Via Danwei's "from the web roundup", Fan Linjun, the news assistant for McClatchy's China correspondent, Tim Johnson, has written a guest post (proxy link) on Tim's blog. She writes about how the kind of coverage she has helped Tim with has been different from what she used to do when working for Chinese television:

Once a police chief in Zhengzhou indignantly questioned whether I had sold my soul to evil foreign journalists. "Why do you help foreigners write bad stories to disgrace China? Aren't you a Chinese?"

Actually I had written "good" stories about China and the government for nearly two years when I was working for China's national television. We were supposed to find daily evidence to prove that China is making progress and the government is doing its utmost to improve people's lives. After writing hundreds of such pieces, I tired of doing it.

It seems that I do just the opposite after I started working with Tim. We are constantly looking for China's problems, especially wrongdoings of government and its officials. Sometimes I am worried that American readers get the impression that the Chinese government is doing nothing but evil through news stories about China, including those written by Tim and me. I actually support many of the Chinese government (and my government)'s policies, which I think are trying to seek justice and help the disadvantaged. On the other hand, I believe that problems should be exposed so positive changes can be brought about early on.

Chinese news assistants at foreign news organizations are in an unusual position, employed by heavily-scrutinized organizations that are at best grudgingly tolerated here. They assume different risks than their employers and are rarely visible over the bylines of the correspondents they work for. This is not a long piece, but it provides a rarely heard perspective.