A couple of months ago I got a FB message from one of the staffers at Thanh Nien Daily--she'd just gotten word that after two years, the daily was shutting down. What she didn't know was that at the same time she was IMing me on FB, I was skyping with her ME, who was heartbroken at having to tell his staff the bad news.
This was the newspaper I helped start. It quickly found it's place at the top. I am extremely proud to have been a part of the founding team. For some reason, they decided to keep my name on the masthead. I don't think they'll ever know how much that means to me.
Here's the bad news.
But today I'll remember better days.
A few months after the paper launched, the ME wrote and asked if I'd contribute an article for their special Lunar New Year edition. He wanted me to write about my experience helping Thanh Nien Daily get off the ground.
A few months later I returned to Saigon. When I walked into the Thanh Nien Daily newsroom, I was welcomed with a warm round of applause. That wasn't because they thought I was so special - (well... :) )... After reading the article, they realized how much they meant to me.
Hats Off, Thanh Nien.
A Newspaper is Born
January 2008
Copyright Patti McCracken
Inside the cupboard was a half empty box of Choco Pies, chocolate drink mix, cheese-flavored crackers, loose tea bags along with two or three tea-stained glasses, some type of freeze-dried noodles and a rolled-up sleeping mat that I didn't know was there.
Outside the cupboard was a breed of bedlam known only to newsrooms. A mass of untidy papers and wordbooks stacked like piles of poorly-laid bricks, trash cans bloated with empty takeout cartons, journalists shouting commands at each other, a pacing managing editor; and in the midst of it all was Xuan Anh, whom I would come to call my Wunderkind.
A few weeks earlier, I'd stepped off the plane in Saigon and was greeted by two grateful editors who had summoned me from Austria to help them launch a new English-language daily. Thanh Nien publishes a successful weekly magazine, daily newspaper and online journal, so its street cred was already well-established. But the launch of this English newspaper had snuck up on the staff in a hurry. So they hastily cleared a room and fitted it with computers and networks, printers were hooked up, office furniture was hauled in, and a pack of young and mostly untrained newshounds stood at the ready. By the time I arrived, we had 10 days to figure out the rest.
This is my job. I dart and skip across the continents as a journalism trainer, working with reporters who need a leg up to catch up in a world that has been less than fair. I bounce around in economy class, sleep in saggy beds, stay away from the drinking water, eat questionable food, argue with the cleaning ladies, get disgusted with taxi drivers, watch dubbed tv, get lonely for home, and let insomnia finally give way to sleep amid the creaks and strains of a foreign city that has expanded to include me. And every now and then, I'm a witness to kinship celebrating itself in the guise of a would-be stranger. This is my life.
He stood in the back of the empty newsroom on the morning I arrived, waiting for me to approach so he could introduce himself. "I'm Xuan Anh," he said, extending his hand, his syllables blunted by the Vietnamese influence on his English. "Call me Anh."
I learned that he had studied in Ireland for a year, was new to journalism, and had a habit of flexing his fingers back and rubbing his palms on his trouser legs when nervous or happy. He sat and walked and stood as straight as an arrow, his dress shoes tap-tapping on the floor as he raced around. He was eager and efficient and earnest. I would later learn that he was equal parts strong will and soft heart, but for now, it was his eagerness which moved me.
Anh and I were to work together on the design and structure of the newspaper; giving it an identity and a strong forum in which to showcase the articles.
On that first evening, managing editor (Mr.) Thinh walked me over to a calendar that hung on the back wall and circled two dates. The first one was only seven days away.
"This is when we need to have all the pages at the printing house."
"And this," he said, pointing to the second date, less than a week and a half away, "is when we go live with the first issue."
I told him it was impossible. There was no way we could design a newspaper from the ground up, train designers, organize a newsroom hierarchy, structure a copy flow and coach journalists on how to report and write for an English readership in a week's time, with an already understaffed and overstressed newsroom.
"We must," Thinh said, and walked back to his desk, leaving me standing at the calendar. He had many things to do, and little time for disbelief.
So we set to work. While Anh and I toiled at designing the logo, the icons, the column widths, the fonts, the point sizes, the frame sizes,... the rest of the novice design staff huddled in close around the two of us, soaking up information piecemeal, then scuttling back to their computers to come up with additional ideas on their own.
Our working days were stretching into the wee hours, and I was getting bone-tired. My insomnia ramped up, so sleep didn't come until well after the sun came up.
It wasn't long before I overslept, and one of the designers was sent over to the hotel on her motorbike so she could jar me awake and haul me back into the newsroom.
The days were disappearing, our energy dissolving. The editor-in-chief, who also oversaw the other news operations, had lost his voice along with his ability to focus for very long, even with a steady stream of coffee and his beloved cigarillos at hand. He hadn't slept in more than three days.
Section editors were tapped out, fried, re-reading the same sentences over and over again because exhaustion allowed them to do nothing else, except skip like a record needle. There was no life outside the newsroom; no newborns to cuddle, no miscarriages to grieve, no sick parents to comfort. Not this week, not now.
I was averaging three hours of sleep a night back at the hotel, always awakened by an overzealous cleaning crew, if not a journalist on a motorbike and a mission.
But Anh never left. He was fixed there. As were a few others, I later learned. He told me he slept there, rolling out the little mat he kept stored in the cupboard. He told me it was too far to go home, and anyway, he didn't want to wake his relatives.
Doctors will say that the pain is the worst, the most intolerable, just before the fever breaks. Marathon runners say the final two miles are horrifically unbearable.
Two nights before the launch Thinh leaned back in his chair, defeated. "We're not going to make it," he said. The doctor telling the patient's family the grim prognosis.
Launch day was as long and grueling as all of the others, and I felt guilty for slipping out and seeking sleep. Anh had also had trouble staying awake the last few days, and from time to time would place some white noise headphones over his ears (to drown out the shouting journalists), drop his forehead to the desk, and rest himself for 10 minutes or so.
But somehow the page count was dropping. Steadily, each page closed. No major glitches.
As the printing house received the final page of the first edition of Thanh Nien daily in English, those still left in the newsroom erupted in applause. And the endearing Vietnamese smiles emerged, broad and unabashed. There was backslapping and handshaking and relief masked as laughter. The fever had broken, we'd crossed the finish line. We made it.
We celebrated that night, late as it was. We planted ourselves at an outdoor restaurant and drank beer and talked about Hanoi and Thinh's new baby; we talked about boyfriends and girlfriends and who has them and who doesn't; we talked about parents and hometowns, and every now and then we stopped to congratulate ourselves. I watched Anh and the others with their newfound family. And I remember thinking I wasn't so lonely for home just then.
After leaving the restaurant, we stopped at the paper to pick up a copy of the first issue, which was already back from the printer. I was headed to my hotel, and Thinh was going home to his wife and newborn. But Anh and the others were staying on at the newspaper. They would make their way back up to the newsroom, open the cupboards that held all the teas and crackers and mats. After some chatter and exhausted, giddy laughter, sleep would come.
And we would do it all again the next day.
