Blue Highways Journal

Mr. Joke Returns to China

Our traveler returns to China this summer for a month of teaching, lecturing and learning at industry and university sites in Shanghai, Nanjing and Chongqing. Last summer, during his Fulbright to Beijing, he was once introduced to a formal conference as “Mr. Joke,” a moniker that has stuck. Following is the record of Mr. Joke’s reprise.

The China Red Tent

Every night in old “CQ” the people take to the streets. Even in this Seattle-Portland-like drizzle, they will not be deterred. Sidewalk cafes sprout like mushrooms, sheltered from the rain by bright red canopies. A single diner, her umbrella hanging from the rafters and chopsticks in hand, takes her repast, silhouetted by a bare lightbulb.

 

The Bridge Over the River Jia Ling

Looming out of the fog like the skeleton of some prehistoric dinosaur, the bridge soars out over water and thin air — the cantilevered construction project daring gravity and mass with its frozen leap of concrete and steel — dwarfing tiny figures of workers, while distant apartment towers on the far shore appear hauntingly through the mist.

Mr. Joke Returns to China

Our traveler returns to China this summer for a month of teaching, lecturing and learning at industry and university sites in Shanghai, Nanjing and Chongqing. Last summer, during his Fulbright to Beijing, he was once introduced to a formal conference as “Mr. Joke,” a moniker that has stuck. Following is the record of Mr. Joke’s reprise.

I am staying at a delightful little mid-town hotel in our neighborhood of Huixing (whee-SHING) where my third-floor room overlooks a garden three floors below. Each time I ask for the translation of the hotel’s name I get a different answer. I like them all:

The Heart’s Rest Hotel

The Heart is So Relaxed Hotel

The Comfort Hotel

The Take It Easy and Don’t Worry About Anything Hotel.

In any event, my accommodations are serenely protected from the hurly-burly of Baosheng Road’s rushing traffic. And since my spacious window-wall faces due north, i am treated to artist’s loft light all day, never any direct sunlight.

No one speaks English at the Heart’s Rest Hotel, but the eager staff wants to learn. Every morning at breakfast, along with my noodles and coffee, i am peppered with little notes in delightful Chinglish. Here’s what the front-office women left me today.

“The noodles isn’t good this morning?

We all love you

No thank you!

You can teach us something simple

May you have every day of happiness”

See? What’s not to love? They have consulted their front office computer for translations and are writing me notes every morning before their daily speech and warm-up out in the lobby: waitstaff, cooks in tall white hats and the front office women assemble out front and get their daily pep talk and finish with a rousing song.

Everywhere the clash of culture. Over the hotel PA system plays an elevator music version of Simon and Garfunkle’s “The Sound of Silence,” while outside on the sidewalk a Chinese drum band plays BOOM BOOM BOOM, (pause), BOOM BOOM BOOM in an ancient type of percussion: each musician, dressed in flaming Chinese red and waving red wrist-scarves, beats a small oval drum worn strapped around the waist. I’m told it the practice comes from Xanxi Province and it dates back to the time of Jesus. That’s China today.

 

MAY I TAKE YOUR PHOTOGRAPH?

Every day I try to take one single frame that is worthy of sharing. Just one. From Chongqing, deep in China’s vast interior, “Baby in a basket,” a mother with her only child at day’s end, catches my attention. The fan, the basket, the light. May I take your photograph? I ask.  She doesn’t answer, but tells her child, “Smile! Smile!”

Click.

 

NEW CHINA; OLD CHINA

One frame that says it all. A massive construction project stretches through the valley for miles, disfiguring the original lay of the land, dwarfing and threatening to consume a tiny subsistence farm, which at first glance, escapes your attention. Huddled beneath, the little farm appears unaware of the future. A farmer, ant-like, goes about his chores; another fishes in the muddy river; goats wander the shore. Everything is as it should be. For now. Where will these people go, I ask, when their farm is overrun. My students show me the new 32-story apartment complex towers in the central city, populated by villagers displaced when the university was built in 2002. So it goes.

 

NOT YE OLDE WAFFLE SHOPPE

A spacious bowl of noodles for breakfast hides a fried egg and spicy vegetables buried beneath. Twenty minutes later, cappuccino! And even later, a box of napkins.

