On Protest and Reporting

Today, Poynter ran a piece titled "Should journalists protest in Trump's America?" This is a question I've been wrestling with as a freelancer. It was mostly focused on newsroom journalists. I posted to Facebook and tweeted, wondering how it applies to freelancers like myself. The piece's author, Katie Hawkins-Gaar, asked me to elaborate. At first I responded in tweets, but then realized I had more to say. Here's what I ended up writing.

Why is it important that I be on top of current affairs? Partially, so as I reach out to editors I can be prepared to jump into my reporting and do it well. I need to have a clear idea of what current issues are to make an effective contribution. On a more selfish level, I need to have a clearer idea of what kind of stories will more easily get an editor’s attention, not to mention that of the public.

In the meantime, I also need to report potential stories, pitch them, and wait on editors understandably harried by current circumstances to reply. How do I survive doing so with such uncertainty? How do I make a living doing that? And how do I do that if the world is changing very rapidly. If a crisis emerges, how does my more evergreen work matter?

That’s reporting. What about protest and politics? Do I let the world go by when people I care about are affected, concerned, scared, etc.? What about when I am affected? Am I affected? Probably not as much, because I’m white, straight, cis-male, college- and graduate school- educated and born in the United States. I am Jewish, but not practicing, and that’s still not (yet) as much a target. My best strength is my dedication to the craft, my skepticism, and my courage to tell stories even if people don’t want to hear them. But, again, I have to be able to survive telling them. It, sadly, often comes to economics, which are often made shakier by political uncertainty. So do I then work on more anodyne material while watching the world go by? Isn’t that just shutting my ears? Wouldn’t that just be isolationism in a different form?

After all, my first book is all about reporters who risked their lives and livelihoods in a troubled time to bring stories to the public that were being inadequately covered. My central subject — Melville Jacoby — was writing about devastating, daily air raids in China that were killing thousands. He was writing about brutal conditions in Shanghai and about the march toward war in what was then French Indochina. His master’s thesis was all about how the U.S. public wasn’t paying attention the war between China and Japan and what that portended for them. He knew what happened there mattered here, and vice versa, so he was driven to tell such stories. Then he reported on the totally under-resourced defense of the Philippines, and sent home the first photos the U.S. saw of the absolutely savage conditions U.S. and Filipino troops endured in Bataan.

I mention all this not because I want to raise heads about my book. I mention it because journalists are still doing this kind of work, still not being listened to, and still often dying because of their work. Seventy-five years later, journalists are telling us about civilians dying in military strikes, about coming conflicts and uncertainty, about corruption, about tone-deaf foreign policy. As a journalist, my form of protest, if I have one, is, in part, amplifying these reporters, and in part, joining them. Not letting the line go quiet.

And I do wonder, in this time, how do I do justice to the subject I spent so much time with? Mel, Annalee, and their friends and colleagues were people who had marks on their heads for their reporting, who fled besieged islands in the dead of night to get the story out. Me? I’m at home reading Twitter, trying to figure out where and how to jump in and contribute when my portfolio is, well, not stale, but, about such specific subjects it seems disconnected from what’s happening. What editor wants to take the risk on that at a time when they need to be very careful about the professionalism of their contributors, to know that they can trust the credibility of their reporting? 

I guess this doesn’t answer the question of what and how I protest as a freelancer, but the thing is, I can’t afford to not think them. I don’t know any other way to operate. How do I contribute now? Lately I’ve thought the ideal is joining a news organization, becoming a stringer for a few publications, or becoming a regular contributor to a few outlets, but with freelancing, even in a time of protest, it still comes back to how do I survive while doing so? I always think I can best help society by reporting well, but where do I turn to be able to do that? Normally, I’d say my community, but if some of my community — those who aren’t reporters — are out in the streets protesting or at home making calls to representatives, and the rest — those who are reporters — are pushed to the max doing their own reporting, what’s left as a backstop or a network for me?

A (Not So) Tiny Letter

Hi,

I've been reading a lot of letters. It seems all I do these days is read letters.

