Vera Chan
Senior Editor
Yahoo
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale CA 94598
4083492741
vchan@yahoo-inc.com
Vera Chan is one of the rare breed of writers/editors at Yahoo,
trendspotting and writing stories by analyzing search patterns from
millions of users. Typical of the Gen X labor force, Ms. Chan worked at
computer gaming company and the Asian American Journalists Association
before finally taking her hard-earned M.J. from UC Berkeley to the Contra
Costa Times, where she worked as features reporter/events editor. She
parachuted out of the Knight Ridder family with a buyout a few years
before the chain shut down, and spent several years freelancing for local
newspaper, onlline, and magazine publications before landing at Yahoo!.
Technology will not save journalism unless journalists and the
businesspeople who run the production of news understand the culture of
information. Journalism hasn’t been helped by the slow adoption of tools,
yet its most egregious example — the slow adoption of the web — has to
do more with the one-way delivery of information rather than a
conversation with the public. The cultural shift needs to accelerate, in
which journalists must address outmoded narrative structure, the neglect
of truly local reporting, the nickel-and-diming of services like
obituaries and wedding notices, poor ad sales and so on — and how
technology is merely the means to effecting long-overdue change and
dialogue.