The Daily Beast published an interview — a bit of a back scratching set of questions and answers, really — that Meghan McCain did with First Lady of Lousiana Supriya Jindal. I read it and recalled Governor Bobby Jindal’s interview on 60 Minutes. It rubbed me the wrong way for a lot of reasons. I […]
Author: Angilee Shah
some recent Sri Lanka reports
When the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) published a report a co-author and I did on the conflict in Sri Lanka, I did not get much of a response. But when they put that report online, the emails and comments began. If new journalism is meant to create community conversation, I hope that this article […]
USA Today, dealing with numbers, and religion in America
I’ve been working on a story about religion in this country and I came across a really excellent example of how multimedia can be used well. This is just a short post to share it. USA Today ran a story about a major survey on religious identification in America. Surveys can be complicated to understand, […]
Thailand news editor faces computer crimes charges
In Jan. 2008, the Computer Crimes Act was about six months away from taking effect in Thailand. It was part of the Internal Security Act, a complicated series of laws that were passed just before the leaders of a military coup held elections to restore democracy to the country. In Bangkok, journalists and web entrepreneurs […]
my online journalism life
I started reading the introduction to The Elements of Journalism, published in June, 2006. I stopped at this paragraph: When the flow of news is obstructed, “a darkness falls,” and anxiety grows. The world, in effect, becomes too quiet. We feel alone. John McCain, the U.S. senator from Arizona, writes that in his five and a […]
my online life
Next week, I’m attending a talk in Culver City. It’s one of my favorite parts of the greater Los Angeles sprawl, a no-fuss but energetic neighborhood with approachable people and good food. It represents comfort in a big city. But the talk, hosted by Zocalo Public Square, is about what is perhaps the antithesis of […]
not usually a fan
I’m in Los Angeles, but I’m not a big Grammys watcher. This year, I might just let CBS run in the background. I first listened to the music of M.I.A. in 2005, when Asia Pacific Arts took an early bet that she would become big news for the music industry. This year, her second album, […]
good feelings and the Olympics
After visiting grand Shanghai and glittering Chongqing, it was in a taxi in Dongguan that my view of China took a small, but important shift. I was traveling with a friend to the South China Mall, down the main road that stretches from the city’s train station all the way out to the suburbs. It […]
more than politics
This week I’m revisiting one of my favorite books, the famous fictionalized account of the last months in the life of South American liberator Simon Bolivar by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I cannot recall the first time I read The General in His Labyrinth except that it was early in my college career and it opened […]
silver linings
I’ve been absent from the blogosphere for about a month to pursue projects and travel. (Lucky for me, slow blogging is in for 2009.) For most of the last few weeks, I have been in Sri Lanka, meeting people and learning about their lives. For its beautiful sunsets, delicious varieties of tea and wild elephants, […]