Profile on Qian Hao

Picture taken by Jingjing Li-30/11/09

“I believe journalists should always have the sense of responsibility to the public,” said Qian Hao.

Qian Hao, a female journalist from China has reported many significant public issues such as SARS and Sichuan earthquake, as well as some interesting topics like transsexual person during her seven-year journalist life.

“I believe journalists should always have the sense of responsibility to the public,” said Qian, “when you come to report big public issues, especially a matter of life and death for human beings, that feeling is much stronger.” Her sound is not that loud, but firm.

She graduated from the university in 2002. She is working as a financial journalist in China Business News in Shanghai now. Before that, she worked as an emergency reporter in a local newspaper in Jiangsu Province for two years.

“The stories I covered at that time were not that big, but I gained much experience which benefited me a lot later,” she said sincerely and pushed her glasses as usual.

Referring to the reports done on SARS in 2003, Qian has a deep feeling towards that, “It was really dangerous for us at that time, there were only few people in the streets, everyone stayed away from others, even when we were going to interview the doctors and patients in the hospital, the taxi driver just sent us to the place that was five-minute walking from he hospital.”

Being asked whether she was scared as well as the taxi driver, she said with a big smile, “not at all, it was the first time for me to realize what a big responsibility I had had as a journalist, I really love this feeling.”

During Sichuan earthquake last year, Qian and her fellows also went to Sichuan to do reports. Finding so many people all over the country coming to the ruined town to help the victims, she was deeply moved; again, the sense of responsibility for a journalist came out. “I have to do the reports, and when you do the report, you should be moved firstly, you could not make others feel moved if you are not.”

Metro analysis

Here is the analysis of Metro website on 23th Nov, 2009.

First impression

· The top story is not attractive enough to get readers’ attention at the first sight. The picture should be bigger, and the headline should be more bold and heavy to differ from other stories.

· The advertisement on the front page is even a little bigger than the picture of the top story, which really distracts readers’ attention. Readers could not get focused.

· The banner is clear and attractive, with “Metro” in bold, and the colour is also comfortable for readers’ eyes.

· There is a wide space on both sides of the website, which could keep readers focus on the web, and is easy to read for people who get small screens as well.

Presentation

· There are basically three columns, and the sentences keep short, no more than seven words each line, which is easy for scanning.

· All headlines are in bold, which is easy to identify.


Navigation

· The navigation is basically organized well, being put on the top and divided into 16 different sections, which is easy to find information for readers.

· For navigation, when you click different sections, it will turn into different colours, which is a little annoying (see image 2&3)

Content

· One idea, one paragraph

· The sentence is short.

· It uses simple words.

· When click the top story, the picture related to the story is much bigger to attract attention.

· There are also related articles in each story, which is easy for people to get the previous reviews.

Respect needed

At 4:30am this morning, I was waked up by an extremely loud noise outside my room.

It was people screaming and shouting, as well as blasting the balloons in the corridor.

It's not the first time for the noise made after midnight, but not as late as this time.

In the residence hall on campus, everyone should learn how to get along well with others, and show respect, especially in cross-culture communication.

The residents here are all from different countries, having different cultural backgrounds, as well as different personal habits.

However, when we all live together, the residence is no longer the place where you can do whatever you want without any considerations. It is not your own house, while it is a shared space.

Respect is particularly needed among the residents. You can do whatever you want as long as not disturbing others.

H&M opens in Ningbo

The first H&M store opened in Ningbo yesterday, on 18 November.

It is located in Tianyi Square, which is the most flourishing and busiest area in the city.

Luo, a young lady working in the hospital said: “It’s great news for me. Previously, I needed to go to Shanghai or Hong Kong to buy products of this brand, but now I can shop in my own city, which is obviously more convenient, and I have already bought a coat and two jeans.”

“H&M always has an excellent design, but sells at a relatively low price. I can hardly afford a luxury brand, but at H&M, I can have the same fashion style,” said Zhang, an university student.

Besides consumers, other competitors in this fashion industry also pay high attention to its new opening.

“H&M has two big advantages, one is excellent design, and the other is high speed for updating. It only needs a couple of weeks to finish the design, and updates the products half a month on average,” said Weiguang Huang, the general manager of Ningbo Oriental Shooping Mall.

He also indicated that compared to traditional department stores, this updating speed was highly competitive as consumers could have more choices.

“It only takes half a month to make design papers into ready-to-wear clothes, this kind of ‘fast fashion’ is worth to be learnt by Ningbo fashion industry,” said one staff in Ningbo Peacebird Garment Company.

Since the first H&M store opened in spring 2007 in Shanghai, there has been 21 stores distributed throughout 9 cities in China so far. With such a high expanding speed, more stores are under negotiation.

Sales in 2008 in China was SEK (Swedish Krona) 881 million including Hong Kong.

H&M is a Swedish clothing company, known for its fast fashion. It offers clothing to women, men, teenagers and children.

H&M has more than 1,800 stores in 34 different countries up to now.

Profile on Patricia Floric

Patricia Floric, a French girl likes reading philosophy as well as playing basketball and travelling.

“Everyday life is philosophy”, she said with a big smile.

In her viewpoint, philosophy is always connected with human being closely.

The person you meet, the movie you watch, and the food you eat, they are all kind of philosophy.

Meeting different people from diverse cultural backgrounds is also interesting to Patricia, which is the main reason for her travelling.

“You don’t know the way people think if you stick to staying in your own country, it will easily result in a narrow view of the world”, she said seriously and changed her sitting position.

So far she has been to many countries including Palistan, Germany, Egypt, Spain, Hungary, and Austria, and found they all gave her a deep impression.

Referring to basketball, “it’s just a normal activity for me and my boyfriend, and other friends as well”, she shrugged her shoulders slightly.

