Category: Misc.

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Matt Gross and multimedia travel journalism

What’s the best way to tell a travel story?

Newspaper and magazine travel journalism, as we know, typically aims to pair descriptive, compelling text with illustrative photography. But what if you add complimentary video and a blog to the mix?

The New York Times‘s Matt Gross — the Times‘s Frugal Traveler — has been producing some really, really good travel journalism over the last few years. ((Disclaimer: I’m lucky enough to call Matt a pal, but I was a fan of his work before our paths ever crossed. In fact, before I ever moved to Bangkok, I ate up his NYT travel stories from Southeast Asia, particularly “To Be Young and Hip in Bangkok.”)) And he’s been doing so using not just well-crafted words accompanied by well-shot images. He’s also been using a blog and sms alerts to connect with his readers. And some of his stories are plotted on Google Maps. There’s even a Frugal Traveler Facebook group (latest count: 1,345 fans).

Matt has traveled around the world in 90 days; he took a road trip across the US; and he re-created the European grand tour. All of his stories are formatted as blog posts, and many of them receive over a hundred comments. In some of the comments, readers give him travel tips on where to go and what to do when he gets to future destinations.

In short, though I’m not a fan of the phrase “Web 2.0,” Matt is a travel writer for the Web 2.0 age.

His stories are not only rich in practical details that are helpful in planning a trip, but his dispatches are often emotionally revealing. For example, during his grand tour last summer, he filed a story called “Tracing Family Roots in Vilnius.” The article describes how he tracked down his Lithuanian ancestors. And the accompanying video (embedded below) is also interesting — but it’s more lighthearted:

The written article, blog post, and images were one story. The video was another.

I also like “Spying on Bucharest’s Cool Underground,” which ran with this video (embedded below):

In the end, I think that traditional newspaper and magazine travel journalism will continue to thrive, as will travel TV shows. These meet a need. But it’s interesting to see how Matt’s work has blended traditional and multimedia elements to create something different entirely.

For more reading, I suggest:

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Obama inauguration in Bangkok’s newspapers

President Obama’s inauguration was, of course, front-page news here in Bangkok today. Here’re the top left corner of Thai Rath newspaper, a popular daily ((Thai Rath‘s coverage can be quite sensational. Today’s issue contains three striking below-the-fold images not included in this scan: a man who was killed in a car crash; a woman embracing what appears to be a dead relative; and a crime scene photo of a shirtless man face down in a pool of blood.)):

Obama inauguration in Bangkok's Thai Rath newspaper

And here’s today’s Bangkok Post ((Apologies for the poor scans. My scanner isn’t big enough to accommodate the papers’ broadsheet size. The full Bangkok Post headline reads “Obama Pledges New America.”)).

Obama inauguration in the Bangkok Post

UPDATE: Hong Kong blogger Thomas Crampton has a nice round-up of Obama front pages around Asia.

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Australian writer gets three-year prison term for insulting Thai monarchy

AFP: “Australian jailed for three years for insulting Thai king”

A Thai court on Monday sentenced an Australian writer to three years in jail after finding him guilty of insulting Thailand’s revered royal family in a novel, a judge said.

Harry Nicolaides, 41, had pleaded guilty to the charge earlier on Monday. He has been in custody for nearly five months.

“He was found guilty under criminal law article 112 and the court has sentenced him to six years, but due to his confession, which is beneficial to the case, the sentence is reduced to three years,” a judge told the court.

“He has written a book that slandered the king, the crown prince and Thailand and the monarchy,” the judge added.

Bangkok Pundit has more info. Here’s an AP story. And here’s one from the IHT. For context, I suggest this CSM story: “Thais tighten ban on royal slurs.”

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Jakarta Globe takes on the Jakarta Post

The newspaper industry in the US is suffering, as we know. But an Indonesian billionaire thinks there’s room for another English-language paper in Jakarta. In November, James Riady launched the Jakarta Globe to compete head-to-head with the well-established Jakarta Post.

Today’s IHT has the story: “Indonesian billionaire takes on the Jakarta Post”

That it is probably the worst time in history to start a daily newspaper is not, at least for the moment, on the minds of the people behind The Jakarta Globe.

