Jennifer 8. Lee

Jennifer 8. Lee
Born Jennifer Lee
(1976-03-15) March 15, 1976
New York, New York, U.S.
Occupation Journalist
Notable credit(s) The New York Times

Jennifer 8. Lee (Chinese name: 李競;[1] pinyin: Lǐ Jìng; POJ: Lí Kēng) (born March 15, 1976) is an American journalist who previously worked for The New York Times.[2] She is also the co-founder and president of the literary studio Plympton,[3] as well as a producer on The Search for General Tso, which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.[4]

Early life and education

Lee was born on March 15, 1976 in New York City, to immigrants from Kinmen, Taiwan, an island off the coast of China's Fujian province.[5][6] Lee was not given a middle name at birth so she chose "8." when she was a teenager.[7][8][9] In Chinese culture, the number eight symbolizes prosperity and good luck. She graduated from Hunter College High School in Manhattan in 1994. She graduated from Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1999 with a degree in applied mathematics and economics.

Career

While a student at Harvard, Lee was the vice president of The Harvard Crimson student newspaper. She interned at The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Newsday, and The New York Times during college. She joined the Times in 2001, one and a half years after graduating from Harvard.

Lee wrote a book about the history of Chinese food in the United States and around the world, titled The Fortune Cookie Chronicles,[6] documenting the process on her blog. 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."[10] She appeared on The Colbert Report to promote the book.[11] The book was #26 on the New York Times Best Seller list.[12]

In December 2009, Lee accepted a buyout from The New York Times.[2]

Lee attempted to popularize the term "man date" in a 2005 New York Times article, and although it never became popular it subsequently inspired the 2009 film I Love You, Man starring Paul Rudd.[13][14]

Lee has served on the advisory panel for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's "News Challenge", and has assisted the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks, dealing with the press and with social networking sites.[15] She helped the organization with its April 2010 release of a video showing the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike.[16] Lee serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for Public Integrity,[17] the Advisory Board of the Nieman Foundation,[18] and the Asian American Writers' Workshop.[19] She is also an advisor to Upworthy.[20]

In 2011, Lee and fellow writer Yael Goldstein Love founded a literary studio named Plympton, Inc.[3] The studio focuses on publishing serialized fiction for digital platforms.[21] Investors include Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Y Combinator partner Garry Tan, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter, Hipmunk founder Adam Goldstein, Inkling founder Matt MacInnis, Columbia Law Professor Tim Wu (author of “The Master Switch”), Quora co-founder Charlie Cheever, and Tony Hsieh’s Vegas Tech Fund.[22] Its first series launched in September 2012 as part of the Kindle Serials program.[23] Its app Rooster, launched in March 2014, is a mobile reading service for iOS7.[24]

In 2012, Lee created NewsDiffs, a website that archives article revisions from The New York Times, CNN, Politico, The Washington Post, and the BBC, with two brothers who were programmers, MIT graduate student Eric Price and Tddium employee Greg Price.[25][26][27] They built the website in 38 hours (including sleep) during the June 16–17, 2012, Knight-Mozilla-M.I.T. hackathon at the MIT Media Lab.[25]

