Hyperlocalized News for New York Chinatown

A journalism innovation project of the Asian American Journalists Association

made possible by the generous support of
ur Chinatown Mission Stateme

OurChinatown hopes to fill the void for rich, consistent,

community-focused news and lifestyle coverage of a
neighborhood that has traditionally been underserved by
mainstream media, and in doing so, to bridge the gaps
among Chinatown’s multiple stakeholder groups — and
between Chinatown and the city that surrounds it.
OurChinatown Objectives
• Demonstrate the need for and value of a dedicated news
medium in the crucial (and vulnerable) New York Chinatown
community

• Showcase how new technologies (online/mobile), combined

with traditional reporting techniques (beat journalism, on-
the-spot reporting) can combine to produce an innovative hybrid

• Test ways of effectively creating and delivering bilingual content

• Establish a proof of concept that can be extended and replicated

urChinatown: Developers
• OurChinatown is a project of the nonprofit Asian American
Journalists Association’s Executive Leadership Program,
which seeks to train and develop new newsroom leaders while also
building new paradigms for news as a profession, an industry and
a public service. The project is one of three special
demonstration projects launched to celebrate the 15th
anniversary of AAJA’s ELP.

• This project has been put in the hands of a led by a unique

multidisciplinary team of veteran AAJA officers and
members, which includes experts in media and marketing
strategy, online editorial and digital development and
production.
OurChinatown: Sponsors
The McCormick Foundation is committed to fostering
communities of educated, informed and engaged citizens.
Through philanthropic programs, Cantigny Park and museums,
the Foundation helps develop citizen leaders and works to make
life better in our communities. The Foundation was established as
a charitable trust in 1955, upon the death of Colonel Robert R.
McCormick, the longtime editor and publisher of the Chicago
Tribune. The McCormick Foundation is one of the nation’s largest
foundations, with more than $1 billion in assets. For more
information, visit www.McCormickFoundation.org

The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making

organization. For more than half a century it has worked with
courageous people on the frontlines of social change worldwide,
guided by its mission to strengthen democratic values, reduce
poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and
advance human achievement. With headquarters in New York,
the foundation has offices in Latin America, Africa, the Middle
East, and Asia. For more information, go to their website:
http://www.fordfoundation.org
he Hyperlocal Future
• The future of city journalism is hyperlocal, with
reporters and readers collaborating in real-
world, real-time tracking of news that
impacts residents of small, sharply defined
neighborhoods.

• This kind of local information is a core

requirement for true participatory democracy
—while also serving as a very real business
opportunity.

• However, so far, most high-profile urban

hyperlocal news launches have focused on
affluent markets with numerous existing
sources for news.
Hyperlocal Successes
Brownstoner
Covers: “Brownstone Brooklyn,” the gentrifying
neighborhoods of Park Slope and environs,
focused on real estate-related news and lifestyle
features. Traffic: 200,000 unique visitors and
1.5 million page views a month
BaristaNet
Covers: Affluent neighborhoods of Montclair,
Glen Ridge, Bloomfield, New Jersey; recently
took over New York Times’s hyperlocal NJ
operations. Traffic: 80,000 unique visitors
and over 500,000 page views a month
West Seattle Blog
Covers: Affluent West Seattle,
Washington suburb of Seattle. Traffic:
80,000 unique visitors and over 800,000
page views a month
ew York Chinatown
• OurChinatown seeks to redress that, by
focusing on an area experiencing dramatic
change that remains both poorly served and
minimally covered by traditional news
venues: New York’s Chinatown, a vibrant
residential and commercial community that
was severely impacted by the 9/11 attacks and
the subsequent SARS scare, and now the Great
Recession

• It is an area whose periphery has rapidly

gentrified, while remaining at its core a
migration target for waves of new
Americans, creating a community with many
cultural, political and linguistic factions
YC Chinatown Demographics
紐約華埠
Population Size:
80,000-100,000,
depending on
estimates, nearly 2/3
of them Chinese

4000 businesses
Above:
Above: Breakdown
Breakdown of
of Business
Business Types
Types in
in Chinatown
Chinatown

Median Household
Income
$20,841 (vs. NY
$38.293 and $58,478
for periphery)

% of People Who
Speak English
Age
Age Distribution
Distribution Relationship
Relationship Status
Status Homes
Homes with
with Kids
Kids
“Not Well” or
“Not at All” Above: Breakdown of Retail Establishment types
51% (vs. NY 12.2%) Average
Average Commute
Commute Time
Time

% of Foreign Born
Residents
72% (vs. NY 35.9%)
Chinatown is split between young, single recent Chinese immigrants; more established immigrant
families, and a large elderly population, as well as non-Chinese affluent “homesteaders”
New Hyperlocal Model
• OurChinatown believes that the key to hyperlocal coverage of a
news-rich and dynamic — yet fragmented — urban market is a
return to city journalism’s origins: Street-level beat reporting.

• Our reporters cover Chinatown with their feet, delivering real-time

spot news even as they pursue specific assignments from editors,
cover events and build enterprise feature stories.