The Globe, an English-language paper that hit the newsstands in November, is an unusual sight in this era of the shrinking – or disappearing – newspaper: It is a 48-page broadsheet, big enough to cover your desk when unfolded and painted head to toe in color.

The paper is backed by the billionaire James Riady, deputy chairman of the powerful Lippo Group and one of the wealthiest people in Indonesia, with interests including real estate, banking and retail.

Riady is also a budding media mogul. He owns the Indonesian business magazine Globe and is developing a Web portal and a cable television news channel.

“I think they are serious about creating a media empire, becoming the Rupert Murdoch of South East Asia,” said Lin Neumann, The Globe’s chief editor.

This snippet caught my eye, as well:

Neither The Post nor The Globe would discuss advertising revenue or circulation figures. Bayuni said The Globe had not yet cut into The Post’s circulation.

The papers’ editors, however, both pointed to Bangkok as an example of a market that has been able to sustain two English-language broadsheets, although Bangkok is a much bigger market than Jakarta. Both said they would aim at the growing Indonesian middle class – a group that is increasingly learning, working and reading in English. More than half of The Post’s readers are Indonesian, as opposed to expatriate, and The Globe, recognizing this trend, is betting on the local population to increase its market share.

And there’s this, about competition for journalists in Jakarta:

The two papers are fighting over journalists as well as readers. Finding experienced, English-speaking local journalists is not always easy here and the competition for them is high. The papers, however, are taking different approaches.

The Globe has put together a team of about 60 Indonesian reporters, recruiting from wire services like Agence France-Presse and Reuters. One of its deputy editors is Bhimanto Suwastoyo, who worked for AFP for more than 20 years and is widely considered one of the best local journalists.

The Post, on the other hand, has long been a training ground for local reporters looking to get their start in the industry. The paper offers a training program in exchange for service of as long as two years.

Often, Bayuni said, those reporters move on to more prestigious or lucrative positions. Bloomberg News employs six former Post reporters.

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Thai navy accused of forcing boat people back to sea

The big story in Thailand at the moment involves accusations that the Thai navy intercepted hundreds of boat people and forced them back out to sea with little food or water. The refugees were Rohingya — Muslims from Western Myanmar (Burma).

Here’s a recent AFP story: “Thailand accused of returning asylum-seekers to sea to die”

PORT BLAIR, India (AFP) — India said Sunday that hundreds of people were missing at sea, believed to be part of a wave of boat people allegedly dragged out to the middle of the ocean by Thailand and left to die.

Thailand has denied the accusations, but accounts of survivors and the latest reports from the Indian coast guard have piled the pressure on Bangkok, and the Thai government said it would meet rights groups on Monday.

The Thai navy is accused of detaining the migrants, from a Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar, after they washed up on the Thai coast — and then towing them to sea and leaving them to their fate.

India’s coast guard said Sunday it had rescued hundreds of the refugees from the Rohingya ethnic group, who live along the border of Myanmar and Bangladesh, but that hundreds more were feared lost.

The BBC has more on the story, which it seems was broken in the Western press by the New York Times on Jan. 17. And the story received a lot of coverage in yesterday’s Bangkok Post. The print edition of today’s Post has a story saying that Thai PM Abhisit will meet today with human rights groups, but I don’t see the story on their site. There’s also a Nation story, but it’s difficult to follow. Bangkok Pundit has more info.

And, finally, here’s some background info on the Rohingya people.

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Obama Cookies

Obama Cookies

Thanks to my friend FH for sending along this image of a package of Obama cookies, which she found at a Safeway grocery store in Washington, DC.

Just in time for the big inauguration. ((Thailand readers: President elect Obama is scheduled to take the Oath of Office at approximately midnight Bangkok time (noon eastern time) on Tuesday, January 20.))

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“Web news wars” and CNN.com

Brian Stelter has a good story in today’s New York Times about CNN.com and “Web news wars” among top news sites.

Some snippets that caught my eye:

On media ubiquity

  • CNN now is as close as any news entity is to achieving ubiquity, with an array of television channels, Web sites, a radio network, airport TV sets and magazines. It is even signing up newspapers for a wire service — fed by CNN.com — that will compete with The Associated Press.

