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Editor's note: As media executives from the Asia News Network convene in Beijing for their annual meeting, China Daily reporters talk to some of the participants, seeking their insights into the challenges Asian media face, working concepts, cooperation among ANN members and how they help to defuse regional political tensions.
Q1: How successful has the ANN been with the concept of Asia reporting on Asia?
Q2: Most ANN members are print media, so how are we facing the challenges in the new-media era?
Q3: Are there any other challenges facing the ANN?
Q4: How do ANN members plan to collaborate on reporting major stories?
Q5: How does the ANN try to defuse political tensions in this region?
Warren Fernandez, editor, The Straits Times
A1: I think it's come a long way from the time we started. We now share content across all our partners, and each paper is free to use it in any way, shape or form it finds useful. The Straits Times uses it both for pint, for online and for our website. It's very good to have a perspective from around the region, a view of how things are playing out in each country, which adds ... to the coverage.
A2: In the past, as a newspaper, we had only one point of contact with the readers in the morning, and for the rest of the day we had no link with them. But today, because they are looking at us on the website, on their phones, and at home on their tablets. I have multiple links to the readers. And as I'm constantly updating content, they are reading my content throughout the day. I see it as a tremendous opportunity, where we can grow audiences and increase engagement with them.
A3: We really have to find out how we can set up our content-sharing. It's not just about sharing news, it's also about sharing views, and interpreting what is going on in other parts of the world. I think the audience is very hungry for an Asian understanding of what is going on, no matter if it is in China, India, Saudi Arabia, or elesewhere in Asia. I think our audience wants to know how our own people make sense of an event. So we'd like to see more sharing of content at a higher and deeper level.
A4: We've made some efforts, whether it was an earthquake or another disaster somewhere, we tried to share information. We shared pictures, we tried to share video, and we can build up the network. We are now connected online to Instagram. ... So if we can get people connected to say, "hey do you have information on this", or "do you have a picture of this", or "can you share your video" we can bring all this together. Then video originators can tap the knowledge or local expertise and try to bring more content together and share this so we can have much richer coverage.
With the Olympics coming, my newspaper is proposing to work together with all our partners to focus on Asians. We are working with our partners to identify the top Chinese athletes, the top Korean athletes, the top Thai athletes and gold medal contenders. We want to do interviews and videos with them. When we pull it all together, we want to share it with all our partners.
A5: There will always be issues that call for our attention, and differences in perspective. I think the most important thing we can do is to write about it, to explain what's going on and to help people understand the perspective one country has on an issue. I think the most important thing is to give the different sides of an argument.
