I’m going to be heading off to the U.S. on July 15 — and coming back in the fall — but I’m already nostalgic for the Shanghai of today.
I was down in the French Concession area this afternoon, one of the nicest parts of Shanghai.
After having a quick bite at Abbey Road with journalist friend [...]

I’ve been using Twitter for about a week now. I keep all the tweets in a column on the side of my browser windows (using Twitbin). It feels like being in a chatroom populated exclusively by your friends — the friends who Twitter, that is.
My Twitter handle is Maria_Trombly if anyone wants to follow me.
I’m [...]

Today I left the house and stepped into what, in Massachusetts, would be considered a pretty hot summer day - 77 degrees Farenheit (25 Celsius).
So much for the one week of nice, spring weather. From now, it’s only going to get worse and worse. I plan to stay inside for the next two months with [...]

I don’t see a lot of hits for “editorial process outsourcing” in Google — but this is exactly what we do.
Publications have been doing outsourcing for a long, long time. Mostly, they just outsource the development of content. They use freelance writers and freelance photographers, and they buy photos and articles from agencies.
Editorial process outsourcing [...]

The Culture Matters show aired last week. People could watch me every night at 6:30 p.m., then again the next day around noon.
Finally, this past Sunday, someone recognized me on the street. It was someone I already knew, though — Megan Shank, an editor at the Chinese edition of Newsweek. People at my kids’ school [...]

I took some time away from work to see some elephants, as long as I was in Thailand. I was with Tim Phillips, editor of Petfood Industry magazine, and Julie Lezner Kirk, an expert on petfood safety and traceability, who also spoke at the conference.
This is a picture of me riding an elephant. In this [...]

Today I gave a talk about global and Asian petfood industry trends at a conference in Bangkok. One of our clients is Petfood Industry magazine, and we’ve been covering the melanine-laced petfood scandal since it broke last summer. If you forgot, hundreds of dogs and cats were killed or sickened by petfood made with wheat [...]

A beginning freelancer asked me today whether he should be a writer or an editor — and whether he could do both.
At the end of the conversation, he decided what he wanted to do, but I’ve heard the question several times, so I’ll post my answer here.
Editing and writing are two completely different jobs, and [...]

Last Friday night, a bunch of us journalists slash bloggers slash entrepreneurs — and, in Shanghai, who isn’t these days? — were sitting around talking about cultural differences.
We had a guy from a Chinese province who had moved to Shanghai, who was worried about taking care of his parents. A young guy who moved to [...]

As I type this, a crew from the International Channel Shanghai is here at my house filming me blogging.
It’s for a program on blogging that will run in the middle of March.
They taped five shows the day before yesterday, Friday, at their studio, but for some reason wanted to see me at home, and [...]