I'm an Australian broadcast journalist and author. My blog is all about the media, arts and China. About me: After completing a journalism masters at NYU in 2007, I returned to Australia, where I published my first book, Beijing Blur, and produced triple j’s Hack for two years. Right now I am associate producer of Insight on SBS TV. Subscribe to my blog by email or RSS, follow me on Twitter, or buy my book.
A popular American iPhone application, available through Apple’s Australian iTunes store, was falsely listing American sex offenders as living in Sydney suburbs for at least four months …
Last night, on the Radio National program Australia Talks, Senator Stephen Conroy told listeners that “the Internet is just a communication and distribution platform like any other form of communication and distribution platform”. He’s wrong, for a few reasons. …
Is a Government Watchdog the right thing to polcie what happens on the net? Will it keep bad stuff off Facebook? Or will any oversight in the wrong hands become a draconian regime of over-regulation. …
The Government wants a mandatory internet filter to reduce the risk of children seeing really bad stuff online. So how often do kids really stumble across online porn? Here’s a quick-fire snap-shot from around the world. …
Don’t worry about the mandatory filter. You can get around it. Smarty-pants tech blogs love pointing this out. But it’s not that simple. …
In the thick of researching Internet regulation, I hear one question over and over again. “Isn’t the Internet, by it’s very nature, free?” And the follow on question: “Is the government’s ISP-filtering plan against ‘the spirit of the Internet’?” …
Unpredictable, addictive and unrestricted. Chatroulette has sparked a cult following, countless YouTube clips, a new genre of shocked screen-grabs, and at last, mainstream coverage. It could now draw the attention of would-be censors. …
I’ve been filling my head with net regulation stuff. I’m doing it for the Journalism and Media Research Centre at UNSW. I’ve been trying to see where there might be flaws or inconsistencies in the ways that filtering and censorship work in Australia. …
One screen. Two parents: If I were a mobile phone, I’d file for divorce from my parents like a dirty brat. That’s what I learned today. I’ll explain in a second. …
Titty Wallpaper: Remember the days when you actually used your mobile phone company’s content service? To get wallpapers or ringtones (why would you), or bikini babes (dork), or titty wallpaper? …
Finally! I have a chance to let you know what happened with that China Radio International Interview about the Shanghai Pride Festival a few weeks back. (Why keep a blog, James, when you never update it?)… So here’s an update for all four of you who read this. …
Shocked. Then pleased to my toes. I received this email today from my friends at China Radio International, Beijing. …
You don’t ‘hang’ in Tiananmen. There’s nothing to see. A dozen vans patrol tourists. It’s hard to get in; with streets petitioned, the massive square is an island. There’s an eerie dialogue between Mao’s eyes and his mausoleum; he watches over his own dead body. I feel like I’m trespassing on a grave. In Tiananmen, you walk through the shadow of China’s struggle for order. …
Principal Kang’s kindergarten class was taking an afternoon nap when the magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck last year. ‘We quickly grabbed the kids and ran out the door,’ she says. ‘We herded them outside into the fields’. …
This artist has seen change. Chen Qiulin was born in 1975 in Hubei province in a town now underwater. The Three Gorges Dam project – China’s great engineering feat – flooded her childhood. …
After this mornings disparaging post about China’s young people, I thought I’d show the cutest little munchkins in Chengdu. Both were hanging with their proud Grandmas, totally happy for me to take some pics, and then show them off to shopkeepers and passersby. …
Beijing, day three. The festival is going great. My personal highlight was chatting with Zachary Mexico, the author of China Underground, in our “youth subcultures” session on Saturday. …
I haven’t haggled for a while, and my skills sharpened only towards the end, when I scored a free 2G flash card. …
Edited book talk – Potts Point Bookshop
Here’s what you may have learned from the Beijing Games.
Buckteeth are bad; bad enough to get you banned from the opening ceremony. …
Beijing today will be, as my friend Jenny might say, mad as an arse full of bats. Immense in every way, every day, this city of planetary movements.
