Beyond The Byline: Carolyn Cui

Today we are happy to bring you the next installment of “Beyond the Byline.” Carolyn Cui covers commodities and investments along with socially responsible investing for The Wall Street Journal. Coming to the United States from Shanghai, China after college, Cui has become an integral member of The Journal’s investment team and a journalist that commands the respect of her peers, readers and PR professionals alike. Thank you for taking the time to chat with the CWQ community, Carolyn!

Without further ado, Carolyn Cui…

Where are you from? Tell us about your childhood / early years.
Across the ocean: China. I was born in Shanghai and grew up like most kids there, spending our entire childhoods studying hard to get into a top university. It never occurred to me until after graduation that I actually would have the privilege to decide where my life could go.

What’s one of your guilty pleasures?

Playing a certain card game, called “80 points,” with my Chinese friends. I feel guilty because it’s not only extremely time-consuming but also detrimental to friendship as it divides the winners and the losers to a degree that outsiders can’t comprehend. Anyhow, I just played this past weekend – and I won this time.

Big family? Small Family? Tell us a little about ‘em.
Mine is a tiny family. I was born in the year when China started implementing the “One-Child” policy. My father really wanted to have a Cui boy who could carry our somewhat unique last name, but he is now awakening to the cruel fact that he has to deal with me.

If you could meet one person, past or present, who would it be? Why?

My grandfather… In the 1940s, he was adventurous enough to leave his hometown in rural Jiangsu Province to come to Shanghai and work as a rickshaw driver. He worked very long hours and didn’t speak the local dialect. Yet his decision enabled my father to receive a better education than he could have at home. Looking back, it strikes me how similar his move was to my decision to come to the U.S. If I could meet him, I would thank him and let him know how much I admire his courage.

Tell us a little bit about your first job.

My first job was as a night-shift copy editor at Shanghai Daily, an English-language newspaper. I also wrote feature stories for the paper, and my favorite one was about a crocodile farm in the city. I enjoyed almost every aspect of the job, except that I didn’t have any night life.

Did you always want to be a journalist? If yes why? If no, what did you think you would do?
No, because I always felt I was too shy to be a journalist. I always thought I should be a detective, since I could usually figure out who the murderer was before finishing a book or a CSI episode ended.

Tell us about the path you took to get where you are.

I left Shanghai Daily to join Dow Jones because I wanted to be in sync with my friends. I was tired of working the night shift and never seeing my friends. I later went to work as a fixer for The Wall Street Journal in Beijing for four years. A lot of earth-shattering news happened over that period, including the SARS epidemic in which thousands of people were killed, as well as the reshuffling of China’s banking industry. For the first time, I realized that great journalism could actually have an impact on people’s lives and even on a gigantic country like China.

Since I didn’t have any formal training in writing or journalism, my boss at The Journal encouraged me to step back for a while and distill my practical knowledge in a more systematic way. I was admitted to Columbia University’s journalism school and later re-joined The Journal at its New York office.

What song is playing on your iPod right now?

Not songs, but I am an avid follower of This American Life and The Moth Podcast.

What three things do you always find in your refrigerator?

Lemonade, wine and dumplings.

Flash forward 10 years. What does the media landscape look like?

The ongoing consolidation in the media industry is likely to continue for a few more years, and eventually each surviving general media group will emerge with a full-line product mix of print, Web, broadcast, and digital news products. Regional papers will probably be folded into these groups, which will produce a local version of the products with a smaller local staff. The inundation of information will exhaust readers and the competition will refocus on the quality of stories. I still expect to see a few niche players in specific areas such as finance and entertainment.

What do you think of the “Twitter Revolution?”

Twitter is a quick answer to the question of what is happening, but I doubt whether this will be enough for people who want to have a thorough understanding of something complex. Many a time, things are more complicated than they appear to be or what others want you to believe. If news were just about passing along the facts, this would not be the sort of career many of us chose to devote our lives to.

What is your favorite place you’ve traveled to?

Annapolis, MD. To be more specific, Cantler’s waterfront crab house…

What is one piece of advice you would offer PR people?

PR people are of great value to journalists’ work. There’s a mismatch between journalists and PR people in terms of coverage, because PR firms normally divide work by clients while reporters are in charge of different topics. I’m always very impressed by a PR person who knows my beat well enough to understand what I am looking for and points me to the right people that I should consider speaking to, even if those people are not clients.

Finish the sentence: I never leave home without my…

… lip balm.

Finish the sentence: In my next life, I want to come back as…

… a detective. For some unexplainable reason, I might find myself being very friendly to reporters.