This is Sichuan Province, where, if the food is not hot and spicy, then it is considered inedible.

My host tells me, “If it is not spicy, what is the meaning of life!?”

It is all worth the wait. In this sun-splashed little breakfast nook overlooking bustling Baoshan Road crowded with four lanes of beat up dump trucks, yellow cabs, motorbikes – and ever the wary pedestrian attempting the dash to the median between predatory steel and rubber…honking…honking…GET OUT OF MY WAY. Don’t you see? Here I come. How unimportant you are to me!

 

 

THE FUTURE IN THE CROSSWALK

She hovers there on the median, hawk-eyed, protective. Guarding her child. Her only child. Precious. Her family’s sole legacy. Swirling about them are the forces that would destroy this fragile flesh. But the mother is experienced and clever when it comes to this dangerous crossing. She knows her child is the future of China. Who knows? The scientist who will discover the cure for cancer, the environmentalist who will clear the polluted air –  why, maybe even the Chairman someday!

 

 

 

 

Mr. Joke Returns to China

Our traveler returns to China this summer for a month of teaching, lecturing and learning at industry and university sites in Shanghai, Nanjing and Chongqing. Last summer, during his Fulbright to Beijing, he was once introduced to a formal conference as “Mr. Joke,” a moniker that has stuck. Following is the record of Mr. Joke’s reprise.

Following my first lecture, I received this e-mail from one of the students  who called herself  “Snappy.”

Good evening,Jock.

Really nice to meet you and attend your lecture today.

And thanks for your humorous talking styles. 

I am Ye Yu,and also Snappy.

Remember me or not?

Hope you enjoy your visit to Chongqing,especially to our school.

It’s a hot day,isn’t it?

Please do take your umbrella or cap while staying outside.

Or,you will get sick.

 

It’s amazing to see that you have a camera with hands today.

And after class,I visit the official website of UNC.

Then,I recognize you are also an expert on photojournalism.

And  I am keen on photos,besides news photos.

Therefore, communicating with you about photos is an opportunity to learn something.

Taking pictures around me indeed memorizes my daily experiences.

 

Questions are follows.

Q1. What role do pictures play in newspaper?

Q2. What features does photojournalism possess,comparing to words? 

Q3. Is there any ethical principles while using photos in news stories, according to your experiences?(toughest one)

 

If you’re exhausted or your schedule is bombarded with task, you can reply to me later.

But I am 100% sure you will give responses to me because you promised me in today’s class even orally.

Really appreciated for reading my letter.

 

After your responses,I will reuse some of your opinions in my thesis.

Hope you won’t refuse my doing so.

Thanks a million.

 

Looking forwards to your reply.

yours,

Ye Yu 

 

Mr. Joke Returns to China

Our traveler returns to China this summer for a month of teaching, lecturing and learning at industry and university sites in Shanghai, Nanjing and Chongqing. Last summer, during his Fulbright to Beijing, he was once introduced to a formal conference as “Mr. Joke,” a moniker that has stuck. Following is the record of Mr. Joke’s reprise.

The bright-eyed kid named Zheng Ruolan stood up in the classroom of 50 and confidently grasped the mobile mic to ask her question.

“What is the future of community journalism in China — if we in China have no sense of community?”

I responded, “Do you think that the Chinese people should have a sense of community?”

Yes, she nodded.

“Is that something that you would like to see happen?”

Yes, her head bobbed up and down, eyes bright.

“Then BE the change in China you want to see,” I said, (apologies to Gandhi). “It is your generation that will shape the new China.”

THESE TEACHABLE MOMENTS

It is for teachable moments like this that we do what we do. And it is for moments like these that I returned to China this summer to teach community journalism.

Today I found myself in a sixth floor (no elevator, no air conditioning) classroom facing 50 enthusiastic journalism majors who peppered me with questions (in excellent English) during a two-hour introduction to community journalism in the U.S.

We flew here Sunday after the four-day workshops concluded in Shanghai, and as a new leg of the Chinese Community Journalism Roadshow took a 1,000-mile turn to the direct west, deep into the interior.

