What does a workday of editors or reporters at Pandaily look like?
Every morning we have a standup meeting, gathering all the editors and reporters to contribute ideas and source information. Then after the meeting the duty editors begin to write short news while other editors and reporters go source information, look for interviewees or work on video shoots.

My daily routine varies. But what usually happens in the morning is I focus on the content with the editorial team. Every Tuesday morning we go through all the video projects and every Wednesday morning we brainstorm and select the topic of featured articles. In the afternoon I usually work with the BD team to meet clients and so on.

You’ve been a reporter in China for years and worked in San Francisco as well. What brought you to the tech field and why did you start a media business in this industry?
I never had journalism training until I stepped into tech reporting. I was an active blogger since college, and became fascinated by the internet. After college, I went to the US to study in information systems at the University of Florida, a major I thought could have brought me into the internet industry. But soon I found out I was a terrible coder, so I changed my career path to experience the internet era as a Tech Reporter. 

To be frank, I really didn’t care much about the environment or potential of this business. I only witnessed an increasing growth of people’s interest in the AI field in China and was eager to get involved. When I lived in San Francisco and interviewed the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, I could feel a huge information gap between China and the US. So I decided to move back to China in Beijing and started Pandaily. 

It was in early 2017. At the beginning, we translated news from Chinese to English for a while until we realised we had to produce our original products, no matter in what format, to convey what really happened in China. Meanwhile, the world’s assessment on China’s innovation and technology gradually changed. China has been copying products, concepts and business model from Silicon Valley in past decades. However, later these years, there were more and more investors and pioneers looking to learn from China regarding its e-commerce business, internet concepts and even technics. Thus, when I got a fund from investors and built my own editorial team, I was determined to feature the tech scene in China and bring it to the attention of a global audience.

Based on that conception, our mission is to deliver premium content and contextual insights on China’s technology scene to the worldwide tech community.

Any highlights on Pandaily’s coverage?
We are an English-language media, but most of the team members are based in China, and all of our team members - including our foreign staff - are living in China permanently. We use the APPs and products made by the companies we cover, and have witnessed the rise and fall of these companies since they were born. 

Apart from written reports, we release video news and podcast programmes to the audience who would like to know China’s innovation. I’d take our podcast for example. The anchors are native Americans who have a good understanding of Chinese and Mandarin. They know the country well and hope to explain what happens in China to the rest of world. In every episode, the podcast introduces representative companies and business models that only exist in China, or even work in China, such as Pingduoduo and its model and strategy. Or the rapid development of paid for knowledge industry in China. Since podcast has a huge active and permanent audience in the US, we hoped these topics could let investors know more about Chinese innovation companies and how they operate.

Technology is very diverse, does Pandaily have any preference or focus on specific issues?
Internet has shaped this entire country in every aspect in the past couples of decades, and will continue changing us. We are a team of young journalists writing English tech news. We particularly know and would love to record how our peers are being influenced by technology. It’s more like a story of our generation. Thus, we prefer stories at the intersection between tech and culture, especially those on how tech can affect the life of young generation.

Can you share with us about a project or subject you are currently working on?
We are shooing a documentary about how Chinese social media platforms like Weibo, Bilibili and TikTok can make an impact on Chinese young generation. The young generation in China is being changed by internet products, and they try to follow up the trend and even make use of it. Expressing personalities, building and maintaining self-brand and making money from various channels become a tag on the generation and reflect the way that how they think of and view the world. We could not tell how it would be like without internet and technology. That’s why we wanted to tell a story about it.

What do you think could be key factors that influence the technology industry? And how would these affect news and media?
Politics, economy and international relations would all be factors resulting in different trends of the market itself as well as its coverage. With the influence of the trade war between China and the US, a simple business activity might become political affairs. If journalists are not sensitive enough to think comprehensively and deeply, the reports would be narrow and incomplete. Apart from these, culture and history are also key information to understand background of some tech scenes.

I believe 5G will rebuild the tech industry in the next 10 years. Also in the 5G era, the formation of news and media will be totally different. Videos and VR / AR contents will all become the new mainstream and be consumed by the new generations to come. Only media companies with strong learning capabilities and adaptabilities can survive.

What kind of tech reports do you expect to see in coming years?
It’s up to the type of the audience. If our audience is the general public, all we need to do is to tell a good story with facts, and to make our points accepted and agreed. If our audience is professionals, data and analyses would be more important. At the moment, Pandaily is still looking for ways to tell good stories to the audience.

Any tips for PR in terms of how they can work with tech reporters?
Always tell the truth and urge their CEOs to do the same.