Lee is a non-voting member of the Unicode Technical Committee of the Unicode Consortium, the governing board for emoji. Inspired by the universality of the dumpling across cultures and cuisines (e.g., gyoza in China, ravioli in Italy, pierogi in Poland, empanadas in Argentina), she helped to make the dumpling emoji a candidate.[28][29] She also co-authored the proposal for a hijab emoji.[30]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lee, Jennifer 8. "Someone added my Chinese name to my Wikipedia entry in simplified :( form". The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. Retrieved March 10, 2014.
  2. 1 2 "Jennifer 8. Lee Taking Times Buyout". New York Observer. December 9, 2009. Archived from the original on January 19, 2012. Retrieved June 11, 2012.
  3. 1 2 "Our Team | Plympton". Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  4. ↑ Foundas, Scott. "Tribeca Film Review: ‘The Search for General Tso’". Variety. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  5. ↑ "Ask a Reporter: Jennifer 8. Lee". New York Times. Archived from the original on June 28, 2011. Retrieved May 7, 2011.
  6. 1 2 Lee, Jennifer 8. (2008). The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. New York, NY: Twelve Books. ISBN 0-446-69897-0. OCLC 225870250.
  7. ↑ Horne, Jim (November 22, 2008). "Lucky Number 8". The New York Times. Retrieved January 2, 2009.
  8. ↑ Lee, Jennifer 8. "Someone added my Chinese name to my Wikipedia entry in simplified :( form" The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. March 17, 2008.
  9. ↑ Lee, Jennifer 8. "Yes, 8 is my middle name." Boston Globe. August 8, 1996. Page E1.
  10. ↑ "Jennifer 8. Lee Attracts Americans with Chinese Food", October 13, 2008. Source: Xinhua/Translated by womenofchina.cn Archived October 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine.
  11. ↑ "Jennifer 8. Lee on The Colbert Report on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008"
  12. ↑ "Best Sellers, Hardcover Nonfiction, March 30, 2008"
  13. ↑ Liu, Jonathan. "Times Goes Hollywood: Gives Content Work to Beverly Hills Group". New York Observer. Retrieved June 17, 2014.
  14. ↑ Ventura, Elbert. "I Love You, Man". Reverse Shot. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  15. ↑ WikiLeaks questions why it was rejected for Knight grant, Yahoo! News, June 17, 2010 Archived September 27, 2010, at the Wayback Machine.
  16. ↑ Clint Hendler: WikiLeaks Releases Video Showing Death of Reuters Staff Columbia Journalism Review April 5, 2010
  17. ↑ "Board of Directors". Center for Public Integrity. Retrieved June 10, 2012.
  18. ↑ "About The Foundation | Advisory Board". The Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  19. ↑ "Read the Margins – About". Read the Margins. Asian American Writers' Workshop. Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  20. ↑ "Upworthy | The Paley Center for Media". The Paley Center for Media. Retrieved March 18, 2014.
  21. ↑ Denison, D.C. (September 8, 2012). "Boston literary start-up lands Amazon deal". The Boston Globe. Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  22. ↑ Ha, Anthony (March 10, 2014). "Aiming To Fit Fiction Into Busy Schedules, Rooster Is An iPhone App For Serialized Novels". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 18, 2014.
  23. ↑ Bosman, Julie (September 30, 2012). "E-Books Expand Their Potential With Serialized Fiction". The New York Times. Retrieved October 26, 2012.
  24. ↑ McMurtrie, John (March 12, 2014). "S.F. company launches Rooster, a new mobile reading service". SFGate. Retrieved March 17, 2014.
  25. 1 2 Brisbane, Arthur S. (June 30, 2012). "Insider's View of Changes, From Outside". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 18, 2015. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  26. ↑ Silverman, Craig (June 18, 2012). "NewsDiffs tracks changes to New York Times, CNN". Poynter Institute. Archived from the original on June 18, 2015. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  27. ↑ Goldenberg, Kira (February 4, 2013). "Tracking the NYT's evolving Koch obit: NewsDiffs reveals the newspaper's multiple revisions, resulting in a surge of traffic". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on June 18, 2015. Retrieved June 18, 2015.
  28. ↑ Warzel, Charlie. "One Woman’s Bizarre, Delightful Quest To Change Emojis Forever". Buzzfeed. Retrieved 17 October 2016.
  29. ↑ Kar, Ian. "Dumplings and fortune cookies: Your emoji are about to get even more diverse". Quartz. Retrieved 17 October 2016.
  30. ↑ Farber, Madeline. "Unicode Is Considering a Hijab Emoji". Fortune.com. Retrieved 17 October 2016.

Further reading

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.