No shabby provincial outpost, Chongqing boasts 23 million residents and several universities, including my host academic unit, the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, where my colleague Associate Dean Li Ren teaches community journalism and where he and his students started their own community newspaper last year, the Huixing Journal,  as a teaching device, not unlike the Carrboro Commons or the Durham VOICE.

So we have much in common.

 

MY BAND OF ANGELS

Prof. Li’s newspaper staff is my core target group to teach. But it goes both ways. It is they who fetch me, escort me about town, instruct me in Chinese culture and social mores, ask endless big questions and basically hover around me like a band of angels, treating me like some beloved old uncle. How cool is that? Yesterday afternoon they showed up at my hotel for our neighborhood walk armed with bottled water and snacks. When we step off a curb at a traffic crossing, they are there to grab my elbow. I am totally spoiled.

Just as with my American students, I learned their names, Chinese or “American,” on the first day, by coming up with idiosyncratic identifiers…as in Liang Feng who has the most charming dimples, and her name “Liang” reminds me of my wife’s name, Lynne. And “Helen” reminds of an old song titled “Helen in my Dreams.” “Feather” dressed in a Native American outfit could easily pass as a Lakota. So there you go.

Then there’s “Karlla” the video diva from Harbin; photographer “Han,” the lone guy who I call “Dude;” “Deng,” who doesn’t use an American name but is as cute as the proverbial speckled pup in a red wagon; “Abe,” who is tall and looks like she could be a model; “Dong,” the lead editor who calls herself  “Betty” is thus Betty-Boop;  the art director “Zhang,” who personally drew me a campus map; “Chen Ying,” who is from Guangdong Province near Hong Kong; and “Wang,” who calls herself “Jeannie,” tall and sophisticated, wants to go into corporate law.

There is also a student video crew shadowing my every move. Making a documentary about the visit, Prof. Li tells me. Those kids include Tong, Ivy and Li, the latter of whom has worn a black designer T-shirt every day and thus is dubbed “Calvin.”

 

I had to travel halfway around the world to get to know better someone from just down the road.

Fellow American and newspaperman Bill Horner of Sanford, North Carolina, USA, had been recruited to come to China with me last week to lecture on the growth of community journalism.

It’s a topic he knows well. He’s the third-generation publisher of a “relentlessly local” and highly successful, money-making, award-winning daily newspaper in my home state. The Sanford Herald was founded in 1930 by his grandfather, Bill Horner Sr., the man Bill III idolizes and models after.

I thought I knew my neighbor pretty well. But it wasn’t until we got to Shanghai and I heard him speak that I realIzed the impact the newspaper and his grandfather had on him — and why China was so important to him.

“My grandfather traveled to over 100 countries,” Bill told the gathering over 100 local civic and governmental leaders at Shanghai University last week, “And he always said that China was his favorite country.”

Bill, along with wife Lee Ann, team-taught with me and Associate Professor Chen Kai of Beijing’s Communication University of China at a workshop on community journalism co-sponsored by the university and the Xinmin Evening News. When asked by one of the attendees at the workshop what was his favorite thing about China, Bill replied quickly, “the PEOPLE!”

And that made me think. Yes! The people of Shanghai. What an amazing resource. And it took my neighbor, Bill, to call my attention to that fact.

After one workshop, a young reporter thanked us, saying that before the conference he and his co-workers felt like they were “stumbling around in the dark” and that the workshop had been like a “bolt of lightning” to show them the way.

I’m happy to have been a small part of that light. And proud to be a better friend to my old friend Bill, who came to China to better know his long-dead and dearly beloved grandfather and namesake, and thus be closer to the man who was his mentor and role model.

Reflecting on his trip, Bill called it “a once in a lifetime experience.” And then upon thinking a second, he exclaimed, “No! A once in a LIFETIME experience!”

Thank you, Shanghai, for bringing me another friend.

Our traveler returns to China this summer for a month of teaching, lecturing and learning at industry and university sites in Shanghai, Nanjing and Chongqing. Last summer, during his Fulbright to Beijing, he was once introduced to a formal conference as “Mr. Joke,” a moniker that has stuck. Following is the record of Mr. Joke’s reprise.

