Tag: CNN

2023 in Review: Hard Launched

Posted on by Elise

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”

― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

On book release day at CNN in New York, reacting live to host Richard Quest in a Korean jimjilbang

It was the year of Taylormania, the year of ongoing wars and displacement, the hottest year on record (and climbing), the year of Ozempic, the year artificial intelligence advances demonstrated astonishing capabilities and triggered serious concerns. Life comes at you fast. Faster than we can humanly process, I think. The AI field is apparently advancing three times faster than Moore’s Law (in other words, doubling capabilities and speed every six months). In the US, the year started with 17 excruciating ballots to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House and it’s ending with him not even serving in the House anymore.

The podcasting industry (ahem, my industry) got clobbered. Companies folded. Spotify laid off hundreds and killed its in-house podcast units, and my longtime employers in public radio laid off swaths of talent. The film industry effectively went on hiatus this summer as both the unions for screenwriters and actors went on strike, which, living in Los Angeles, I saw in my backyard. I even joined in the picketing with my screenwriter partner, until the stalemate with the studios finally, finally came to an end.

My year was about giving my heart and soul to launching and touring my first book. Energy and love came back to me in surprising, rewarding, heartfelt ways. Superstars moderated book talks with me in cities across the country and most recently, in Hong Kong. People like my tax accountant, high school prom date, and my former and current bosses all showed up. I had the great honor of being invited on national broadcasts and podcasts and featured in magazines. I met and corresponded with thousands of readers directly, who shared similar desires to resist factory-issued beauty culture and stand up for bodily autonomy and liberation. Friends and readers, I cannot say thank you enough.

Photo credit: Sarah Makki for LAist

Favorite TED Talks: Research-backed ways to manage pain. Dr. Becky, on repair.

Best gift: Rob wrote me a song about all my paradoxes and performed it with his band at my birthday party

Favorite Film: Past Lives

Firsts: Picket line. Ketamine treatment. Book release. Book tour. Writing a film treatment. Mahjong.

Disappointments: Facebook page got hacked and they couldn’t restore years of photos and videos. Not enough newborn meetups! Have my friends all stopped having little babies?! My opinion piece for the New York Times got spiked at the last minute. I missed my BFF Sudeep’s wedding party in DC because of schedule conflicts.

New cities: Yosemite National Park, though I suppose it’s not a city. Ensenada in Baja California, famous for its blowhole. Isa observed this natural phenomenon sandwiched by Mennonites, which she didn’t even notice because she was so mesmerized by the blowhole.

Isa in Ensenada

Notable New Friend: Janet Yang, who is a force in the entertainment industry, the current head of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and walks the walk when it comes to Asian representation and excellence. She’s opened the doors to a network of badass Asian women that I admire and feel fortified and nourished by.

With Janet at one of her mahjong parties

Fave Tennis Player: Daniil Medvedev — he’s blunt, he’s precise, he is genuine. He’s had an incredible year. He has gawky fluidity and a smothering wingspan. All I’ve ever wanted is gawky fluidity. All I have ever been is gawky.

Favorite podcast episode: Radiolab’s episode, The Seagulls, on how same sex behavior is far more common in the animal kingdom than scientists thought. It’s evolutionarily adaptive. Here’s a WaPo story on the same idea.

Purchases and practices that fed me:

  • Iced Honey Lavender Latte from Love Coffee Bar, in LA’s Mar Vista neighborhood. So creamy and so delicious. It better be, because it’s $7.50, not counting the tip.
  • Making Ram-Don, the instant noodle+steak combo popularized in a crucial scene in Parasite. Maangchi teaches it best.
  • Xirena white button down, and I liked it so much I got the same shirt in black

In no particular order, this year I…

Was in the live audience of The Masked Singer, a longtime bucket list item
Released my first book
Toured the book in 14 cities
Sold the film rights to said book(!)
Started a documentary project related to the book
Went to the pop culture event of the year: The Eras Tour
Learned how to play mahjong (poorly)
Dislocated my shoulder (again)
Appeared on 38 podcasts (including three of them I host)
Met two K-pop groups at KCON at the Staples center
Trained 24 times with my personal trainer neighbor two houses down
Got my neck and back cracked three times
Tried ketamine at a sub-anesthetic dose
Threw three big parties, including Deck the Balls, my ball-themed potluck and attended lots of book parties for Flawless and all the food was delicious
Met a member of Mac Sabbath, the McDonald’s+Black Sabbath tribute band
Saw a lot of artists perform live: Depeche Mode, Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams, HAIM, Rain, XG, ATEEZ
Hosted a parade of friends at my house: Matt Thompson. And Bryan Tradup. And Pamela. And Lawrence and his family. And our staffer Mary. And my unstoppable actor friend Mari.
Returned to Asia for the first time in two years
Went to Washington DC five times
Read 28 books, reviewed a few of them
Attended two weddings: New York (Pamela and Jeff), DC (amy and Alli)
Flew 51,493 miles to 18 cities, five countries and spent 71 days away from home
Reunited with my brother in Hong Kong and visited my parents in Taipei

PREVIOUS YEARS IN REVIEW

2022|2021|2020 |2019 | 2018 | 2017 |  2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010|2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004

The Summit

Posted on by Elise
With Josh at the end of a long day, before our appearance on MSNBC

I slept about three hours a night for a few nights so the recovery feels like a really bad hangover. Matty is in such poor shape that (egad!) I had to take care of ALL THREE GIRLS AT THE SAME TIME yesterday. But gosh, I loved Singapore. The food, the expertly planned out thoroughfares, the rooftops, the polyglots, the sunshine, the pools available everywhere … if I were a super-rich expat I would totally live there! I mean, are you kidding? The place is so great that it seems fake. That is, if you like having malls at every corner to get whatever you need and no hassles whatsoever, and you’re okay with trading your civil liberties for it.

