P11.V53.I01
black
cyan
magenta
yellow
SUMMER 2012
Page 14A
Media Teachers and Advisers:
Win a Free Subscription
for your class or staff
Adviser Update
footnotes
Tales & traditions of the press
Expat life
‘a wonderful reality’
By ANNE G. WHITT
Why do you need a free
subscription to
The Wall Street Journal
Classroom Edition?
Email a persuasive 250-word essay to
[email protected] with
609.452.2820 Web: https://www.newsfund.org
“Classroom Edition”
in the subject line by Sept. 17.*
Dow Jones News Fund P.O. Box 300 Princeton, NJ 08543-0300 Phone:
Subscriptions start in October.
Winners receive:
430 copies of The Wall Street Journal
Classroom Edition
4A Teacher Guide
4Unlimited use of Classroomedition.com
4Full access to
WSJ.com for the teacher
*Nearly 60 subscriptions have been
awarded since 2009
ebecca and Alan Paul answered the
R
who-will-keep-the-kids puzzle with
one word: Daddy. This arrangement
allowed the family to live a predictable,
Maplewood, N.J., suburban life. Alan
says, “I … held down the family fort no
matter where her job took her, how late
she came home, or how early she left.”
Rebecca’s talent grew at The Wall
Street Journal while Alan worked from
home for Guitar Magazine and Slam.
An offer from The Wall Street Journal for Rebecca to go to Bejing forced a
new family decision. They moved into an
expatriate village, where the children
quickly adapted to playing with other
expatriate children. Three in-house
attendants helped the parents adjust.
Again, Rebecca went to an office. The
children went to a British school. Alan
again worked from home.
With the 2008 Olympics only about
three years away, Slam was glad to have
an on-site office. Alan could also continue
submitting to Guitar. The whole expat
life fascinated Alan so much that he
started a blog to share with friends back
home.
Of course, a man who loved guitar
would not allow geography to limit his
ability to find someone to jam. He found
three Chinese nationals. One of the Chinese guitarists called himself Woodie.
Alan could not resist the thought of calling the group Woodie Alan. He wrote
songs for the group and managed to book
gigs for weekends and a few week nights.
After visiting with the family in
China, Alan’s father suggested that
returning home would be a return to reality, Alan felt offended. He says, “One of
the lessons I had taken from expat life
was that no one was destined to live by
any single reality. There were a million
different possibilities, and no one could
convince me our life wasn’t real. I had
never done more than I did now or felt
more alive. The key for me was figuring
out how to maintain this vibrancy in the
looming new reality [of returning to New
Jersey]. I would never marginalize my
expat life. It was a wonderful reality.”
By time to return, Rebecca’s bureau
had received the Pulitzer Prize for
International Reporting for a series called
“China’s Naked Capitalism,” Rebecca had
been groomed as an international editor,
Woodie Alan was giving five concerts a
month, the Olympics had ended, their
son Jacob talked of attending Oxford or
Cambridge, and The National Society of
Newspaper Columnists had named Alan
2008 Online Columnist of the Year.
Anne Whitt
is a 1997-98 Dow
Jones Special Recognition Adviser, 1999
Florida Journalism
Teacher of the Year
and 2000 Distinguished Adviser in
JEA’s National Yearbook Adviser of the
Year competition. In
2002 NSPA and JEA
named her a Pioneer. In 2006 Florida
Scholastic Press Association gave her its
Medallion. Her column, “Whitt and Wisdom,” may be read