Biography

Now: I am currently an Open Society Fellow, working on a book tentatively titled "Internet Freedom and Control: Lessons from China for the World."

I am on leave from my position as Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre, where I spent 2007 and 2008 teaching online journalism and conducting research related to free expression and the Chinese Internet.

I am an active member of the Board of Directors for Global Voices, an award-winning citizen media community which I co-founded in 2004 with Ethan Zuckerman.

In 2007-2008 I was Project Lead for Creative Commons Hong Kong.

I am also a founding member of the Global Network Initiative, a corporate code of conduct for free speech and privacy.

Prior life as a TV journalist in Asia: Soon after college, after a one-year stint as a Fullbright scholar in Taiwan, I worked my way up from the very bottom of CNN's Beijing bureau. Somehow I managed to wind up as CNN's Beijing correspondent and Bureau Chief from 1998-2001. After that I moved on to be Tokyo Bureau Chief from 2001-03.

Transition from TV to Internet: In January 2004 I went on leave from CNN to do a fellowship at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. My research focus was on blogs and participatory online media, especially as relates to international news. After about 3 months at Harvard I resigned from CNN and was invited to stay at Harvard as a Research Fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, enabling me to evolve from a TV person into an Internet person. I remained a Berkman Fellow for two and a half years, from mid-2004 until the end of 2006.

Selected writings beyond the blog...

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