![]() You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to following is the biographical sketch of Wang Qishan: If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.īut you know what? We change lives. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. ![]() Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.” ![]() My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. “Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. That will put him in charge of the campaign to root out corruption, which outgoing General Secretary Hu Jintao warned last week could “prove fatal to the party and even cause the collapse of the party and the fall of the state.”Ībout a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”: He had been expected to take another economic role on the Standing Committee, but the latest rumors suggest that instead he will be made head of the party’s Discipline Commission. Wang has been the governor of a state-owned bank and is experienced in financial affairs for the past four years, he has been vice premier in charge of trade and the financial sector – a key post from which he has helped steer China through the turbulence following the global financial crisis in 2008. Regarded as open to the West, Wang led Chinese delegations to several “strategic dialogue” sessions with the United States, making numerous friends among US officials. He is known as a straightforward talker unafraid of the limelight a couple of years ago he appeared on the Charlie Rose Show to answer questions, a feat of daring unthinkable in any other Chinese leader of his seniority. By doing so, he restored the Chinese government’s tattered international credibility. Wang ordered daily briefings for the media and talked often and freely with officials from international bodies such as the World Health Organization. He has put out a number of fires over the course of his career, but perhaps his most notable achievement dates back to 2003, when he stepped in as Beijing’s mayor after the previous incumbent – who had covered up the SARS epidemic – was fired. But given the chance to return to Barbados? Yes, please!Ī history graduate with an extensive background in finance, Wang Qishan is popularly known in China as “the fire chief.” Next time I travel to an English-speaking country to report, I know my expectations won’t be so idealized. But, ARE you Bob?”Now back in my adoptive home of Mexico, I’ve finished writing my stories from Barbados, one of which you can read in today’s Daily about the innovative and growing sport of road tennis. I learned to love local turns of phrase, like “yes, please,” which was doled out in situations where a simple affirmative just wouldn’t do. “Is the restroom over there?” “Yes, please!”“Are you Bob?” “Yes, please!” “. When I was told, “That would be right,” it wasn’t a use of the conditional as I first understood it, but somehow a gentler way of telling me something was correct. ![]() I was thrilled to report in Barbados last month for all the expected reasons (weather, beaches, food) and a slightly less conventional one: This would be my first time reporting a story entirely in English in more than a decade.In the lead-up to the trip, as my anxiety grew over driving on the left side of the road and making sure I had all my interviews confirmed, I comforted myself with the notion that doing something in one’s native language inherently makes it easier.Of course, I was wrong.Between Britishisms and Bajanisms, I frequently found myself asking, “What?” There were interviews where I even considered inquiring if the person spoke some Spanish.But, like any language, it only took a strong dose of humility – and tuning my ear to what was initially a linguistic puzzle.
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