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In the Hutong
Good grief, Thursday already?
1317 hrs.
In a recent profile of Michael Lewis, arguably the leading long-form journalist of our age, New York magazine’s Jessica Pressler quotes her subject on the gulf between journalists and the people and organizations they cover:
It is amazing how much contempt there is for the professional media that surrounds any given enterprise,” he says. “I find it all the time. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs think the tech journalists are all stupid. The sports people think that about the sports journalists. They don’t say that to the sports journalists, because they want the sports journalists to be nice to them. But the level of contempt is very high.
As someone who is called upon to bridge the gap between companies and the media who cover them, I can attest that this contempt, mixed with more than a little fear, is a problem here in China as well. In defense of the companies, part of that contempt is self-inflicted: any journalist who cheapens himself and his trade by taking payment or expensive gifts from a company he covers earns his full measure of scorn and contempt, and splatters his fellow journalists in the process.
But it is not always justified, in particular in the case of the global media. There are hacks in every crowd, to be sure, but China has been blessed with a crop of some of the most astute, erudite, and talented people ever to face a daily deadline. I challenge anyone to impugn the intelligence or abilities of people like Andrew Browne at The Wall Street Journal; Tania Branigan of The Guardian, Louisa Lim of NPR, James Kynge (formerly of the Financial Times), Charles Hutzler of the Associated Press, Barbara Demick of The Los Angeles Times, or anyone working behind the veil of anonymity at The Economist, including their most recent addition, Gady Epstein. And for every one I mention, I am skipping a half dozen of equal or greater talent, as well as those who have been here and left, like the brilliant James Fallows.
Granted, engaging with foreign correspondents can be painful at first: there is much to explain about one’s business and industry, because most of these reporters are by necessity generalists. One executive complained to me that it was a lot of trouble to explain the basics of their business to someone who had not bothered to do the research ahead of time. My response to him was that as bright as these folks are, they are also under the constant gun of a deadline and cannot always afford to do the research ahead. But a stupid question is a golden opportunity: when a foreign correspondent asks you to explain your business in your terms, it doesn’t get any better than that. And nowhere do those opportunities crop up more often than here in China, especially Beijing.
A generation ago, the “best and the brightest” young stars of international journalism made their careers covering the Vietnam War. Today, many are making or sustaining their careers by covering the rise of China. If your company is not taking advantage of that opportunity, (and plenty of both Chinese and foreign companies are blowing that one terribly,) what excuse do you have?
Silicon Hutong 
Do we even have to make any mention of the manifold ways the Chinese government blows it in regards to international media?
Not necessary. Beijing still approaches international communications and public diplomacy as a one-way spew of self-aggrandizement, bluster, and agitprop. What is amazing to me, though, is how many companies still do the same thing. It will be hard for Party propagandists to accept that they have to at least address if not respond to the concerns of their audiences. Nether western multinationals nor Chinese SOEs should still be using such an approach three decades after it became passé.