Writing for the Web

English blogs in China:the disappointing ethnocentrism

That's the title of an opinion piece in China Daily. It's a blast against blogging westerners' criticism of China and the Chinese, and it brought a couple of nostalgic shocks:

First, it quotes from blogs I haven't visited since the SARS scare died down, and it was interesting to see they were still in business. Second, the quotes from those blogs remind me vividly of the China-bashing beer sessions that we "foreign expert" English teachers would indulge in almost every afternoon or evening back in 1983. It was really a form of culture shock, an expression of our difficulty in adjusting to a very different country. We were trying to cope with the help of a few daily litres of Tsingtao Beer; we had very little communication even with colleagues elsewhere in the country, never mind back home.

Now the Internet and blogging have made it possible to vent one's culture shock around the world. It's understandable, but not especially constructive. The author of the opinion piece is a bit too defensive, and the China-bashing bloggers (like my colleagues and me long ago) are clinging to their western values rather than trying to learn from the values of their hosts.

Blogging as Invasion of Privacy

Thanks to my webwriting colleague Jill for the link to Don't Blog So Close to Me, a Washington Post column about a seriously indiscreet journalist/teacher/blogger. For me, the interesting part of the story is not the middle-aged teacher's lech for a young student, but his inability to realize that blogging is as public a medium as print. Talking about his student's charms amounts to an invasion of her privacy.

This is why I spend a full evening in my article-writing course just to explain the legal hazards my students are facing—not only invasion of privacy, but also defamation and copyright violation. If this guy was qualified to teach in journalism school, and had spent almost twenty years as a journalist, he should have understood that perfectly well. And if he didn't understand the relevance of such issues in blogging, he deserved the sack on grounds of incompetence, not misdirected lust.

The column excerpts the blog post, including a couple of throwaway lines that do deserve attention: He's got just six students in his journalism class, and the students don't read the papers. A class that small isn't likely to develop critical mass (unless it's six highly motivated grad students). And the reluctance of aspiring writers to do any reading is indeed a problem. Anorexics aren't likely to become great cooks, and non-readers will never become good writers. So how and why did the j-school recruit these six bozos, including that hot, smart, non-reading Israeli?

Bloggers React Quickly to London Blasts

The Guardian, always a blog-sensitive news source, has a Special report on how London bloggers are responding to the terrorist attack this morning. Half a century ago, ham radio operators served a similar function in moving information during a disaster. It's an honourable line of descent.

Meanwhile, The Tyee here in Vancouver has a Report from London on one young journalist's experience this morning. This is a very small world.

A New Online Magazine

The Tyee reports the advent of a new online magazine, Dragon Fire, out of Drexel University. Always encouraging to see new efforts in this field.

UK Bombings: News Links

A set of news links has gone up on the Canadian Journalist blog You can find still more links at NewsNow, which does excellent work scanning both general news and breaking stories like this one. Both are examples of how rapidly the Web can organize and deliver information.