It’s a long way from Sanford to Shanghai. And Sanford Herald Publisher Bill Horner could only dream of ever visiting his grandfather and namesake’s favorite country.

Yet there he was, 9,000 miles from home, strolling with wife Lee Ann along the vividly illuminated waterfront of Shanghai, touring the ancient sites of the Middle Kingdom and rubbing shoulders with newspaper people, like himself, from half a world away.

“A community is all about relationships,” he told a seminal conference on community journalism, held at Shanghai University, May 15-18. Using photographs from the April 2011 tornado as an example of how his newspaper helped his community, Bills said, “We have to be connected together as a people in order to survive events like this tornado.”

Bill’s presentation was yesterday’s keynote address at the “Workshop on Sino-US Community Media: co-sponsored by the Community Edition of the Xinmin Evening News and Shanghai University.

As Bill’s warm-up act, I tried to provide a broad overview on the state of American community journalism. As has been well documented, US community papers have survived the Great Recession in far better shape than their big-city cousins – a fact not lost on the Chinese. That, and the exciting news of Warren Buffet’s putting his money where his faith is – in communities with a strong sense of community.

My colleague, Associate Professor Chen Kai (Karen) of the Communication University of China, served as my translator for yesterday’s event, but she had lost her voice to laryngitis, and was forced to deliver the translations in a hushed whisper. This rendered my message all the more compelling and somehow intimate, as conference-goers leaned forward to catch her words.

.

RE-ENTRY OF THE 600-LB. GORILLA

The issue of press freedom was everywhere in this room, an uninvited guest, the 600-lb. gorilla.

During a Q & A session, a Chinese journalist asked Bill Horner, “Do you have to obey the orders of the regulator?”

I could see Bill taking his time to compose his response. Then he said evenly, “In our country, there is no regulator.”

You could hear the proverbial pin drop.

• Other speakers delivered impassioned addresses, and this one, translated for me, struck a real chord. Prof. Li Liang Rong of Shanghai’s highly –respected J-school, Fudan, U. told the gathering that while the current state of community newspapers in China was in its infancy, the main problem is that many of such newspapers are illegal, according to the Chinese system of newspaper regulation through licensure. (I’m told that the government isn’t issuing any more newspaper licenses, in an attempt to control what’s already out there.)

Rong insisted the way forward should be nurtured by local governments allowing these local papers to grow and flourish. This would mean a fundamental change in existing press law in China.

Currently, if local governments disapprove of the content of the newspaper, that government can fire the reporter, the editor and even shut the paper down.

Knowing this sword of Damocles is hanging over them, Chinese editors and journalists are prone to self-censor.

Thus, he said, the future of community newspapers in China remains tenuous at best. Nevertheless, it is a worthy goal because he believes in the core mission of the community paper to help build community and serve as a “platform for deliberative democracy.”

Then he told a story that illustrates graphically the lack of community  in Chinese society.

He told us that he has lived in his apartment for 10 years but doesn’t know his neighbor across the hall.

Mr. Joke Returns to China

Our traveler returns to China this summer for a month of teaching, lecturing and learning at industry and university sites in Shanghai, Nanjing and Chongqing. Last summer, during his Fulbright to Beijing, he was once introduced to a formal conference as “Mr. Joke,” a moniker that has stuck. Following is the record of Mr. Joke’s reprise.

 

China stretches across my couch — from Xingjian’s arid deserts in the west to the prosperous cities of the south, to the political heart of Beijing in the north, to the glittering neon-lit waterfront of modern Shanghai in the east— the old National Geographic map sprawls on the pillows like a crazy quilt piece of art, punctuated by highlighted blobs of colors marking few places this traveler has been. And the map, its vastness and mystery, tells me, ‘Stranger, how little you know of me… and what challenges and adventures await!”

The Back-Story

What am I doing in China — a former small-town newspaper owner-publisher turned University lecturer?

What could I possibly have to offer the world’s largest country, the second largest economy, and a land of 1.3 billion people, force-fed by a state-controlled media system?

Therein lies the tale.

