist, I'm a big believer in the power of economics. I'm also not a big fan of culture. Sure, it's fine when it comes to entertainment, but I don't trust culture as an explanation of behavior.

Many habits which are routinely attributed to culture can be better explained by economics. Take, for example, the issue of saving money. According to some people, saving money is a Asian cultural value, or a Chinese cultural value.

But saving money can also be attributed to economic forces -- recent economic problems, combined with current wealth and doubts about the future.

In the United States, we've seen high levels of savings after the Great Depression, for example, and with recent immigrants. My immigrant parents, for example, have a high propensity for saving money and being thrifty. I myself, having grown up in the United States, have no memory of hardship, and few doubts about my future earning potential. This creates a little bit of friction between me and my parents -- my mother routinely reminds me to save money and warns me not to waste it.

To some, this would be an example of the "cultural wars" between immigrant parents and their children. To me, it's just an example of the different economic realities in which we live.

Another example is career choice. My father was very concerned that I grow up to be an engineer. This is common for many immigrant parents -- as well as parents in China and India and other emerging economies. A couple of generations back, most American parents were very concerned about raising children to be white-collar professionals -- doctors, lawyers, and engineers. Personal fulfillment took a second seat compared to long-term income potential and career stability.

When I chose to drop out of the engineering program to follow my dream of being a writer, my parents were very concerned about the risks this career path involves.

In China, I also meet lots of young people pressured by their parents into careers that they don't want. This is often seen as an example of the Chinese cultural value of listening to your parents, or being conservative and not creative in making career choices. But if you go back to the United States in the 1950s -- not to mention the many examples of immigrant families like mine -- the same issues come up. How much risk is a person willing to take on?

I would say that children listen to their parents to about the same extent, regardless of whether they live, depending on how much of an economic impact their parents have on them. Today, in the United States, many parents tell their children to be happy -- to find a career that is fulfilling and rewarding, not just financially renumerative.

This brings me to yet another value that is often ascribed to culture -- the relative importance of personal happiness compared to family commitments.

Again, I feel that the basic issue is economic -- when the family is the primary economic unit, it makes sense to protect it at all costs. In underdeveloped countries, the family takes care of the sick and elderly, protects its members from physical violence, provides career training to children, feeds and clothes its members, provides work, and provides money. In a developed country, governments and private pensions take care of retirement, doctors and hospitals take care of the ill, police departments protect citizens against violence, schools and colleges provide career training, banks lend money, and restaurants and delivery services provide all the food that anyone would want, at any price point.

In a developed country, the role of the family is to provide emotional support -- to ensure that its members are happy and loved.

It makes sense for people in a developed country to ignore the wishes of a family that is pressuring them to do something that would make them unhappy -- including adopting a boring career, or marrying someone they don't love.

In an underdeveloped country, it makes sense to put personal fulfillment aside to take care of more pressing needs for physical and financial security.

In China, as with immigrant families in the US and Europe, the economic reality is changing very quickly -- and personal behavior is changing to keep up.

Ascribing the changing behaviors to changing cultural norms is a mistake, and often results in absurd reactions such as blaming US movies, music and television for the "declining cultural values."