Patricia is not tall, neither strong, but she takes playing basketball as a fun, and a way to keep in touch with her friends.

Patricia was born in Evreux, a small city in France.

She graduated from Institute of High Studies in Social Communication in France in the summer, 2008, and got a bachelor degree of Communication and Journalism there.

After graduation, in order to practice her English, she came to London, and worked as a waitress in a cafe for seven months.

Now she is making great efforts to realize her dream as a journalist through doing MA Journalism in the University of Westminster, UK.

Domain name in Chinese will be proposed tomorrow

According to 163 News, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) is going to apply for the domain name in Chinese to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) officially tomorrow.

I think to make non-Latin characters in URL realizable is an extremely significant step after the network was created.

For Chinese people, it is so convenient to use Chinese domain name as the most of them do not know English very well. So they can follow their code of language to use internet more efficiently.

For example, when you search a website for a specific department of the Chinese government now, you need to use a search engine, and then type the Chinese name of the department to look up the click.

Once you have the Chinese domain name, you can just put the Chinese domain name in URL, then you get it. So convenient, isn't it?

Besides, it is also beneficial for the promotion of the country, culture as well as language.

Strike action at the University of Westminster

Members of the UCU were taking strike action at the University of Westminster yesterday, on 13 November.

The strike was held in all those four campuses of the university including Harrow, Regent, Cavendish, and Marylebone.

The strike decision was made by the union after the university turned into the only one in the UK imposing an overdue deal without paying back pay it owed its staff.

The union said that it had been five years of negotiations between the union and the university to make an agreement on back pay. However, no progress had been made in those talks.

The university failed to carry out the deal called the Framework Agreement, and made new moves towards staff working conditions, such as changing grading structures.

UCU Westminster branch representative, Peter Mcloughlin indicated that in June this year, the university told the staff it would be carrying out the Framework Agreement, but still would not be paying back pay, which caused many staff’s discontent.


Since the union failed to make an agreement with the university on the right of both the union and the staff, they had no other choice but to take strike action on Friday. So those students who had classes that day were affected.

Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas, the Deputy Vice Chancellor in the university said, “the university believes this strike action is unwarranted and unfairly damaging to students”.

One student from MA Global Media also said, “the tuition is so expensive, it’s unfair to force us to accept such a result.”

“To students, we regret that they missed the class. I believe it did affect them, but not that much. We wanted to persuade the employer without hurting students, but finally we had no other choice but to take strike action to protect our own rights”, said Peter.

He also indicated that if they did not get the result they wanted, they might organize more strikes in the following time.

No democracy in China?

The topic today for Issues in Journalism is about democracy.

Again, the democracy issue in China was raised, being focused on Tiananmen Square happened in 1989.

I have to admit that all the information about this event is blocked in mainland, and people hardly talk about it, some young generation even do not know this event at all.

After I checked the viewpoints by both Chinese and foreigners, I would say our government did something wrong at that time, but I also doubt whether there are some deep reasons.

China is a country with various races, long history, huge territoty and complicated cultural heritage.

Even Chinese ourselves could not fully understand certain issues, how can we explain it to foreigners in several sentences?

What I find interesting here is that it seems foreigners always like judge China based on one thing, such as Tiananmen Square.

20 years passed, please, China is not that lacking of democracy any longer.

I mean, critically speaking, maybe you receive the part truth, and I receive the part truth, none of us could say clearly and exactly about what happened at that time.

Iran at this year's World Travel Market

Iran is improving its image to attract more tourists at this year’s World Travel Market in the Excel conference centre, London, between 9 and 12 November.

“It is safe enough to go to Iran for travelling,” says Rangiha in Iran Sebt Tour, “Politics is just politics, the Iranians are very friendly and hospitable, and we welcome all people to visit our country.”

Another officer working in Iran Discovery Tours says: “Basically you can take pictures everywhere as long as you do not take pictures of nuclear reactors on purpose.”

He also indicates that although the number of tourists is shrinking badly, from around five million to one million now, they are still confident about the future of the market through the feedback they received at the WTM.

There are various travelling packages offered by four different travel agents to all tourists around the world visiting Iran including singles, couples and groups.

Customers can also suggest their individual journeys as they can arrange it particularly for you.

Many translators of different languages will be there assisting the trip as well, such as English, French and Italian.

As it is quite difficult for individuals to get a visa for visiting Iran, it is a better and easier way to ask for a travel agent to deal with it, which requires about one week.

Iran is an Islamic country, so all the visitors are required to conform to the Islamic dress code to respect their religion. For women, it is essential that all the body is covered, except for the hands and face.

There is a fabulous cultural heritage in Iran based on its rich and long history. Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Yazd, Mashad, and Persepolis are all places worth visiting.

The best time to visit Iran is spring and autumn since summers are always hot and dry, and winters are rainy and snowy.

New modern China

The morning class today asked us to express an opinion (stereotype, basically) towards a country.

After the personal presentation, I found there were almost all negative impressions when referring to China.

What I want to indicate here is that China is quite different from the past, although there still exist some problems in the society. China is making great efforts to improve the image.

With a rapid economic development, China is now showing a new image to the world.

The nation is friendly to foreigners. No matter what problems foreigners have when they are in China, travelling, studying, or doing business, the only thing needed to do is asking for help, Chinese people will always be delighted to offer help from the government to the ordinary people.

China is getting more fashionable under a great effect by western culture, especially for young generation. They chase Hollywood style, wear popular clothes, and even purchase luxuries.

There is no big difference between Chinese and foreigners for the entertainment part. Chinese now have more choices to enrich their spare time, either going to the cinema, theatre, club, museum or the bookstore, what people imagine could be easily found in China now. Overall, it is becoming more open to accept western life style.