news.imagethief.com

Don't miss James Fallows' superb story in Atlantic Monthly on China's national communication woes. Fallows gets into all the things that China does to undermine its own attempts to improve its international image. It's a fascinating read for anyone interested China and communication:Such self-inflicted damage occurs routinely, without the pressure ...

Tim Johnson, Beijing bureau chief for the McLatchy newspaper group (and a standout among the local blogging journalists), has posted about the imminent expiration of the relaxed rules for foreign correspondents that were implemented for the Olympic period. This has been a matter of concern for the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC), which ...

Imagethief, being an arrogant son of a bitch and a bona-fide member of the Ivory Tower Elite, is seldom interested in what the common man has to say. Nothing gets me to change the channel faster than an ''iReport'' segment on CNN, or the BBC equivalent. Of course, most professional pundits are equally useless, so in a sense, my contempt is ...

Black and White Cat compares an August 10th New York Times article on Beijing's preparation for the Olympics with a heavily ''improved'' version run in translation in the Beijing Evening News (with attribution). The Cat creatively shows the omissions and additions together: Visitors to the Olympics, however, can be forgiven for thinking are ...

Xinhua headlines from the last 36 hours, almost all of which came to me in one Google news alert:Swiss media praise Beijing Olympic Games World leaders, media praise Beijing OlympicsU.S. media praises ''truly exceptional'' Beijing Olympics  Iranian media hails Beijing Olympics as great success Foreign leaders hail successful Beijing ...

Via the China Digital Times, this outstanding excerpt from the transcript of Wednesday's IOC/BOCOG press conference (the ninth in a wretched series, we are informed). I've excised some back and forth between the question and response: South China Morning Post: Mr. Wang and Giselle, we did get to know there were 77 applicants to the protest. ...

The latest incident report from the Foreign Correspondents Club of China is out. It doesn't make for pretty reading:BEIJING: OFFICERS ROUGH UP AP PHOTOGRAPHERS, SEIZE MEMORY CARDS August 20, 2008: Two Associated Press photographers attempting to cover an Olympics-timed protest were ...

For those who are a bit weary of the whole idea of corporate pavilions, Media magazine has a witty review of the pavilions of all of the Olympic TOP sponsors. Each is helpfully compared to the Olympic athlete or icon that it most resembles. Two examples:China MobileSMS a vote on your favourite Olympic photograph and receive a set of stickers and ...

This New York Times article is a few days old, but I didn't have time to get to it when it first came out. Apparently some of the press conferences got a little scratchy as journalists got frustrated with BOCOG's oblique responses to any question not focusing on China's immense medal haul, and the IOCs equally vapid responses. In this case, the ...

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on efforts by the operators of China's gleaming, new Olympic sports facilities to sell the naming rights. According to the article, six multinationals are competing for naming rights to the National Stadium/Bird's Nest among various other ''partnerships'' on offer for the new facilities:Ben Sturner, ...