But here's a letter for you. I wish I could send it to you on the onion-skin I so often find myself reading, the translucent sheets etched with the black ink of a an old Hermes's or Corona Portable's hammer-strikes, the sheet carefully folded into an envelope covered with bright stamps and decorated with a picture of a DC-3 and bold capitals reading "VIA AIR MAIL." 

Of course, I can't, but I still want to say hello, because it's been a while (probably) and I miss you (certainly) and connecting beyond the superficial digital zones where we encounter one another. You may know where I've been, but perhaps something will settle on this screen. Letters, whatever their substrate, allow thoughts to steep better than ever-flowing streams of information we feel we must address and process now. Right now. Always now.

So feel free to read this and whatever letters follow at your leisure.

This Spring, while traveling between archives and libraries, first in Washington, D.C. and College Park, Maryland, then in Palo Alto and San Diego, I've had a sort of secondary education on the art of letter-writing. But what I want to discuss isn't what I've read in search of details about Melville Jacoby's life. I want to address what happens after processing so many diplomats' desk calendars, journalists' diaries, essayists' scrawled notes, and of course, the letters, those countless letters. I want to address what happens when I leave the reading rooms and need to unpack myself into whatever crevices of the day remain. Hard as I may work, these trips acquire meaning through what happens in their margins. Even seemingly inconsequential after-hours moments counterbalance days crammed with research and mountains of paper.

After I finished my first day at the Library of Congress, a college friend I hadn't seen since graduation showed off the senate office where she now works. I later met her husband (and adorable dog) while staying as the first overnight guest at the house they just bought. But what I remember from my visit wasn't catching up over what we've done the past dozen years, it was the three of us talking late into the night over meals and music, the kind of meandering conversation one remembers from college dining halls, dorm lounges and walks across the quad. In other words, the moments outside the classroom.

But for the bulk of my nights in D.C., I stayed on the couch of my best friend from grad school. We hadn't seen one another for half a decade. Because of a major event in the D.C. area while I was there, my friend, a TV news producer, was as busy as I. While we could only squeeze in a few hours of socializing, our familiarity with one another ran so deep that we didn't need to do anything to resume our patter after five years apart, and being busy together was our normal. Back at her apartment on the last night of my trip, we collapsed on the couch with wine, take-out and mindless TV. Both depleted by our work, the moment felt like the endless hours we'd spent agonizing over our Master's projects, commiserating over breakups and wondering what the hell we would do next with our lives. It was the comfort of familiarity balanced against a week working ourselves sick (Literally; I went home with a cold).

Pain and Gain

Two weeks later, I was at it again in California. There, I met friends' boyfriends at ballgames and high school classmates' babies at coffee shops. One night in L.A., after mingling with Tyrannosaurs and dancing among the imagined landscapes of a prehistoric Golden State, one of my oldest friends and I stretched the night deep into the morning, remembering youthful exploits on late nights long past.

On my second day in San Diego, after exhausting the collection I'd come to scrutinize, I visited the studio of an aunt literally working herself raw finishing a glass art installation. With my uncle explaining the painstaking preparations they were making to hang the work, my aunt stepped away from shaping a sea-green sheet of glass. She explained how, despite torn-up hands and her exhaustion, she was fulfilled by the work and grateful for the chance to involve the man she loved with its preparation. Toil doesn't only happen from nine-to-five, and it doesn't only happen in offices or construction sites.

Just the previous night, I met a high school friend I hadn't seen since 2001. Over cocktails and a late-night tea, we dissected the writing life, its sharp edges, and the truth of just how brutal our passions can be.

"Because I love making art, and I love being alive, I am trying to be brave, to be honest, and to listen carefully,"  she confided the next day in a North American Review essay. She felt like I sometimes do, like she was failing. "And so far this year, interestingly, it’s been the perfect fail. All pain, no gain."

Candid admissions were the order of the week. After my visit to my aunt's studio I met one more person, an old colleague who became a close friend years after we worked together. At a coffee shop near her childhood home we discussed "light" topics: books, TV shows, our families, etc.; but we also talked about her pancreatic endocrine cancer — and its often debilitating treatment. That afternoon, Huffington Post ran a piece she wrote originally for Reimagine.me about fighting to stay afloat financially. Years into her diagnosis, she hasn't even reached her 29th birthday. As she details in the piece, she didn't choose the expense of having cancer the way we make other informed choices about our major financial commitments, but she must bear it. I know her to be an artist as well, and I know that she is brave, and I know that she is honest about when she cannot be brave, and I know she listens carefully, and I even know much of what she loves about being alive. And I also know about her pain — though it's a real pain whose dimensions I can't fathom — pain that, by contrast with what art has brought my high school friend and I, didn't result from any of her choices.

