Jennifer 8. Lee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jennifer 8. Lee | ||
|---|---|---|
| Born | March 15, 1976 | |
| Birth place | New York City | |
| Circumstances | ||
| Occupation | Journalist | |
| Ethnicity | American of Chinese/Taiwanese descent | |
| Notable credit(s) | The New York Times | |
Jennifer 8. Lee (Chinese name: 李競; pinyin: Lǐ Jìng; born March 15, 1976 in New York City) is a New York Times reporter for the Metro section. She writes her middle name as "8." (with both the digit and the punctuation) on paper, but on her New York driver's license, it is spelled out as "Eight".
Citing the buzzed-about article in which she coined the term 'man-dates', NPR referred to her as a "conceptual scoop artist"[1]. In response, she explained that "it literally is, kind of, stories that people talk about, [as in,] 'Hey, did you hear that story about cell phones and flirting? That was really awesome.'"
Many Chinese and Japanese names contain numbers written in characters. Lee's parents did not give her any middle name. Jennifer added the number eight to her own name while she was a teenager because of the prevalence of her first name. For many Chinese, the number eight symbolizes prosperity and good luck.
Lee graduated from Harvard College (class of 1999) and Hunter College High School. She interned at The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Newsday and The New York Times while working on her applied mathematics and economics degree. She joined the Times in 2001, one and a half years after graduating from Harvard.
A February 3, 2004, New York Sun article portrayed Lee, then based in Washington, D.C., as someone known as much for her grand parties as for her byline and profession. Exactly one year later, an item in the Washington Post reported that Lee was being sued by her former Washington landlady, who claimed Lee's parties caused about $148,000 in damage to the landlady's condominium.
Lee wrote a book about the history of Chinese food in the United States, titled The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, documenting the process on her blog fortunecookiechronicles.com. Warner Books editor Jonathan Karp struck a deal with Lee to write a book about "how Chinese food is more all-American than apple pie," according to Lee. One interview she conducted for the book was with a famous chef in Taiwan.
[edit] References
- Lee, Jennifer 8. "Yes, 8 is my middle name." The Boston Globe. August 8, 1996. Page E1.
- Lee, Jennifer 8. "In Chinatowns, All Sojourners Can Feel Hua". New York Times pp. B29, B37. (January 27, 2006). Hua means Chinese. Huabu means Chinatown. Huaqiao means Chinese sojourners (overseas Chinese). Lee celebrates the Chinatowns in her hometown, New York City.
- Leiby, Richard. "Landlady Says Reporter Did a Number on Her Condo ", The Washington Post. (February 3, 2005)
- Mayerson-Schneider, Anna. "Meet D.C.'s Hostess of the Mostest", The New York Sun. (February 3, 2004)
- Nugent, Katherine. "New York Times Reporter Tells Students to Ask the Right Questions.", Medill School of Jourmalism. (November 22, 2005)
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ As Media Multiply, So Do 'Conceptual Scoops'. NPR. Retrieved on June 20, 2007.