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The compelling image of Great Firewall of China fills the imagination with total impenetrability. The Firewall’s integrity, like the Great Wall’s itself, can withstand the Mongols and protect the people. But just like the Great Wall, whose story to this day is one of impermanence, a single line that demarcates territory, the Great Firewall is equally a thing of political fantasy and propaganda. …
My interest in the changing nature of Chinese journalism on the web takes me to Hong Kong to interview one of China’s biggest bloggers, Roland Soong. …
The first thing, overwhelmingly, was the smell. Like no other place on earth. Sulfur dioxide. The robust smell of bad eggs and coal. The plane pushed through a blanket of it. The night lights made the pall glow greenish brown. The haze continued inside the airport. I couldn’t make out the end of the turnstiles in the baggage claim hall. It smells like this place, and this place only. …
This is the final episode of “Fourteen: The Complete Diaries of a Teenager in Love” for this season. All your questions about Jack and Snowy are finally answered. But it wouldn’t be Jack if he didn’t have a few surprises up his sleeve. …
In the second last episode of the series, Jack faces exams head on. After a monumental term (who knew Year 9 could be so bloody hard?) it’s time to look forward, to the holidays and beyond. …
It’s the day after. Jack races to school for what becomes the most defining day of his 14-year-old life. Just two more episodes after this, before school term ends. Probably the strangest, most eventful term ever. …
Surds. Deductive Geometry. The impact of White Settlement on Aboriginal Society. The beginnings of theatre. Macbeth: Should the audience speak of a villain, a victim, or both? With all this study, who-on-earth could have seen a day like today coming? …
Not long to go now before the end of term. But something is wrong. As always, Jack feels like he’s the last to know. Why is Jin acting like a crazy person? And what-the-fuck was tonight all about? …
Driven by the casual abuse of the classroom, Jack finally comes clean to band-mate Jin, Jack’s tall and troubled Year 10 friend. How will Jin react? …
Death comes to Australian TV in a big way. Rolling coverage does nothing to help Jack, 14, process the enormity of loss. Meanwhile, he still can’t bring himself to join the band at school, even though Jin has all the lyrics and all the names. All Jack has to do it turn up. What’s holding him back? Another episode from Jack’s real diaries from 1996. …
Camps are finally out of the way and it’s the calm before the study storm. Four weeks from exams. Term 2. Year 9. Jack doesn’t know it yet, but in a few weeks everything will change – more than he or anyone else could have predicted. For now, there’s still time for Jack’s daily pre-school rituals. …
Jack heads off on another school camp. (His first real camping experience. Does he know how to pitch a tent?). Trekking through the wilderness of the New South Wales southern highlands gives Jack the perfect chance to think about where-the-hell this whole Year 9 thing is going. Real, unedited. Do you remember when you were 14? …
“Fourteen, the complete diaries of a teenager in love”, continues. My favourite line from Jack in the last episode, was when he was gazing into his crystal ball: “Wouldn’t it be funny if one day I actually published this, when I’m 30 or something. ‘Growing up Australian in pre-Republican times’”. Oh Jack. In this episode, it’s All About the Boy. …
Being 14 sucks. Firstly, you’re stuck in the ‘burbs. Next, you think everyone doesn’t like you, even when you know you’re better than everyone else at just about everything. And third, there’s that small issue of a big secret. Catch up with all the previous episodes over there on the right-hand-side pane. And keep up. Jack’s just getting started. …
Time to play catchup. Previously on “Fourteen”, Jack wrestles with God, and decides it’s not gonna work out. That doesn’t stop him from wanting to be friends with Year 9 Christians, Zach and Adrian. Of course it all began with a black sketch book, and a desire to write it all down. These are Jack’s real, unedited diary entries from 1996. …
What have you missed? In episode one of “Fourteen”, Jack got his Mum and Dad to buy a black sketch book, and now, in secret, he is filling it up with the tell-all details of life in Year 9 (officially the most boring year ever). These are Jack’s unedited journal entries from 1996. He’s 14, and in Year 9. In this episode, Jack goes to Christian camp, and you’ll meet Jack’s friends, Zach and Adrian. …
14-year-old Jack is in love with a super-hottie. If only Jack could return to that Big Night two years ago to alter the course of fate, they might be together. But now, down and out in Year 9 (officially the most boring year ever), Jack sits alone, obsessing over private diaries. …
“West arrived in Beijing with vague hopes of writing a book. He is now one of few Australian memoirists with a US publishing deal.” …
I did a quick profile interview with a magazine in Beijing today, about my experiences writing Beijing Blur. …
“Bang on target”
The review of Beijing Blur in Melbourne’s Sunday Age Newspaper. …
‘Intimate, erudite and evocative writing, shimmering with honesty’. Thanks, nation’s capital. …
“Casting himself as a lonely observer, ex-pat James West chronicles his experiences of Chinese media, music and queer culture with a moody voice, interviewing dissidents, bloggers and musos to flesh out his experiences. …
“When he’s not hung over, West’s voice rings with insight”. …
“West reveals a country that is far more complex, entertaining and downright odd than its rulers might have you believe… West covers enormous ground without becoming ponderous or judgmental. …
“You’ll be swept up in the energy, contradiction and confusion”
New look at Beijing: Niki Bruce. Monday, June 16, 2008 …
‘West succeeds in painting a vivid picture”
The Age …
Highlight of the week so far was being on Richard Glover’s Drive on 702 ABC Sydney. …
People will be forced to read this when the seatbelts are fastened and all the newspapers run out. Thanks, Jetstar Magazine. …
LISTEN: Late Night Live (ABC Radio National), China’s Me Generation, 29 April 2008. …