Seventy-Two Years

Fortunately, pain isn't the only experience that catches us off guard. The previous night, I stayed late at UCSD's Theodore Geisel Library. On the bus to meet my high school friend, a woman who works at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies sat down next to me. We started talking about her research into genomics, as well as mine into history and wartime news coverage, and our mutual bliss throwing ourselves into work we love. It was one of those serene moments of connection, where as draining as our day had been, we regretted when the bus reached my stop, because it meant we couldn't continue this unexpected conversation.

But I learned one thing: Her name was Shelley. Shelley's name was easy to remember. My aunt with the glass-torn fingers is named Shelley. One of Mel's best friends was named Shelley. That day, I'd spent much of my time reading letters written between that Shelley (along with her husband, Carl) and the couple whose papers I was studying. 

It's a coincidence, to be sure, but it was enough of one to get my attention. And it's on my mind again tonight. 

When Japan invaded the Philippines, Mel and his wife, Annalee, escaped. But Japanese troops captured Shelley and Carl and imprisoned them with other American civilians. A few months after Mel's escape, he radioed Washington D.C. and urged U.S. officials to arrange a prisoner exchange, hoping his friends could be released. The government couldn't make the exchange happen, at least not then, but in a letter acknowledging Mel's request, his contact expressed relief at his and Annalee's safety.

"One of these days we shall hope to see you again," read one line of the letter, dated April 28, 1942.

I realize not only that this letter was sent exactly 72 years ago, but also that its hope would never be realized. Just a few hours later — indeed, nearly at the exact hour I finished the last edits on this letter — halfway around the world, an airfield accident would change everything, and kill Mel.

I hadn't intended to write this note to mark the anniversary of Mel's death, but I can't ignore that timing.

There's something else I can't ignore. Mel didn't choose his pain, either. He didn't have a chance to reconnect over the decades with old friends for drinks or dinners or candid admissions. Mel didn't have hours or days, let alone years, to recover from exhausting work. He only had his short life.

While I was working at the Hoover Institution, I went to an evening forum at Stanford's School of Journalism sponsored by Rowland and Pat Rebele. There was a reception after the talk, and I spent a long time there chatting with Rowland, whose curiosity about Mel's story deepened with each question I answered. That was exciting enough, but my biggest memory of the night was when I stood up from the panel discussion and noticed glass-encased shelves lined with cardinal-red, bound volumes. The spine of a book on the shelf closest to me read "An Analysis of Far Eastern News in Representative California Newspapers, 1934-38." It was a masters thesis authored by Charles L. Leong and Melville J. Jacoby. Of course I knew about its existence already, but seeing it there, moments before meeting Rebele, reminded me that I am doing the work I need to be doing, when I need to be doing it.

It's not news that writing is a solitary existence. Since I am single, and I work from home, and I don't have roommates, I sometimes feel even more isolated. All these moments of connection these past months, however, make this work feel far less lonesome. Indeed, they reminded me that there are people who understand the work I'm doing, even if miles, years and conditions separate us.

That's part of the reason I'm writing you; in the past, you've shown an interest, and I want to carry on whatever conversations we've already started, or begin ones that might last into the future. I'll write occasionally to this list; sometimes once a week, sometimes a little more or a little less frequently; sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Yes, I want to keep you interested in my book, but I also want to experiment with a simple but elusive concept: getting and remaining in touch. If this isn't the place for you to do that, or you don't want to remain in touch, please don't feel obligated to do so and please don't feel like you'll offend me if you unsubscribe.

But that's why I'm writing you today, and if you can, and if you want, write back when you can, about this, about your passions, about anything. And share this note widely with people who'd want to read it, and who'd want to be part of the conversation.

