Fundamentals of Interactive Journalism

By Anastasia Economides and Karina Ioffee

The economy may be in a freefall, but tourists from all over the world are continuing to flock to New York City. They come for the iconic sites such as the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and of course, the world-famous shopping in Times Square.

The euro exchange rate plummeted this summer and has not fully recovered.

Although the value of the euro against the dollar has fallen since July, European tourists especially are still finding good deals in the Big Apple.

 In Times Square, German tourist Nicolas Wallens said he booked his ticket earlier this year, and despite the financial turmoil, never considered canceling.

Nicolas Wallens, Tourist

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Seventeen-year-old Charlotte, who is visiting from England, said she had been planning to splurge on some clothes while in New York. Now, she says, she has to be a bit more careful with her money.

Charlotte, Tourist

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Tour guides are also singing the blues. At the Empire State Building, Selemi Adediq, 30, an agent for CitySights NY, a tour bus company, said that he had sold only three tickets by 4pm on a recent Friday. And because Adediq’s income is based on commission, less tickets means less money in his pocket.

Selemi Adediq

Selemi Adediq, Tour Guide

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For more information on how tourism has declined over time, check out the December report from the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

Even if you’ve been a journalist for just several months, you’ve probably noticed how tight-lipped folks in government are when you come knocking. “I’m sorry, but I’m not authorized to speak to the press,” says one bureaucrat. “Could you submit your questions in writing?” says another. It doesn’t matter if you are calling about retirement benefits for city employees or the Christmas gift drive, the trend in government and corporate offices is to funnel media requests to the designated flak who will use carefully crafted talking points with just the right amount of spin on them, to give you the answers you are seeking. Of course, in their words, it’s about the message being “appropriately positioned.”

I am sure people have always feared the “fourth estate,” but the past decade has seen an increase in the barriers companies, government departments and even nonprofits put up between themselves and journalists. Gone are the days when a reporter can just saunter into the police department and shoot the shit with the workers. Now there are “public information officers” whose job is to dole out sanitized versions of the facts to reporters. Very often, these PIOs don’t even do that, as I’ve experienced time and time again with the New York Police Department. But when I’ve pointed out that if they don’t speak to me, it will make them look bad, they just take down my number and promise to pass it along. The message they are sending–loud and clear–is I JUST DON’T CARE.

As the next generation of journalists, it’s up to us to educate government officials, corporate hacks and everyone else that it’s actually in their interest to talk to us and explain their side of things. Most journalists aren’t out to get their sources, but simply want to report what’s happening. Unfortunately, that’s a point that seems to lost on most people.

What do you think? Can journalists do anything to counter the trend of companies and government creating strict procedures about speaking with the press? Is it a matter of making friends with the people you want to become your sources? Is it a matter of bidding your time, until hesitant sources begin to trust you?

To many immigrants, Barack Obama’s story is an inspiration. They like him because he is the underdog, the kid with a funny name and a dark face who spent a part of his childhood in a Muslim country. They like him because he is a self-made man who today is standing at the threshold of the most powerful job in the world.

But among Russian immigrants, Senator Obama gets no love. At all. As much as it pains me, a Russian and a registered Democrat, to say it, many Russians have viewed Obama with nothing but suspicion and contempt. And even though Russians in New York are overwhelmingly Democrat, only 10 percent of them said they planned to vote for the Illinois senator, according to a soon to be published survey conducted by the Research Institute for New Americans (RINA). Meanwhile, a whopping 65 percent said they would vote for McCain. 

“It has nothing to do with race,” said Valery Grin, a Russian immigrant from Latvia, who plans to vote for McCain. “If Condi was on the ballot, I’d vote for her with two hands. She’s done more than Obama. He just talks. He hasn’t done anything in his career.”

The problem seems that Russians just can’t seem to take Obama seriously. To them he’s just a shpiglet, a young politician who hasn’t paid his dues.

For Grin, who lives in Rockaway Beach and is unaffiliated with any political party, the fear is that America under President Obama will be just like the Soviet Union, with government controlling all aspects of life, from jobs to healthcare to education.

“I don’t believe what Obama says about taking from the rich and redistributing to the rest,” says Grin. “The person who’s going to be distributing the wealth will be sure to pocket some of it. We’ve seen it happen in Russia.”

Dima, a 35-year-old Russian-American who lives in Brooklyn, also doesn’t plan on voting for Obama. He says the Dems’ candidate leaves a bad taste in his mouth because he somehow manages to associate with all the wrong people.