• What makes this possible is a low-cost, highly efficient reporting device

that’s ideally suited for hyperlocal journalism: The smartphone.
Reporter locations are trackable on the OurChinatown map via
their phones, allowing readers and editors to alert them to breaking
news in their areas; phones are used to record and rough-edit
videos and audio podcasts, and to take all photographs. They are
also the primary authoring platform for OurChinatown spot
updates, which are published directly to the site on a real-time basis.
New Hyperlocal Model
• Meanwhile, mobile phones (and increasingly smartphones) are so
ubiquitous in Chinatown that they’re an ideal news consumption platform
for its residents as well — with OurChinatown content available to be pushed to
them as text or email alerts, available in full form via mobile-optimized
blog, and enriched with mobile-friendly video, images and audio
podcasts.

• Targeting phones as a fully equal news consumption platform also offers

new ways to deliver bilingual/multilingual content: Real-time — e.g.,
providing both text translations (machine translated, then edited by bilingual
editors) and “phone in” audio translations of breaking news or regular
stories, and even allowing people to call in their own
comments/alerts/responses (in a fashion similar to calling into a talk radio
show).

• We believe this “mo-to-mo” concept is a new and exciting paradigm in

hyperlocal news. OurChinatown is the first step in creating a new, standard
hyperlocal platform for underserved communities — using the
smartphone as a main reporting/deployment tool.
Site Walkthrough
• Built on Wordpress (scalable,
industry standard blog platform)
• Hosted on AAJA National’s
servers
• Community features built in
• Social media features to come
• Mobile-optimized site available
• Mobile publishing app available
(iOS, Android)
Content Overview
• OurChinatown content is focused on not just the news of the greater
Chinatown community, but the lives of residents (both core and periphery)
and the cultural conversation they’re engaged in, with one another and
the city around them, as Chinatown continues its ongoing evolution as a
neighborhood and as a concept. As a result, OurChinatown includes:

• Breaking newsflashes: Spot reporting on local news as it happens, with

real-time commentary from resident eyewitnesses

• Event calendars / coverage: Things to do, previewed and reviewed

• Interviews with notable locals: Telling the stories of local leaders,

characters and personalities

• Civic/political reminders: Alerts as to key civic announcements and

politically important events

• Arts/food/shopping/culture: Insider’s subjective views of the best in

the nabe, with highlights of promotions, events and bargains
Community Partnership
• To maximize impact while minimizing costs, we have
partnered with community institutions, both for-profit
and nonprofit, including:

• ethnic media (tapping into their reporting/editing

resources, while offering our longer features for branded
reuse in their pages or on the air)

• service, arts and professional organizations;

• and students, particularly at journalism and

communications programs (Columbia, New York
University, Baruch/CUNY, etc.)
Kickoff
• The kickoff for these partnerships was a “Bridging the
Media” panel (bringing together ethnic and mainstream
journalists to discuss media inclusion and Chinatown
coverage) and “Town Hall” hosted to obtain feedback on the
OurChinatown concept, cohosted by the New York chapter of
AAJA and the OurChinatown team.

• The event took place in late October, at the Museum of

Chinese in America. Additional events will be held
monthly, to create a real-world connection between the
blog’s content and its audience.

• A survey was conducted among attendees to obtain insight

on media needs and opportunities among Chinatown
residents. Results from that survey follow.
How Often Do You Use the Following
Media for Reading/Accessing News?

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 What Media Do You Most Frequently Use for
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How Would You Rate the Quality of Coverage in the
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Chinatown and Lower Manhattan?
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How Would You Rate Coverage of the Following Topics
in the Media You Most Frequently Use for News About
Chinatown and Lower Manhattan?
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Future Implications
• The success of OurChinatown will offer lessons,
technology and a repurposable template for use in
similar neighborhoods — certainly, other Chinatowns
Sunset Park (Flushing and Sunset Park in New York, and Chinatowns in
other major cities) could use this model other Asian ethnic
enclaves; a network of such hyperlocal blogs would provide
both economies of scale and the ability to tap into
national/international advertisers.
Flushing • Beyond Asian enclaves, this strategy could prove viable for any
culturally distinct enclave with both a real localized need
for news and lifestyle content, and a flow of “outside”
tourists with limited other ways of learning about the
community and what it has to offer.
San Francisco
Organizational Structure
AAJA HQ & Project Stakeholder Advisory
Coordinator Board

Project Leads

Marketing & Outreach: Technology & Operations: Editorial:

Jeff Yang Paul Cheung Cindy Del Rosario-Tapan Content
Partners

Web &
Media/Distributi News Features
Development
on Partners Editor Editor
Team

Reporter 1 Reporter 3
Sponsors/Supporters Technology Partners Student
Interns
Reporter 2 Reporter 4
urChinatown: The Team
• Paul Cheung is the Associated Press’s Interactives
and Graphics Editor, and the former Deputy
Multimedia Presentation Editor at the Miami Herald.
He managed the redesign of MiamiHerald.com in
OurChinatown
Role: Project
2008 and in 2009, helped launch of Miami Herald’s
operations,
technology
suites of iPhone sports apps. Prior to the Herald, he
planning and
development
was the Senior Graphics Editor at The Wall Street
Journal. He serves on the National Board of AAJA and
was in charge of national convention programming in
2009 and 2010.
urChinatown: The Team
• Before joining OurChinatown, Cindy M. del Rosario
Tapan was editorial manager at RecycleBank, an
incentives program that encourages people to take
positive green actions. Cindy has served as the managing
editor for National Geographic’s Green Guide online, and
OurChinatown
Role: Editorial the eco-conscious website Blue Egg, and started her
strategy and
operations career at In Style and Oprah, before being named
program director for the launch of Martha Stewart Living
Radio. She is the former president of the NY chapter of
AAJA
urChinatown: The Team
• Jeff Yang was the founder of aMagazine, Asian
America's most influential English-language media
institution, and aOnline, one of the first Asian American
communities on the web. He now serves as VP at the
OurChinatown strategy and insights firm Iconoculture, where he
Role: Media,
marketing and oversees operations in Greater China, Japan and Korea,
business strategy;
community and writes the Asian/Asian American culture and
outreach
politics column “Asian Pop” for the San Francisco
Chronicle. He is a correspondent and frequent guest on
NPR and its New York flagship, WNYC. He is former VP
of the NY chapter of AAJA.
urChinatown: Advisory Board
Wendy Chan, Definity Marketing
Beatrice Chen, Museum of Chinese in America
David Chen, Chinese-American Planning
Council
Wellington Chen, Chinatown Partnership
Margaret Fung, AALDEF
Kevin Kong, Renaissance New York
Ed Litvak, The Lo-Down NY
June Jee, OCA-NY
Andrea Louie, Asian American Arts Alliance 
Alex Peng, Chinese American Voice
Telly Wong, IW Group
OurChinatown: Editors
• Alex Peng (editor) has served his beloved community as a trailblazer in community-based
journalism for many years. Since the 1980s, Mr. Peng has traversed and immersed his readers
and listeners in the physical, historical and cultural landscapes of New York. He has also been
specifically focused on the documentation of the history of the Chinatowns in North America.
Peng’s career in journalism began during his high school years. While well-versed in print
journalism, which he studied extensively in East Asia, he also studied broadcasting journalism
in Japan, becoming one of the few Asian American journalists who then had the privilege of
practicing both print and broadcasting journalism for his community.

• Angela Chen (editor) is originally from southern California but loves NYC like it’s her own.
She is currently a freelance reporter for NY1. Before that, she studied at Columbia University’s
Graduate School of Journalism, where her beat was Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Her
previous experiences include working as a news writer and associate producer of the morning
news program “Good Morning San Diego” at KUSI News. Angela was also an NBC News fellow
at Dateline and Channel One News. She has written for the San Diego Union-Tribune and
worked for The Charlie Rose Show. Angela did her undergraduate work at the University of
California, San Diego, where she earned degrees in Literature/Writing and Psychology. She is
a member of AAJA, SPJ and Pi Beta Phi.
OurChinatown: Staff
• Michelle Jiang (reporter) is currently an editorial intern at WomansDay.com. As a recent
graduate from CUNY College of Staten Island, she is an internet-savvy aspiring journalist,
covering multiple areas of interests from music and arts to cultural and local events in Greater
New York. After studying for a semester abroad in Rome, Italy, and months spent exploring the
European continent, Michelle was bitten by the travel bug and has since been fevered with a
passion for delving into diverse cultures around the world. Having lived in Brooklyn, NY her
whole life, she is the product of a rich melting pot environment. If you have tales of your travels
or tips to share with Michelle, email her at MichelleJ1288@gmail.com or friend her on
Facebook.

• Pearly Huang (reporter) is a freelance writer and editor based in New York. She was born
and raised in New York’s Chinatown so this project holds a special and deeply personal interest
to her. Pearly recently came from working with another hyper local community startup,
Patch.com. Before Patch, Pearly was an editorial intern at Time Out New York, where she
contributed to TONY’s online blog, “Last Minute Plan.” She also interned for the interactive
department at SIRIUS XM Radio. Pearly also has on-air radio experience from ComRadio,
Penn State’s student-run radio station. If you have any tips or suggestions for something you’d
like to see covered about Chinatown, feel free to e-mail her at pearly.huang@gmail.com
OurChinatown: Staff
• Katherine Fung (reporter) is a writer and editor based in New York, and Regional
Listings Coordinator for Patch.com. Prior to working with Patch, she was Special Projects
Intern for Time Out New York, an intern for the Huffington Post, and worked as a special
events intern for Chinatown's Chinese-American Planning Council. She grew up in
Brooklyn and graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Urban Studies.

• Roque Ruiz-González (web producer) graduated in late 2007 as a Graphic Designer

from Miami International University of Art & Design, he quickly became one of the main
designer for Miami Herald’s website redesign. Since then he has worked on many
interactive online packages and infographics for South Florida’s leading newspaper
blending successfully graphics, sound and video. At the same time his passion for music
has taken his own Cloudberry Records to be one of the world’s most loved and known
record labels in the indiepop genre, with more than a hundred releases.
urChinatown: Timeline