-Bill

P.S. If you want to keep track of what I have to say but don't want to subscribe, please consider a visit to my blog, follow me on Twitter, Tumblr or Instagram.

Artifacts From a Young Journalist's Fantastic Life

While I'm in the middle of travels that will keep me off the Internet for a few days, I wanted to share some finds from my recent trip to Southern California to learn more about Melville Jacoby. When I get back I'll share some reflections from my visit with George T.M. Ching as well as deeper examinations of Mel's life than have ever been shared on this page. For now, I'll share some of my recent discoveries. This really is but a sliver of what I've found. This book certainly won't want for a lack of source material, much of which I've brought home with me. These include thousands of pages of letters and cables, hundreds of photographs, a couple hours of home movies shot by Mel from his journeys around the world, some audio, half a dozen books, a journal, even a pith helmet that once belonged to Mel (that's more for my own fun than the book itself).

Please enjoy them, but don't forget: What I didn't bring home with me is money. Some of you have supported this project already, and I could never have made it to a point where I could make use of these resources without your support. But the next step is ensuring I can afford to continue to transform these materials into a book. I invite any continued support, and donations will continue to be welcome at wepay.com/donations/melvillejacoby or lascheratlarge.com/melville while I'm away.

Here are your first tastes of what I have to share:

Melville Jacoby and Annalee Whitmore on their wedding day in November, 1941. They were married in the Philippines, where Mel had just transferred to work as Time Magazine's Manila correspondent.

Annalee and Melville Jacoby making the most of a layover on the Philippine island of Cebu while on the run from the Japanese in March, 1942. Forced to cut their honeymoon short when the U.S. entered World War II, the couple's travelling companions and Cebu's native population helped them celebrate in the middle of their adventure.

A note appended to a memo Time News Editor David Hulburd wrote about the status of Mel, Annalee, and their friends Carl and Shelley Mydans after the Japanese occupation of the Philippines

Check back Friday and Monday for more artifacts!

One Last Assignment One More Time

After much anticipation, last week I released a new video describing Melville Jacoby's fantastic life. It also reintroduces the work I'm doing to tell his story. I'm really proud of this video. I'd love to hear your opinion in the comments, or by email or social media, and for you to share it with anyone interested in wartime journalism, storytelling, or 1930s and 40s nostalgia.

Meanwhile, I've extended my fundraising deadline for Melville Jacoby's story through the summer. If you haven't had a chance to donate, now's a great time to do so.

Next week, I'll be boarding a train to Southern California. There, I have two major projects scheduled. First of all, I'll finally meet 97-year-old George T.M. Ching, who Mel befriended when he was an exchange student at Lingnan University. I can't wait to hear first-hand from one of Mel's friends what it was like to study and travel with him. Actually, I'm looking forward to whatever George has to say.

My other goal is also pretty exciting for me, and very important to this project. I'm going to visit my grandmother's house for the first time since I formally started working on Mel's story (Why my grandmother? Because Mel was her cousin, and she ended up with all the various artifacts Mel's mother, Elza, kept after he died). That means access to many, many more primary source documents, photographs, recordings and other materials that either belonged to Mel or involved him. For the first time I'll be able to thoroughly and systematically inventory everything she has available so I can then better identify what gaps I need to fill in my research.

Since I'll be in the greater L.A. area, I'll also be able to conduct other research as it arises and take advantage of a few resources unique to the area.

Your support will help pay for this trip and the work I'll do while I'm there. As I did on my recent trip to the Bay Area, I'll do my best to blog, tweet and record my trip.

Thanks again to those of you who have already helped out.

Won't You Be My Mrs. Luce?

Earlier this afternoon I shared the first in a series of stories about my visit to Palo Alto last week to further study Melville Jacoby. As much as I hope you enjoyed it, I need your help today to keep telling these stories and finish telling the story Mel died trying to tell. Last week, at lunch with the children of Chan Ka Yik, my grandma described how Melville Jacoby became a China specialist. It began while he was an exchange student at Lingnan University and deepened after he returned to Stanford. There, he penned columns for the Stanford Daily about the war erupting between China and Japan and studied the way the media covered conflict in Asia. As I've described elsewhere, Mel returned to China upon graduation and strung together a career for himself.

