What's Jennifer 8. Lee Thinking About?

Headlines and Big Moments of the Past Year

About this time last year I came out with a book on Chinese food called The Fortune Cookie Chronicles - a long gestational process. I used a lot of multimedia - YouTube video - TED talks - and it was very interesting to see the organic ecosystem of media works - and then to see the people who show up at events being driven by viral media. I am on Facebook, Twitter and anything else you can think of. One of my funniest videos is of Chinese people in China being completely befuddled by fortune cookies.

When you're an author you're also marketing yourself, which doesn't happen as much with journalism because you are piggybacking on the brand of the institution. This gave me a taste of what reporters may have to do in the future in terms of pushing themselves and their work, for better or worse. Historically there are so many examples of reporters who transcended any kind of publication. However, newspaper writers -- because they are more tightly bound to their host publication -- have a hard time doing this (columnists are the exception).

I've been working on the New York Times metro City Room blog, which has been interesting and fun experience for the last one and a half years. It has given me insight as to what works. Fast. Fast. Fast. And things with a longer shelf life, magaziney. So it's a bifurcation that we even seen in the paper. Our Sunday metro section is now almost Sunday Styles-like, planned in advance with long narrative pieces and regular features. Whereas news is going more bloggy. The dominant aesthetics of the Internet are immediacy and intimacy. Newspapers have immediacy down but intimacy is harder for us since we have evolved to become so arms-length with our subjects and our readers. In contrast you can see the appeal of intimacy on YouTube and Flickr.. We're trying to help the Newsroom deal with these issues. The NYT has done a good job trying to maintain its newsroom. We've learned that breaking news is the most important because it drives traffic. Research has show that while we think of humor or opinion as the most "viral", in fact news is what people share most often. We don't notice it as much unless it's wrong: like the Twitter episode with the misinformation about Prop 8 and the Amazonfail hubhub.

Anything else that will help people get to know you?

My boyfriend, Craig, moved from Silicon Valley to NYC in February. We moved into our new place in Chelsea at the beginning of June and are throwing a lot of events. He will stay with Google since it's the only full-time job he's ever had. He can walk to work.

In January, I organized 40+ people to go to the Sundance Film Festival. We had 200 film tickets and a house for the ten days. I became a master of Google Docs. I am a logistics queen.

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