When in 2008 I received an email from an unknown Chinese scholar in Beijing requesting a year of study with me at Chapel Hill, I thought to myself, “Why bother?” and dismissed the notion…until the following year when Associate Professor Chen Kai wrote again informing me this time that UNC  had accepted her as a Visiting International Scholar, and that she intended to spend the year studying American community newspapers, and that I had been assigned as her mentor!

Why me? Because she had stumbled across my book, “Community Journalism, the Personal Approach,” in her university library (the Communication University of China in Beijing).

Why Community Journalism? Because even with a state-controlled media system, community newspapers are being launched, under the radar, illegally and in something of a shadow media ecosystem. And with the burgeoning growth of the Web and blogs, there is much interest in the development of a local news reporting — as a new revenue stream for existing newspapers, as a way to generate new interest in local affairs, and most importantly, as a way to achieve that old and elusive Chinese goal: the Harmonious Society.

In the US, we would call that “civic engagement,” namely that individual citizens realize their single importance, become involved, and

In the U.S., we call that “civic engagement,” the process by which individuals embrace their role as stewards and caretakers of their local affiars. Of course, we believe that an informed citizenry is vital to the maintenance of a free society…to the maintenance of a robust community.

But there’s the rub, isn’t it? The concept of “community” is largely unknown to many Chinese, especially in the cities where growth from rural areas is exploding. And the concept of the “watchdog press” is also foreign to their way of thinking.

 

Into the Breach

So how could I say no?

Prof “Karen,” as she called herself, arrived on campus in August 2009 with her 12-year-old son, Coco (Frank) — and almost immediately we began targeting what I call “Great Good Papers” across the state.

Over the course of the year we visited the Chapel Hill News, the Daily Tar Heel, the Carrboro Citizen, the Shelby Star, the Sanford Herald, the Spring Hope Enterprise,  the Fayetteville Observer, the Washington Daily News, the Greenville News-Reflector, the Carolina Weekly Group in Huntersville and the Pilot of Southern Pines. At each paper, she conducted exhaustive interviews with publishers, editors and reporters. During that time she also accompanied me on my annual summer Community Journalism Roadshow as I led workshops at the Caswell Messenger in Yanceyville, the Montgomery Herald in Troy and the Louisburg Journal.

Prof. Karen’s extensive observations, notes and photos turned into the seminal book, published in Mandarin last year, titled “Introduction to Community Journalism in the U.S.”  by the Nanfang Daily Press. I am honored to have served as project director and having written the foreword.

I threw myself into the project because I came to believe that such a book would fundamentally alter the landscape of Chinese understanding of community journalism.

According to Prof Chen, Chinese professionals had gotten their stereotyped and inaccurate impression of American newspapers only anecdotally and indirectly — not directly from visiting American scholars and practitioners— especially those with whom they could establish personal relationships. And about community newspapers, they knew almost nothing!

The publication of that book led directly to a Fulbright last summer to Beijing, where I taught at three universities and met with industry leaders.

“Our” book also led us to another scholar, intrigued by the notion of community journalism. Associate Professor Li Ren, associate dean of the School of Global Journalism at Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing, contacted us.

And soon a full-blown Skype relationship had been initiated —not just between we three, but also between our classes. Live Skyping across 9,000 miles, face to face with fellow students, journalists and colleagues.

To my way of thinking, Skyping represents a stunning life-altering way of communicating, teaching and learning. To my knowledge, our Sino-U.S. student-to-student Skyping sessions were the first-of-its-kind in our school.

All of this leads to the summer of 2013 and our current lecture trip, headlined by the inclusion of Sanford Herald Publisher Bill Horner III and his wife, Lee Ann.

Summer Roadshow 2012
Burnsville, July 9

 

Each summer for the last 12 years, the Johnny Appleseed Community Journalism Summer Roadshow has brought “Journalism 101″ to 175 small newspaper newsrooms across the state from Murphy to Manteo (from the Cherokee Scout to the Outer Banks Sentinel). Led by Jock Lauterer, founding director of the Carolina Community Media Project, the Roadshow is a public service outreach initiative supported by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill. This month, the ol’ perfesser visits the little mountain town of Burnsville where a sure-’nuff newspaper war is going on, and the new kids in town have already won national kudos.

 

“Great journalism happens in Podunk.”

