Changing China
Giant on the move
Surely I won’t get nominated to the Central Committee too?
I’ve been a China watcher for much longer than I’ve been a journalist — Chinese language, literature, history and politics were my passions and the objects of my academic study before I ever found my vocation. And for a watcher of modern Chinese politics, few texts in my 30 years in the field have been as important as the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party.
With a circulation of three to four million, it is one of the world’s biggest papers; with its direct ties to the top Party leaders, it has long been the way official policy shifts have been announced or hinted at.
When I was Reuters China bureau chief from 1991-94, the unalterable start of every day’s routine was to study the newspaper from front to back, trying to piece together the hints contained in an article, an editorial, in the choice of words or in the selection and placement of pictures.
This was the practice of journalists and scholars from the very founding of the newspaper in 1948, a year before the People’s Republic of China was formally established.
Even today, China watchers and journalists believe little gets into the newspaper by accident
Imagine my surprise, then, when my own face appeared on page 17 of today’s edition above an interview on Reuters coverage of the Olympics.
In the old days, such a presentation might have meant I was destined for high office — today, it just signifies how China has changed its attitudes towards the foreign media.
Just 5% make it — or, more how the sausage gets made
To bring you the stunning choreography of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, Reuters photographers and photo editors do a complex dance of their own — and then a brutal Darwinian whittling down to select just the best and most iconic images to send to subscribers.The team shot a staggering 18,000 frames during the four hours of the ceremony. Only about 850 shots made it to the “wire” — our file of photos to customers. That’s just five percent. Less than a 10th of those were selected for our web slideshow and a typical newspaper subscriber might only print one two or three shots from the selection.
In a brutally competitive world like this, nothing can be left to chance.
One of our most experienced Olympic photographers and editors, Gary Hershorn, attended rehearsals of the opening ceremony in order to plot out key moments that simply had to be captured.
That advanced planning helped the team of 12 photographers in the stadium, nine immediately outside and six in Tiananmen Square and on the Great Wall get ready to tell the story in images through a mixture of bread-and-butter set-up shots and imaginative compositions that matched the dreamy romance of the show itself.
The 12 in the stadium had set positions from the roof catwalk down to the stage and scattered all around the Bird’s Nest. Four were directly cabled into the editors’ computer system (and, in fact, we had two senior editors, including the global head Tom Szlukovenyi, in the stadium itself to do on-the-scene selection of the key shots); the rest sent their computer disks to the editors via runners.The gargantuan task of editing the file was split between the editors in the venue, six editors and 15 processors in the main press centre and a further specialist desk in Paris that selected photographs of VIPs for magazine use.
This type of volume would have been absolutely impossible in the days before digital photography -18,000 prospective shots would have taken some 600 rolls of film, a physical and financial impossibility!
After the dramatic spectacle, the grind of chronicling 204 delegations began. Editors made sure we had shots of the delegation from every place we have clients as well as every place that was somehow newsworthy.
Does my body double really drink more than me?
I’m at the Olympics in my role as Editor-in-Chief — that means I’m doing some journalism and some “representational” work as the senior person from Reuters News and Thomson Reuters in Beijing for the Games.
In the representational role, I was invited to Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state banquet along with a score of other media leaders — among them News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, the BBC’s Mark Thompson, AP’s Tom Curley, Russia’s Rianovosti’s Chief Editor Svetlana Mironyuk and Dr. Dinh The Huynh, member of Vietnam’s Communist Party Central Committee and Editor-in-Chief of the Nhan Dan newspaper.
Held in the vast and imposing Great Hall of the People off Tiananmen Square, the banquet was an amazing opportunity to see Chinese leaders in a rare informal pose and to chat with a variety of current and former world leaders.
“Reuters? I have no problem with Reuters, but of course I’m out of all that now,” former U.S. President George H.W. Bush said to me.
Singapore’s Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew asked me sharply if we’d report the Olympics fairly. I replied that China’s Xinhua news agency had already quoted my assertion that we would! (I think if you read all our coverage you’ll see that we are applying our usual, global standards of good journalism to everything we do here).
The banquet itself — each large round table graced with a pair of huge peacocks carved out of radishes — went off with military precision, plates presented and then whisked away to make sure that everyone would get out in good time to do some business in the afternoon before the grand opening ceremony.
I was told that two practice banquets had been held, one five days before and one 10 days before, to get the timing and the presentation exactly right.
How the sausage gets made
As the world waits for the opening ceremony to inaugurate the Beijing Olympics in a blaze of fireworks and pageantry, I thought I’d give you a peek behind the scenes at the temporary newsroom that will give you the story throughout the Games.
Situated in the main press centre in the Olympic Village, the centre is home to the more than 30,000 journalists and support staff from the world’s media who gather to cover the games.
The halls are filled with impromptu reunions of people who last saw each other at the last summer Olympics in Athens or the last winter ones in Turin.
Reuters has been covering the Olympics since the modern Games began in 1896, so we’re well prepared for the logistical puzzle that will spit out 150-200 stories, 1,000 photographs and many minutes of video highlights every day, along with a complete run of results.
Our team is a mix of sport experts, China experts and all-around journalists who bring myriad talents to bear on a story that runs from results to human interest to politics and economics. And, of course, the technical geniuses who make sure that the temporary set-up in Beijing works as well as, if not better than, our permanent bureaux around the world.
As soon as the actual competitions begin, the newsroom will house only a steady crew of editors while the reporters and photographers will fan out to various events in a complex logistical dance. With 28 sports, 302 events and demanding subscribers interested in every country represented and nearly every athlete competing, the combinations are mind boggling!
((Photos: Laszlo Balogh/Reuters. From top: the newsroom, planning photo coverage, editors at work)
Add my vote to Emma’s. These are the things that separate the pros from the poseurs. Go team Reuters!
The open secret of doping in sport
Balazs Koranyi was an Olympic semi-finalist at the 1996 and 2000 Games for Hungary and since 2004 has been a Budapest-based correspondent, covering mainly political and business news. He will cover the Beijing Games for Reuters.
I was first offered performance-enhancing drugs in 1998, after breaking the Hungarian 800-metre record and making the European championship finals.
Doping in sports is less hidden than many people think. Everyone suspects drug use is widespread, but what they see less is how athletes treat the subject as a regular, everyday part of the game.
In my five years on the international athletics circuit, I ran into the issue time and again, and had to make some tough choices.
A sports doctor and a coach I had never worked with called me in separately for chats and pushed me to get involved. They told me the risks were nil and results immediate. I was promised the drugs would shave a second off my time and were undetectable.
When I asked about health risks, they said modern drugs were safe and I had nothing to worry about. For good measure, I was told that only losers stayed clean and anybody who is somebody used something.
The push was strong but not vehement. Unlike many runners in eastern Europe before the collapse of communism, who were required to use drugs if they wanted to be on national teams, I did have a choice.
Hi Balzas,I am a social science researcher investigating doping in sport. I’m intrigued by the story you have to tell and I’d love to talk to you about your experiences in more detail. Please email me to discuss further.Thanks.
Hey you never know!!
(Great tidbit… that was hilarious…)