I did get lost in one of Singapore’s ubiquitous underground malls one time and I feared I would never be above ground again, and the irony was I went to the mall to buy sunscreen.

While Trump’s big accomplishment at the summit was the reset of the US-North Korea relationship (and world peace, of course), I completed the US cable news network hat trick (CNN-Fox-MSNBC) inside of about 12 hours! Anderson Cooper was probably the biggest star I got to appear with, something I was reminded of when we were in commercial break waiting to go live from a second floor hotel balcony when passersby on the sidewalk yelled, “ANDERSON COOPER!” He says they don’t usually have any material besides that. On the day of the summit, my friend Josh Lederman and I coincidentally got booked on Bret Baier’s show together, but the greatest coincidence was that for my last booking of the day, an hour with MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson, Josh was ALSO my studio buddy. Josh and I became friends in Laos and then reunited in Hawaii. This time around we got to hang in Singapore on rival cable networks. Journalism breeds some random and memorable friendships.

Because both spouse and I had to cover the bejeezus out of the summit, and my parents are off on some Canadian adventure, we brought the children and helper Yani with us to Singapore. Eva’s bestie Jonah of the Wan-Yau’s lives in Singapore so the Wan-Yau’s helped entertain the girls the whole time. Almost positive we will never be able to repay them for their friendship.

AAJA 2010: Present/Future of Online News

Posted on by Elise

“This is the most exciting time ever, to be in journalism. More people are consuming more content in more ways than ever.” -Mike Allen

This morning’s conversation featured Manav Tanneeru, wearer of many hats at CNN.com, Dave Morgan, Executive Editor of Yahoo! North America, Mike Allen of Politico and John Bracken, Director of New Media at Knight Foundation (Knight is one of Tribune’s generous benefactors, and we love Knight. Shoutout.)

Create Content with Value, Cause It’s Competitive Out There

The success of Politico (which started with 30 employees and is now nearing 200), is based on the premise, “What if we did a paper with only interesting stories?” The changing habits of consuming news (less loyalty to the major papers, brands) has been a benefit.

“Traffic is one of the attributes we consider, we don’t even tell our reporters our traffic because we dont want them to value that above our audience. We’re not there to serve a mass audience,” said Allen. “Think about ‘if i didnt write this story, or made this video, would I read it?” It’s amazing how many things in our news orgs dont meet that test. Before you invest time producing something, would someone email this, blog about it, would i book segment based on this? If you’re hitting a couple of those, you’re breaking through and creating value for your audience.”

Yahoo’s thinking about original content as well.  It’s aiming to change the content they provide. “Yahoo is traditionally a good aggregator, but if all we’re doing is distributing great partner content, then we’ll be replaced,” said Morgan. The company’s web strategy is moving more toward reporting for the audience and not just hosting the audience. A lot of people can do commodity information – score of the game, who won the election – what do you add to that? What is the unique content you provide.

“Everyone can do their job on a laptop, which means anyone else can too. If we can’t do it shorter and sooner, someone else will and should. That’s the great part about the way people consume news now, it’s almost completely a meritocracy. it used to be if you were the Miami Herald, LA Times, you had a guaranteed audience. We don’t have guaranteed time with the audience anymore,” said Allen.

It’s Not All About the Pageviews
Remarkable ideas are remarked on, remarkable content moves up. It’s wrong for traditional companies to think, how can I move up in search rankings instead of, what can i do to make irresistible content?

When we get too obsessed with what people want to know, are we shortchanging them on what they NEED to know? There’s little interest in non-US news in the US, but the world’s more connected than ever. Will there still be outlets to provide the important stuff that the audience isn’t naturally hungry for?

SEO Today

“In the foundation world, we get grant applications that say, our web traffic is this, this number of Twitter followers, etc… What are web metrics that matter? What does that really mean?”

If you’re a reporter you should not be thinking about SEO first, but still, everyone in the newsroom should have general understanding of core principles that allow something to be elevated. CNN chooses slugs very carefully, Daily beast used tags in URLs, etc.

Future Considerations

If you’re starting something, you’re a lot better off to start in niche because you have a more obvious revenue stream. You have a specific audience to target, i.e. Politico’s focus is on serving Washington insiders.

The two major considerations of Politico as they head into the future:

1.) Sideways traffic, and how to maximize it. (Audiences don’t go to homepages as much as specific story pages, much of the readership consumes content without typing in politico.com)

2.) Fewer people with desktops/laptops – how to move to mobile.

Generally, part of our task is to think about the holes being created at the same time all this exciting change is happening. “When there’s a news gap, it’s very significant. The newspaper has been the closest thing we have had to a community forum, and when that goes away, what replaces it?
Is the frame we have for local news still appropriate for the digital age? How do we carry it over to the web, when people are going to their own places for news?” said Bracken.

Local news is an area most ripe for innovation.. using tools already available is empowering. But news experiments won’t fill all holes. If Brooklyn was reported with just blogs and Twitter, there would be huge gaps in its portrayal. How do we dig deeper?

“If youve arrived at a winning model, enjoy it because it’s already changed.” -Yahoo!’s Dave Morgan