"[Mel and other young journalists in China] didn't have anything like Kickstarter," My grandmother told our new friends. "What they had was this opportunity to talk on the radio to America, and to send home material, because he was learning. Gradually he became very expert on his subject."

She turned and looked at me "He was you at that stage of the game," my grandmother said. "It was a different way, but that's a story too. How does a young reporter like Bill Lascher get started?"

This is how. By not letting go. Two weeks ago I completed a quarter teaching a community college class on multimedia journalism and turned in the last of two small freelance assignments on my plate. All that's left for me is what I'm doing now: throwing all that I have on the table in pursuit of this one last assignment. Everything I have, everything I can be is now focused on this account of the first Time Magazine reporter killed in the line of duty, this tale of Melville Jacoby, this story of my family's beloved cousin and this man who lived so fantastically before he died so tragically.

"He had the good luck to be on an airplane with Mrs.[Clare Booth] Luce [the wife of Time Magazine founder Henry Luce, who was also on that plane], who was impressed with him." my grandmother said. "You have to be on an airplane with someone who will be impressed with you."

Won't you be my Mrs. Luce? I'll do everything I can to impress you. You don't even have to board an airplane, you can just make a secure online donation right here:

Enter an Amount

A Reunion of Sorts

California, here I come, right back where I started from. In a little less than two weeks I'll hit the road for Palo Alto, California, the home of Stanford University. That's where Melville Jacoby earned his bachelor and master's degrees in the 1930s (it's also where his wife, Annalee Whitmore Jacoby Fadiman was the first female managing editor of the daily student newspaper and where other close friends, such as Shelley Smith Mydans, studied). It's a trip I've long been waiting for, and one that wouldn't be possible without the support, encouragement and financial contributions I've received since I first launched my Kickstarter campaign and then launched the current fundraising campaign. Yes, I'll be retracing Mel's footsteps and digging through archives, but I'm most excited for what might best be described as a reunion. One of the more fascinating aspects of Melville Jacoby's life was his relationship with Ka Yik Chan (later known as George K.Y. Chan). Chan was Mel's roommate at Lingnan University, in Guangzhou, where Mel spent his sophomore year of college. The two became fast friends. As is evident in photos and letters home, Mel was quite fond of Chan and treasured the adventures the two took around China. Even my grandmother and her sister -- Mel's younger cousins -- recall the stories Mel told of their travels when he returned home. For example, Chan's father was an influential landowner in Southern China -- what some refer to as a "warlord." On one of Mel's trips with Chan to the family's compound, the two were picked up by a sedan chair. Though Mel came from a wealthy family in Los Angeles, he was modest about his status, and particularly uncomfortable with the idea of Chinese peasants carrying to the compound a young European man who could have easily walked the dirt road.

After Mel died and after the conclusion of World War II, Chan was forced to leave China. His family had become a target of the communist regime that had come to control the country. Chan moved first to Hong Kong and then, after abandoning everything but his wife and children, to the U.S., where he settled in San Francisco in the early 1950s. There, Chan and his wife started a Dim Sum restaurant and raised their family as Americans.

Two Families Meet

My grandmother (Mel's cousin and also Stanford grad, by the way) and I have long discussed how curious we are about what happened to this man who was such an integral part of Mel's life. Had it not been for their friendship and Chan's hospitality, Mel may have had a very different in China, and may not have fallen in love with that country the way we did. You'll have to read the book (and, hopefully, help me afford to research and write it) to learn more about that love and about Mel's time at Lingnan. Last fall, I was finally able to speak on the phone with one of Chan's daughters and learned just a little bit more about their family. Since then, Emmy has been one of my biggest cheerleaders for this project, stressing how much her father would want to see Mel's story told.

Now we'll have a chance to meet in person. The same weekend I'm in Palo Alto, my grandmother plans to visit my aunt (yet another Stanford alum - that side of my family's rife with them). While we're there, we'll meet Emmy and her sisters (all of whom still live in the Bay Area) for the first time in our lives. Though as a young girl one of the sisters once met Mel's mother during a family visit to Los Angeles, over the years the ways of the world meant our families did not stay in touch. Now we will have a chance to reconnect, to get to know one another, and to share stories about these loved ones of ours. My grandmother also plans to bring photos and other materials of Chan's to share with his daughters, some of which they most likely have never seen.

