Free More News

Obtaining news. Channels are limited at the moment.

It is a technical issue. I hope the computer can automatically spot news of value according to the standard we put in, and auto-search for details for us. In this way, we will take lead of the traditional media. Then the man power can just do quality control after everything is automated.

There are two problems:

a. The life cycle of news in traditional media is short. The news is not discussed in-depth before the next story occupies all public attention.
b. The taste of the public influences the focus of news on traditional media: The semi-entertainment, semi-scientific news is most popular.

We face the more or less same problem with traditional media. However, we have been on Twitter longer, we know what's the prime time for the twitterers to consume tweets and what kinds of tweets are more "tweetable", how to contain the largest possible amount of information within the shortest text. The news we send out are all highly "retweetable", with complete meaning within a single tweet.

The states, the press and the readers share responsibilities. First of all, in China, politically sensitive issues will be suspended from follow-up release or banned from release from the very beginning. As a result, continuance of news is poor in China. Second, the press was commercialized to follow successful business models to maintain competition in the industry. To retain readers and advertisers, they will have to put up news that fits into the readers' taste. Last, but not least, the readers in China tend to be interested in what others are interested in.

When I graduated from university in the US, I wanted to experiment with something new in media. There were four of us. Some of us are now back in China and some are not. We were doing an online-magazine website at the beginning. However, we were shut down because our report on the Tibet issue in April, 2008. We did not restart until April 2009, when we realized that Twitter can be a feasible tool in China to carry on what we want to do.

We provide many such channels. We archive news from websites both home and abroad; we translate news from foreign websites; we have media friends who ask us to publish news that's not allowed in traditional media; we publish news provided by volunteers after verification with friends in the media industry; we take initiatives to contact people who have first-hand information about an incident and put up updates for them (such as the Shishou incident). We set up Google News alerts. We also look up the US Geological Survey for information on natural disasters.

The government prefers that no one knows anything so that the government will have more freedom to do whatever they want. Public attention frequently cause them trouble.

It does not happen a lot. We mainly arouse public interest or attention by putting up news that's prompt, real, and concerns everybody.

For example, in the Feng Zhenghu Case, we've been following the story for a while. When we noted that Feng Zhenghu's coming back, we contacted twitterers who went to Shanghai to welcome Feng's returning to China. They used the account @fmnlive to live document the whole process. Then we use the @freemoren account to retweet the important updates.

It depends. When news breaks out abruptly, we will wait to see if there would be any follow up for the news. Sometimes the news is on a pause, sometimes it disappears.

There's no exact number available. When the readers sleep, we will sleep too. Even if it's a piece of big news, we tend to wait to release it until the next morning after the readers have woken up.

To confirm what's the real situation at the frontline.

We have a double filter system. First, we will look through the news and select part of it. Second, we will analyse it from a reader's perspective, to see if the news influences their life and if they will be interested to know (e.g. topics such as food security, environment pollution) . After that, we will release the most important news at prime time. We also prioritize news that suddenly breaks out in the day. They will be released right after the verification.

We no longer actively update the website after it was shut down. There are about 5,000-6,000 who subscribe to our RSS feed, which is our twitter news of the day. For websites, I don't think there's a lot of Wu Mao on Twitter. (Wu Mao refers to "the fifty cent party,” the nick name of commenters who are hired by the Chinese government that receive 50 cent per comment to release positive information about the government.) Most of our followers just receive news from our Twitter stream. So it's not a big concern of ours.

We recruit volunteer students who are interested in our work by offering to write recommendation letters as well as to offer study abroad advice.

The word-of-mouth effect. We provide news of value then the old twitterers will build trust with us, and refer us to their new followers.

Before our website was shut down, it was Google search. Some influential citizen journalists in China, such as Lian Yue, will also bring in huge traffic by referering to us in their tweets/blog posts.

On the website and at t.sina.com. Those who cannot climb over the Great Firewall will join t.sina.com. We are a couple months later than others on t.sina.com I hope we can catch up and be a new media source with great credibility on t.sina.com, too.

Our website was shut down without any notice or warning.

To put everything transparently "under the sun" so that everybody knows what really happens. For example, the government downplayed a lot of food security issues in recent months. That's the kind of news that we insist in following up. If we arouse attention among people about the issue, then I would consider our project successful.

We don't exactly have an incentive mechanism to encourage participation. We will tell the volunteers what kinds of news should be paid attention to and where the line is. Generally, we embrace the same belief: let more people know what really happens.

Knowledge about information technologies and fundraising.

We have some advertising income. But we support ourselves with other jobs.

Memedia, etc. The cooperation is primitive. We witness lots of new media websites going downhill recently.

Yes. But we think developing communication skills and information channels are more important. Besides, we don't have the money to develop the tools.

We received an insightful comment on a post, and from the knowledge of the commenter I think he/she is a government official. But I cannot confirm.

We expect to encounter copyright problems later as we grow. We are not registered as an organization.

Some other people will directly copy our tweets and forward them as if they were their own. We are not comfortable with that. But we don't see anyone on Twitter that keep updating everyday Monday to Friday.

Start recruiting tech people to start the development of an auto-search news system. Make sure it can search and publish English news as well. The basics are the same, but there are still some subtle differences between English news and Chinese news. For example, forums are important news sources in China, while blogs may be more popular as news sources in the west. I hope it can become a sustainable model that finally integrates new media and traditional media.

In 2010, we aim to build awareness about us on t.sina.com, the most popular micro blogging platform in China. At the same time, I am looking for investors and partners to start the news-auto-search system.

In 2011, we will do some more experiments with news updates within the Great Firewall. We hope that in the end we can send out accurate information without touching the government's censorship line.