Wenxin Fan Intro

I root for Spotlight to win the Oscar. Hi! My name is Wenxin. Am a Nieman fellow from China. I report from Shanghai for Bloomberg News/Businessweek, and previously for the New York Times.

A lot of my work involves finding data and then matching them. I spent a large amount of time searching the Web using names, phone numbers, emails, IDs, birthdays etc. as keywords. Then I try to connect those dots by matching a set of those data. An example would be identifying a man with an English name invested in an Australian mine to be the grandson of Deng Xiaoping. The databases I use include social networks such as Facebook or Weibo, company registrations, stock exchange filings, lexis/nexis, and Communist Party propaganda. Most of the times, I start with Google, which had also helped me to help my wife find her primary school classmates.

Am interested in learning the more innovative means of reporting, and am keen to find new ways for story-telling. Eager for my hidden geek-side to be kindled by working with y’all.