This is one of those amazing things about life: the way we thread ourselves in and out of each other's worlds, the way these oceans of years can still be crossed, the the pages keep turning.

This is one of those amazing things about life: this is only possible because you've made it happen.

California, here I come.

Right back where I started from.

Journalism of the Unknown Unknowns

It's complicated ... and that's the point. Journalism doesn't have all the answers, and we shouldn't expect it to. We shouldn't expect our stories to solve things for us.

Journalists' primary role is not to answer the challenges that face our society: it's to bring light to those challenges, so that those with the proper tools to solve a given problem will know that the challenge exists. In a sense, we're brokers, we're middle-men, we're matchmakers between problems and solutions. But those problems and solutions still have to get to know one another, find the right match. We can't consummate their relationships, we can just help them find one another.

A couple weeks ago, I pitched a story idea to a magazine whose content I admire. From my perspective, the idea was right up this prospective client's alley. It fit their unique geographic focus and addressed a new angle to a controversy that's beginning to show up in more and more states. In the interest of still pitching this story elsewhere, I'm not going to get into much detail about it.

I'm writing because the outlet's rejection of my pitch centered on the editor's position that there were too many unknowns in the subject I wanted to discuss. I tried to stress that that's the noteworthy aspect of the story: this is an unknown situation. It also happens to be one that involves multiple state governments and economies sailing into uncharted waters. They're trying to develop a strategy for approaching the subject at hand (hint, it involves regulation of an increasingly popular energy resource extraction technique), but don't seem to be able to because they don't yet know how much this issue will impact them.

My potential editor didn't want the story because there are so many questions. Isn't that the point of journalism? Isn't part of our responsibility as journalists shining the light on inadequacies in official government? Are we only supposed to do so when we have tidy answers to present? Am I asking too many questions?

If there was another issue at play – the outlet doesn't like my approach, they don't trust my ability to complete the assignment, they can't afford to pay me, or anything else – they didn't let me know that was the case (and thus, lacking such knowledge or the ability to read minds, I'll go with what they said to me directly, rather than worry what they *might* be thinking, something I spend too much time doing all across my life).

Perhaps I suck as a journalist. It's quite possible, and that might be one reason I'm focusing more on my book than on reporting. Actually, this wasn't my first pitch rejected because there were too many uncertainties. Maybe that says something about my reporting. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough for a story. Maybe I'm giving up too soon before I find an answer. Maybe I don't belong. It's tough not to think such things when these sort of situations repeat themselves.

But I also can't help thinking that one responsibility of journalism is to help identify the “unknown unknowns.” Is it also our responsibility to then make those unknowns known? If it were, I'd suspect we'd get paid a lot more than we are (or I'd hope we are).

It's such a grind to pitch and hustle. Have I really been spending so many years doing all this work, racking my brains for all these answers, only to possibly have a magazine maybe think about publishing something of mine for a few hundred dollars? Is this really any way to survive?

The ground beneath my feet is so incredibly unstable.

Melville's Story on the Radio

I was interviewed by KCLU's Lance Orozco for a story about Melville Jacoby that aired today for that station's broadcast of "Morning Edition." You should now be able to hear that story at the following link: http://www.kclu.org/2012/03/20/ventura-journalist-writing-book-about-almost-forgotten-war-correspondent/

Thanks for listening. Please share this with anyone who might be interested.

Speaking of radio, don't forget that you can pledge $750 and get a unique audio documentary produced about you or someone you care about, in addition to all the other great incentives I offer, like letters written from Mel's typewriter and signed copies of the upcoming book. Want to hear an example of my audio work? Visit www.lascheratlarge.com/portfolio/audio or check out the first few editions of my "Along for the Ride" series of stories about Portland-area mass transit routes.

Note: This is an adaptation of a post originally written for a Kickstarter campaign that is now over. You can continue to support this project directly through this website. Learn more and donate by clicking here.