“He’s a figure who presents himself as a unifier, but in reality is highly divisive…If we take McCain, he’s a middle Republican. Obama, on the other hand is extremely left.”

Another issue that’s on the mind of many Russians is Israel, says Sam Kliger, director of Russian Jewish affairs at American Jewish Committee, which conducted the new study together with RINA. 

“For Russians, Israel is not just some country in the Middle East,” says Kliger, himself an emigre from the former Soviet Union. “They take it very personally because they have relatives there. So whoever supports Israel is their guy.”

But where does this notion that Obama is anti-Israel come from? He has repeatedly said he backs Israel’s decision not to negotiate with Hamas and that he supports a two-state solution. 

Just because he’s not backing the radical Jewish settlers, doesn’t mean he’s automatically anti-Israel. C’mon people.

More than that, Russians side with McCain because they believe he is more qualified on the security front. After all, he fought in Vietnam and knows the dangers of Communism. Never mind that the war makes them cringe. To Russian emigres in the U.S., the war in Iraq is essentially a war against terror and must be conducted no matter what.

In addition, many Russians see McCain as an extension of Reagan’s legacy, says Kliger. “They remember in 1982 when Reagan (on a trip to the USSR to conduct talks on arms reduction) stood up and proclaimed the Soviet Union an evil empire. That was a turning point for many people.” 

While I understand my compatriots’ fears, I also think they’re also outdated. We’re living in a different world than the one Reagan shook his finger at, one where things like the Internet and the mass migration of people requires a different kind of tactic. It requires flexibility, a global perspective and yes, a willingness to sit down and talk with people who don’t agree with us. I believe Barack Obama offers this and although his story might not be exactly the same as ours, Russian-Americans have far more in common with the candidate than we realize. We are both immigrants with funny names Americans can’t always pronounce, who work hard to make a mark for ourselves in the U.S. And although it’s impossible for Obama to speak for all of us, all the time, his message of hope and unity should resound more with immigrants than that of McCain, who, among other things, will cut benefits so many Russian immigrants (especially pensioners) are the beneficiaries of, privatize health care and continue an unwinnable war, “even if takes 100 more years.”

It’s no secret that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has actively cracked down on opposition groups it views as threatening its absolute power. First it was Tibetans, who have been barred from speaking their own language and practicing their culture since the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1949. Later it was the pro-democracy movement that culminated in a brutal crackdown of student activists in Tiananmen Square. In 1999, Falun Gong, a quasi-religious Chinese exercise society, was added to the list, on premises that the group was a cult and incited members to act out against the CCP.

Now tensions between Falun Gong and the Chinese government have come to Flushing, Queens, where followers of the group have been harassed, spit upon and beat up by other Chinese immigrants. But the biggest allegation is that the attacks have been condoned and even funded by the Chinese consulate in New York, as part of a global effort by the CCP to reduce group’s growing influence.

“They’ve told us things like ‘We will eliminate you” and “traitors”, said Judy Chen, a 50-year-old Falun Gong member, originally from Taiwan.

On October 12, three Falun Gong practitioners were arrested on charges that they were blocking traffic and drawing a large crowd of people, charges they say are ludicrous because they have a permit that allows them to hand out literature on the street. All people have since then been released, although it remains to be seen whether the charges against them will be dropped.

Wenyi Wang, executive director of Quitting the Chinese Communist Party, a group of Falun Gong practitioners in Flushing and one of the three arrested, said the incident began after a scuffle in which a woman in a wheelchair overturned a table holding the group’s literature and yelled at the members. Police responded and asked one person for identification, which they did not have. According to Wang, that was grounds for arrest. The New York Police Department did not return repeated calls for comment.

When reached for comment, a spokeswoman at the Chinese Consulate in New York mumbled something about Falun Gong not being involved in religious practice and hung up the phone.

Falun Gong is a spiritual practice made up of a series of exercises similar to tai chai and meditation in order to acquire a third eye that allows practitioners to transcend the molecular world. Today it has 70 million followers in as many countries. That, apparently, is the crux of the problem.

“If you go to China, you will see that many Chinese have the space to voice their opinions,” says Dr. Juntao Wang, a researcher on Chinese political history and a prominent pro-democracy dissident who was imprisoned by the Chinese regime before being exiled to the U.S. in 1994. “But you are having significant influence (on others), they will arrest you and torture you. They will crack down on you and do whatever it takes to silence you.”