An Interview on Melissa Chan

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Rosanna Xia, Journalist Expelled From China Reflects on Experience. Los Angeles Times, May 14, 2012.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-melissa-chan-20120514,0,5342851.story

Quote:

Melissa "Chan, who was the sole Al Jazeera English correspondent in China, said she knew she was on shaky ground for most of this year. She had been working on month-by-month credentials since January, when the government refused a routine visa-renewal request. Ordinarily, journalists are granted year-long credentials, but Chan is believed to be the first foreign correspondent to be given temporary papers.

"Interviewed in her hometown of Walnut, Chan, 31, says she's not exactly sure what prompted her expulsion after five years of reporting in China.

She will "attend[] Stanford University in the fall. She was recently accepted for a [one-year] Knight Fellowship there

Note:
(a) Walnut, Califoania
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walnut,_California
(a city in Los Angeles County)
(b) The report notes "Chan recalled a nine-day trip in China's far west to cover a Muslim Turkic ethnic minority community, only to lose every translator she had set up because her phones were tapped and police had intimidated them prior to her arrival."

Apparently folks in Xinjiang are not familiar with Mandarin.
(c) John S Knight Fellowship for Professional journalists
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joh ... ssional_Journalists

Mr Knight (1894-1981) inherited from his father in 1933 a newspaper The Beacon-Journal (Akron, Ohio), in 1937 bought the Miami Herald, and  in 1974 merged his company with Ridder Publications to form Knight-Ridder Newspapers Inc. "Ridder Publications was founded in 1892 when Herman Ridder acquired the German-language Staats-Zeitung in New York."  In 2006 The McClatchy Company bought Knight-Ridder.
(d) Regarding the German or Dutch surname Ridder. Middle Low German ridder and Middle High German ritter (both nouns) means knight. (Ritter is a German surname.) In other words, the corresponding English name is Knight.

Ridder (title)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridder_(title)