When Jonathan Austin says that, he looks you right in the eye, a little ironic grin playing on his face, as he nods his head slightly, watching to see if you ‘get it.’

Austin, 51, along with his wife, Susan, is living that mantra. No sooner had they launched their dream project community weekly in the quaint N.C. mountain town of Burnsville than all hell broke loose.

In a nutshell: they busted the county sheriff’s dept.

The lead headline of the Yancey County News, Vol. 1, No.1, dated Jan. 13, 2011, read:

YANCEY VOTE FILES SEIZED FOR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION

Their fearless watchdog reporting has not gone unnoticed. In only their second year, the Austins have garnered unprecedented national attention for their exposure of corrupt officers in the county sheriff’s office.

This spring the Austins were honored with two of the nation’s top awards for ethics in journalism: the Ancil Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism and the Edward Willis Scripps Award for distinguished service to the First Amendment.

Pretty heady stuff for a 15-month-old fledgling weekly.

“I was shaking,” Jonathan concedes when he got the congratulatory email.  And he adds with satisfaction, “We beat out Bloomberg.”

At a 1,200 circulation start-up weekly. A mom ‘n’ pop shoestring operation with two dogs in the front office. How cool is that.

Jonathan concludes, “It’s been the most fantastic and energizing year and half of my career.”

A STANDOFF IN A TWO-NEWSPAPER TOWN

To be fair, when the Austins launched their paper in the winter of 2011, theirs wasn’t the only paper in town. The Yancey Common Times Journal, is a widely read 7,000-circulation award-winning and respected weekly.

The folks at the Times Journal are confident they will weather the competition.

“We’ve been through a few newspaper wars,” says Times News Editor Jody Higgins, who herself launched the Yancey Common Times back in 1990. Her paper eventually merged with the competition Yancey Journal in 1995, and now is majority-owned by Bob Tribble of South Carolina under the heading of TRIB Publications, Inc. However, keeping it local, both Higgins and Times Journal publisher Pat Randolph have part ownership in the paper.

And, mind you, the Times Journal as won their share of awards too. Jody told me, via e-mail. “I just counted the awards on our walls — there are 30. But the “award” I like best is a poster (with handprints, names and drawings) up there with the real awards from the K-1 class at Bee Log Elementary thanking us for teaching them why a community newspaper is important. I also received the Governor’s Volunteer Award for assisting with teaching journalism at the high school and for writing a grant to get equipment and set up a broadcast journalism program for the high school.”

However, when it comes to hard-hitting investigative reporting, the two papers take a vastly different approach; the Austins have been far more aggressive in their watchdog-style reporting and are willing to risk it all to report negative details about those in power. Predictably, not everyone in Yancey County is a fan of the News’ take-no-prisoners style of community journalism.

 

TAKING THE RISK

Be that as it may, the Scripps-Howard judges praised the Austins, writing that the Yancey County News had “exposed absentee ballot fraud, ethics violations, abuse of arrest powers and the theft and illegal sale of county owned firearms – all during the newspaper’s first year of operation and despite risks both financial and physical.”

A 30-year journalist who also served as an Army Reserve drill sergeant, Jonathan keeps his “libel insurance” locked and loaded by his office door. “And I know how to use it,” he says convincingly.

The Scripps-Howard judges continue: “It is clear that the Yancey County News has had a significant impact on the rural North Carolina community it serves  (pop 17,000). In the short time since its founding, the newspaper has established itself as a check on local government by providing its readers insight into the practices of their elected officials.”

The Ancil Payne Award for Ethics judges called the Austins’ work “classic public interest journalism at great personal and economic risk. Shortly after it began publication, the paper reported a state investigation into elections fraud involving the sheriff’s dept. that other local papers had ignored. Also in 2011, the paper reported that the chief deputy, who many revered for his tough-on-crime attitude, was pawning county-owned firearms for personal gain. To take on the powers that be in a rural community where citizens are afraid to speak out against local law enforcement is very brave. To stake your livelihood and personal safety on it is above and beyond. This is an extraordinary example of serving the public good.”