    The challenge, for Mr. Estenson and others, is to make CNN.com more distinctive. At the end of a long day recently, he showed a visitor screen grabs of four Web pages on his Macbook Air.

    “When you look at the top news sites, they often look almost identical,” he says, gesturing to the home pages of CNN, ABC News, The Wall Street Journal and Yahoo News. Down to photo choices and color schemes, the four sites look practically interchangeable and utilitarian, he says — hence his emphasis on the power of “unique signatures.”

On high-traffic times

  • Tracking audience sweet spots is also a juggling act. CNN’s television arm exerts much of its pull during the prime-time hours of 8 to 11 p.m., when advertising rates and audience levels are highest. But for the Web news desk in Atlanta, prime time is the lunch hour, when users log on during work breaks.

    More broadly, Ms. Golden defines “Web prime” as 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. During those hours, the home page will feature six or seven lead stories, on average, so no one headline lingers too long.

On profitability

  • CNN.com formally achieved profitability eight years ago, the company said; Time Warner doesn’t break out separate revenue figures for the unit. In an era when “monetization” is a buzz word among news organizations migrating to the Web, CNN.com has been able to capitalize on its traffic surge by keeping visitors on the site longer, thus exposing them to more ads.

    It’s also trying to make money from more experimental forays. During the inauguration coverage on Tuesday, for the first time, CNN.com Live, the Web site’s video arm, will include TV-style commercial breaks. Until now the only ads on the streaming service have been snippets that play before the main clip, and small sponsorship banners.

    Amid a recession, advertising sales are sluggish on television and online, putting a damper on CNN’s growth plans. But CNN.com is expected to remain flush; while Web revenue doesn’t match TV’s, the costs aren’t nearly as high.

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The Future of Newspapers — and online journalism

It’s no secret that the American newspaper industry is in trouble.

This New Yorker article by James Surowiecki from late December summarizes some of the problems:

  1. Advertising revenue is down. Way down. Department stores and real estate advertisers have been hit hard by the economic downturn. And online ads aren’t as lucrative as print ads.
  2. Fewer people subscribe to newspapers now. Surowiecki notes that “as a percentage of the population, newspapers have about half as many subscribers as they did four decades ago — but the Internet helped turn that slow puncture into a blowout.”
  3. Newspaper companies, critics say, have failed to innovate. Surowiecki says they’ve focused on the product — the newspaper — rather than the consumer.
  4. Ironically, papers like the New York Times are actually more widely-read now than, say, 10 years ago. But revenues are down since most readers are accessing the site online, for free.
  5. For solutions to the profit problem, Surowiecki points to a foundation/nonprofit model, bailouts from rich patrons, or increased online revenues.

Where do newspapers go from here?

Here are some resources for further reading:

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Notes from Thai PM Abhisit’s FCCT Speech

Abhisit Vejjajiva, Thailand’s recently-named Prime Minister, gave a speech at a Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand dinner last night. It was his first address given to the entire foreign press corps. In his 30-minute speech, the 44-year-old, British-born, Oxford-educated Abhisit said he would work to achieve reconciliation and social justice in a country that has seen ongoing political chaos.

Outside the event, which was held at Bangkok’s Intercontinental Hotel, a small group of opposition protesters staged a demonstration. Many in Thailand still support ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and his backers have recently held a series of protests around the city. They argue that Abhisit came to power last month through a “judicial coup” following the PAD’s closure of Bangkok’s airports and the subsequent banning of the Thaksin-linked People Power Party. One of the protesters held up a sign saying that foreign governments should boycott the upcoming ASEAN summit.

Inside the hotel’s ballroom, though, the atmosphere was relatively lighthearted.

Here are my notes from PM Abhisit’s speech:

On being Prime Minister

  • “I knew this would be an incredibly difficult job…and there is no doubt that the number one priority is to get the system to work again.”
  • “I know that my job is requiring a grand plan for reconciliation. But it won’t happen without justice. I intend to achieve justice in three key areas.”

