Final Report

Baywatcher in San Francisco

My new life in San Francisco seemed surprisingly familiar after only a few days.

Journalists have many things in common, no matter where on this earth they have their desks. I was surprised to find how little the daily routine at The San Francisco Chronicle daily routine differed from production days at Financial Times Deutschland.

There is the big daily nagging event called the main news conference featuring the editor-in-chief who complains about stories that were missed or that should be pursued in more detail. Most writers and subeditors find a good excuse to pass on this one.

There are the inefficient morning hours that are spent reading papers, checking emails and discussing the best lunch options with your colleagues. Then there are the hectic afternoon rush hours, everyone silently regretting that lunch may have been a little too extensive.

There is, of course, the collective feeling of triumph when your paper broke the news first, and others have to follow up. And there is the rewarding experience that the best ideas come up when colleagues stick their heads together and come up with a new angle to a story.

Unfortunately, the confused situation of newspaper business also differs little across the globe. Like many German media organizations, the Chronicle was restructuring and reducing staff – and the ongoing quest for a solid online business model seemed very familiar.

It also felt like a déjà-vu to hear the Chronicle staff discuss the need to go for more localized, more personalized and more flashy stories. And it was interesting to observe the efforts to promote more interaction with the readers. Other than inviting comments and blogs online, The Chronicle also has a format where readers can give their short comments on important issues in the paper’s print edition (including a photograph to show their friends).

There are a few things that seem to work better in US journalism. In some areas, professional and technical standards are higher and more strictly enforced.

US journalists are also more careful in attributing quotes. German newspapers tend to use quotes “that were on the market” more generously without meticulously naming the source.

Editing is being taken way more seriously than in Germany, editing is considered a responsible and highly valued position in a newspaper. In Germany, the writers tend to be the stars so most people working at newsdesks split their work between the two. But mistakes crop up more easily if editing is done in-between writing by the same people.

I was also impressed with the strict separation between editorial desk and news reporting – even though it often leads to non-experts commenting on issues they know much less about than the reporter.

After that I worked at the Metro Desk for two weeks before I asked to be transferred to business. It was a good decision to make this change early on in my stay and it was definitely worth to get involved in the necessary office politics to get everybody to agree. But my feeling that I could contribute more in business proved to be correct.

The Burns fellowship for me was a great opportunity to apply my knowledge and skills in a new environment while at the same time having the time and space to try new forms.

It felt very good to find that as a journalist you have acquired a number of skills that are universally applicable, even in a foreign environment. The differences in the way a news story is structured in the Anglo-Saxon and the German press are interesting to note, but small enough to be able to adapt to the new style in a short amount of time.

San Francisco and the Bay Area being so close to Asia, I could contribute my expertise on China and Asia, for example during the scandal over recalls for Chinese products.

The fellowship is also an opportunity to dig into something completely different. I found a new playground in Silicon Valley. The Chronicle’s business section being short-staffed on people following venture capital flows into IT and clean technologies, the Chronicle allowed me to explore this area that is such an important part of Bay Area business culture.

I also enjoyed experimenting with new forms. My “Baywatcher” blog on the Chronicle website was a way to play with the English language, it served as an electronic diary of my everyday observations in San Francisco – and it was a chance to use all the experiences that don’t go into a newspaper story.

Last but not least, the fellowship was a testing ground for being a foreign correspondent for my own newspaper back home. How useful this experience could be has become clear later in the day – as FTD is now sending me over to Washington, DC!

“You are going to San Francisco? But this is not really the United States”, is a comment I often got on my choice of location during the Burns fellowship.

I felt a bit guilty in the beginning for wanting to be in a lively cosmopolitan place and avoiding the culture shock of a small Midwestern town. It is of course quite true that the population in the Bay Area is in many ways not representative of the general mood in this country – and therefore more adaptable for Europeans. People are politically more liberal, they care about climate change and healthy food.

And man, do they care about these things! And in that way, I think, San Franciscans are actually more American than they themselves might believe. In the States, to my observation, people tend to choose between one of the extremes. If you are fat, you are really fat, but if you buy your stuff at Whole Foods then you don’t compromise on your health. If you drive a Hummer you really don’t care about emissions, but if you do care, you are quite likely to ride a bike and to set up your own civil rights organization on environmental issues.

And there are other sides to life in San Francisco that couldn’t be more in tune with the American cliché. The proverbial friendliness of Americans – it takes its purest form on the West Coast. The American service orientation couldn’t be better exemplified than by the Chronicle’s cafeteria staff who have memorized every single employee’s name and preferences – from the size of the cup to the choice of milk (reduced fat, low fat or regular).

Something I could never quite understand was the argument that San Francisco was the most “European” city in the States. Other than the fact that it is possible to walk around instead of driving, I could not find much factual proof for this statement.

If anything, San Francisco has become an Asian city – to the extent that Chinatown and Japantown have become negligible enclaves (and certainly no longer the places to get the best Chinese or Japanese food in town). For many third generation Chinese-Americans who had previously lost contact with their family roots, learning Mandarin has become an asset – and a helpful too in interacting with the new arrivals who don’t come to work in restaurants but aim straight at Silicon Valley. Mexican immigrants have in general been less successful than their Asian counterpart, but their presence is also hugely felt – be it on the menu of all fast food parlours in town or as helpers in the harvest season in Napa valley.

Europe, and that was also a revealing experience for me, was simply not on the map! I was always surprised at how rarely European news made it into the Chronicle, we were not on their agenda. And considering the geographical location of California it is easier to understand why. Having widely travelled in other parts of the world, I have never felt so far away from home and so hopelessly disconnected from developments there. Nine hours time difference can make a lot of difference – especially in journalism!

The arrival of German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was a good example for different perceptions – and for how everyone only talks to his own audience. For Steinmeier, San Francisco was the perfect stage to promote a “coalition of the willing” in climate change – and German diplomats and accompanying journalists alike were proud of the snub the minister had delivered to the US administration in bypassing Washington during this trip. In San Francisco, no-one had a clue that Steinmeier was in town – with one exception: The Chronicle ran a big story on the possible cooperation between California and Europe in climate change, which was proudly passed around among the delegation members by the German embassy. The author was your German Burns fellow.

Paradoxically, Europe has an excellent image in the Bay Area where people are very self-critical and always ready to believe that European environmental laws and health care systems are more advanced than their own. For example, I was quite shocked when a colleague recommended the British NHS as a promising model for universal health care in the States!

The situation is one of many examples to show how much both sides can still learn from and about each other. And this is maybe the most surprising finding for someone like me who has travelled and lived in much more exotic countries than the United States: It is the discovery that Americans and Europeans tend to believe they know each other – but in fact they sometimes live in rather different worlds. In reverse, it is the discovery that Europeans think and act more similarly than they tend to assume – and that from the American perception there is a distinct European identity that Europeans are sometimes insufficiently aware of.