Danwei Picks

The state media's performance on the earthquake story

Danwei Picks is a daily digest of the "From the Web" links found on the Danwei homepage. A feed for the links as they are posted throughout the day is available at Feedsky (in China) or Feedburner (outside China).

State TV on Speed: On the Newsweek blog, Jonathan Ansfield writes about the pressure on CCTV to keep up with their colleagues in other Chinese media organizations and the unprecedented transparency of the government's handling of media during this earthquake crisis.


CCTV International brings new lows in top priorities: CCTV International still follows protocol in its nightly news-cast, leading with a bizarre phone call between Hu Jintao and US President Bush, reports Hugh Jorgen at the Zhongnanhai blog.


Qian Gang: 3 crucial days: From the China Media Project:

The China Media Project has been inundated with phone calls from journalists trying to reach our director, Qian Gang, author of The Great Tangshan Earthquake (唐山大地震). Unable to answer all interview requests, Qian Gang has issued [a] response to the Wenchuan earthquake, published in today's edition of Southern Metropolis Daily.


Rescue teams at epicenter, 60,000 missing: From the BBC:

Chinese rescue teams have reached the epicentre of Monday's devastating earthquake, Wenchuan county, where an estimated 60,000 people remain missing.
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The Eurasian Face : Blacksmith Books, a publishing house in Hong Kong, is behind The Eurasian Face, a collection of photographs by Kirsteen Zimmern. Below is an excerpt from the series:
Big in China: An adapted excerpt from Big In China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising A Family, Playing The Blues and Becoming A Star in China, just published this month. Author Alan Paul tells the story of arriving in Beijing as a trailing spouse, starting a blues band, raising kids and trying to make sense of China.
Pallavi Aiyar's Chinese Whiskers: Pallavi Aiyar's first novel, Chinese Whiskers, a modern fable set in contemporary Beijing, will be published in January 2011. Aiyar currently lives in Brussels where she writes about Europe for the Business Standard. Below she gives permissions for an excerpt.
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