Abhisit then outlined the following three points:

  • “The restoration of the rule of law” will be crucial. “I’m not just leaving everything to the police. I’m in the process of finding a few people…and I will ask them to help ensure that there’s a good overview of what’s happened.”
  • “There has to be justice through political reform. The red shirts say the constitution is dictatorial and must be reformed. The yellow shirts say they want a ‘new politics.’
  • “Most important: I will prove that my government will not discriminate; we will work for all Thais, no matter where they live…I will work for every single Thai…”

On political divisions in Thailand

  • “It isn’t true that elites and grassroots people have different ideas about what’s best for the country. It just isn’t true…On one side, they believe that democracy should be about majority rule…But on the other side, they expect democracy to return a government that practices good governance that is transparent and accountable. I will prove that both are possible.”

On international relations

  • Holding he ASEAN summit in Hua Hin, Thailand, will “send a clear signal: We are back in business.”

On Thailand’s south

  • “The situation over the last two years has been, at best, stable. But it hasn’t improved markedly…I intend to pass a law to set up an office with a minister for Southern affairs…”

In conclusion

  • “The character of Thai people is very clear: it is our resilience. We’ve come through so many crises in the past. There’s no reason we can’t do so again…We simply can’t ask for cooperation. We must earn it. I intend to earn it.”

Q&A session

On tourism and the rule of law

  • For the Q&A session following his speech, I asked Prime Minister Abhisit about tourism and security in Thailand. Following November’s airport closure, many Americans and other foreigners wonder if it’s safe to travel to Thailand. How will the Thai government communicate to the world that the rule of law still exists in Thailand?
  • PM Abhisit said that he expected tourism numbers to hold steady, and that “we’re on the right path, and determined to stay on this path.”

On lese majeste cases and the Web site crackdown

  • “The monarchy has immense benefits as a stabilizing force. We have respect for freedom of expression.” Web sites “shouldn’t allow illegal content…We will try to enforce the law while allowing freedom of expression.”

More on political divisions within Thailand

  • Abhisit noted that in the US, there are differences in political thought among people who live on the east and west coasts and the mid-west. But he asked whether this truly reflects a “fundamental difference,” and whether this means that people who disagree with one another “can’t live in the same country?” He noted that “democracy isn’t just about elections. It’s about respect and the law. Everyone must be equal under the law.”

On Myanmar (Burma)

  • He was asked what Thailand will do to bring about change in neighboring Myanmar. He said that “it’s time for change that will benefit the people and the government.”

On his musical tastes

And finally, on a lighter note, PM Abhisit was asked about his musical tastes and about some of his favorite music from 2008. He mentioned that he like the following bands:

  • The Killers
  • Oasis
  • Metallica
  • Guns N’ Roses
  • Arctic Monkeys

Media coverage

Here’s some media coverage of the event:

  • The Nation: “Grand reconciliation through social justice and rule of law : PM”
  • AFP: “New Thai PM vows to heal political rifts”
  • VOA News: “Thai Prime Minister Promises to End Country’s Political Conflicts”
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Man U: Now sponsored by the US Fed

There was a time when it bothered me that most Americans don’t appreciate football (soccer). I love the game. I always have. Why, I wondered, doesn’t everyone in the US think it’s the Best Sport Ever Created?

These days, though, I’m not hung up on the issue. As Dave Eggers wrote in his contribution to the excellent book The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, the game is doing just fine without America. Soccer doesn’t need the United States.

In an interesting twist, however, the US government has now effectively become the official sponsor of Manchester United, perhaps the world’s biggest and most successful soccer club.

How is that, you ask?

Well, in September, 2008, insurance behemoth AIG was given a US$85 billion bailout by the US federal reserve. AIG is Manchester United’s “principal sponsor,” and the AIG logo is emblazoned on the Man U shirt (see above). It’s a four-year deal in which AIG pays Manchester United US$102.9 million in total, or roughly US$25 million per year.

So, here’s some back of the envelope math: Man U pays Cristiano Ronaldo, 2008’s FIFA world player of the year, approximately US$9 million per year in wages as part of a five-year contract. So the AIG money — which now comes from what could be argued is essentially a nationalized US asset — represents almost three times Ronaldo’s yearly salary.

Who’d have seen that coming?

I might have to switch my allegiance from Arsenal to Man U. It would be the patriotic thing to do.