MEET MADDY AND GUS

Just off the square and across from the ice cream shop, the little office of the Yancey County News stands modestly, with its wide-open front door, blocked only by a baby-gate to keep the two “newshounds” Maddy and Gus, from straying out of the newsroom. Hardly the sort of storefront you’d expect from national award winners. Or maybe it’s exactly as it should be.

I had to ask Jonathan, Why Burnsville? There’s already a good paper here. But it had been a dream of his for 30 years, he said; his late dad lived here, and while Jonathan worked at the Hendersonville Times-News, the Statesville Record and Landmark and did a stint with the bigs at CNN.com in Atlanta — in the back of his mind there was always that dream cooking….how about starting a feisty little kickbutt weekly up in Burnsville?

But he’d have to have a soulmate and a partner to make that fly. Susan was that key. They’d been school pals and best friends forever. When their first marriages fell apart, well…guess what happened. Susan, a skilled designer and former construction engineer, could be the ‘details person’ keeping the books, running the front office — while Jonathan could be the go-for-broke reporter and creative genius.

The formula has worked.  The News is a handsome “long tabloid” format paper, printed in Boone by the Watauga Democrat, with large attractive front page photos depicting “relentlessly local” content such as the high school prom night, a monster bear killed by a local bow-hunter, the Relay for Life event, a big truck wreck or a banner photo of the high school’s FFA club off to a national convention.

GROWING THE PAPER

So what’s next for the Austins?  How can they ever top 2012? I’m sure they’d like to grow their circulation and advertising, because after all the awards and glory, a newspaper is a business with a bottom line just like any other business.

But I have an idea that the Austins also need to spread their mantra of “great journalism in Podunk.” So I’m having them come to UNC this fall to talk to my community journalism students. And the Austins need to be a part of next spring’s North Carolina Newspaper Academy; perhaps a session on fearless investigative reporting on the local level.

Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Stay tuned. I’m sure we’ve not heard the last of Jonathan and Susan Austin. Oh, and Maddy and Gus.

THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 2012

Headline: Mr. Joe to Sanford! A huge success with daughter Kate, who is a delightful kid, translating so effortlessly – and Publisher Bill Horner III going way beyond just being hospitable, spending three hours with us, answering all of Zhou’s many detailed questions – and then taking us and a crew of Heralders, including fave Editor R.V. Hight, ad director Gina Eaves and circulation director Jeff Ayers out to lunch for more substantive talk.

What a day!

Back at the paper office, Zhou bore down, asking more pressing questions of Bill, as Zhou seeks to establish his newspaper in Shanghai as more successful pioneering model for China. His paper really is a beta site and he thinks the American community paper success story has lessons for him.

At the end of the day he invites Bill and me to Shanghai next summer for more talk, perhaps even a conference on Community Journalism. How cool is that?

I was particularly gifted to be able to spend one hour down and back  conversing with my new pals: Mr. Joe in the front seat and daughter Kate in back, leaning forward between us, translating our chatter with ease.

It was on the return trip to Greensboro, while brainstorming, that we came up with the notion of setting up a Sister Newspaper Exchange between Zhou and Bill’s respective newspaper groups.

So while today could have been just a  “one-and-done,” instead now it’s turning into one for the ages.

When I asked Bill what his take on the experience was, here is what he sent back:

“‘Delightful’ doesn’t begin to describe the time with Mr. Joe and Kate during their visit here with Jock. Mr. Joe’s earnest enthusiasm for finding out how newspapering works for us, along with Kate’s buoyant translation, was energizing. There was both a genuine interest in understanding how things work “over here” and a realistic expression of the parameters under which Mr. Joe was bound to operate back home in China. The differing languages, culture and perspective didn’t dampen our time together, but rather gave life to it. It was an exhilarating experience.

Immediately after they left, we were all talking in our shop about how enjoyable it’d be to do it again – and soon. Jeff, my circulation manager, told me later in the afternoon that he’d love to have “just a day” to spend talking to Mr. Joe about marketing newspapers and reaching potential readers.

We’re not sure what’ll transpire next, but knowing that Kate will be in college nearby, and knowing Mr. Joe’s keen interest in Professor Karen’s book, has us hopeful for more time with Mr. Joe in the future.”

Bill Horner III
Publisher, the Sanford Herald, Sanford, N.C.