A Letter From Melville Jacoby's Best Friend

I was digging through the collection of materials I have at my place related to Melville Jacoby and found a photocopy of a lovely letter written to Mel 74 years ago today. The note was sent by Chan Ka Yik, one of Mel's best friends. The two were roommates at Lingnan University in Canton (now Guangzhou) while Mel was an exchange student there.

"The flight of time is like an arrow," Chan writes on university letterhead.

The letter responds to an earlier mailing Mel had sent. It describes Chan's fondness for his roommate, and, in many ways, is the sort of letter anyone might send to catch up with an old friend. But these greetings are described against a backdrop of war. Though calm seemed to have returned when Chan wrote the letter, it was clearly still a presence.

"Maybe it is so lucky that no bombs dropped in Lingnan or very near Lingnan so far, although the firing of anti-aircraft guns and the explosion of bombs of somewhere around Canton came to our ear quite often," Chan writes. "Mel, I should thank you so much for your sympathy to our country."

In recent months I've tracked down Chan's daughter, Emmy, who now lives in the Bay Area. During a phone call a few months ago Emmy told me how her father thought of Mel as one of his best friends and how he clearly thought of those days together at Lingnan as some of the happiest of his life. That comes through clearly in his letter.

If Chan's name sounds familiar, by the way, that's because after he emigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s he helped open what became one of San Francisco's best-known Dim Sum restaurants, Yank Sing, though he sold his interest in the business long ago. Still, this is one example of how as I tell Mel's story I'm also eager to explore what happened to the other people whose lives he touched.

"Mel, I am very anxious to know something about your home and college life," Chan writes. "You are a rich, smart, stout and handsome boy so that your life will be cheerful and romantic."

For a short time, it was.

Assignment China

Also, today I was excited to learn more about "Assignment China." That's a project at my graduate alma mater, the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and specifically its USC US-China Institute. Their effort to describe how journalists have told the story of China's evolution since the 1940s has so much relevance to the story I'm trying to tell about Mel. I'm thrilled to have found them. If you're at all interested in China or Journalism do check out their fascinating "Assignment China" documentary on YouTube.

Getting Going

UPDATE:The Kickstarter campaign is now over. You can continue to support this project directly through this website. Learn more and donate by clicking here. WOW!!!

This is exciting. Two and a half days of fundraising down and I've already raised more than $1800 here on Kickstarter. Woohoo. I'm expecting a few hundred more from people who said they'd like to donate but have yet to set up accounts.

I'm thrilled, but not surprised. Mel's story is so compelling, and I'm touched that so many of you recognize it is, and that you are sharing this project with your friends and family and coworkers and social networks. To those already backing this project: even though I'm going to start formally thanking each of you once my project is funded (and it looks like I better stock up on typewriter ribbon!), I definitely want to express my gratitude to you right now for being the first to step in and show your confidence in my ability to tell Mel's story.

I'm already amazed by the Kickstarter experience. I'd hesitated about taking this route. For a long time I wondered whether it might be a better idea to do a traditional pitch to a publishing house. I finally decided to go with Kickstarter because I knew having the deadline to reach my fundraising goal would motivate me. Boy, has it ever. So many new ideas about how to research and tell this story have percolated just since I clicked the "launch" button.

But what a scary moment that was! Had I tweaked the pitch enough? Did I clearly express what I was working on and why I needed help to do it? Should i have made the video shorter? Longer? Higher resolution? Funnier? More serious? Would people commit very hard-earned cash to it? Would people care? Would they tear apart the idea?

Of course, no one has, and of course, Mel's story promotes itself. As I dive deeper, it just gets more exciting. For example, when Mel was a news broadcaster in Chungking, he dispatched his reports by shortwave radio. Those reports were picked up by an amateur radio operator -- a dentist -- in a small, beachside community an hour north of Los Angeles. Someone from NBC would drive up to get the recordings and use them in newsreels. The coolest part (at least in my opinion)? That city where the dentist lived was Ventura, the same city in which I grew up!

It's definitely a small world.

Another cool thing about running the project on Kickstarter is that my backers are also helping me out with ideas for the book. A friend of mine who attended Mel's Alma Mater, Stanford, was an editor of that school's newspaper, the Stanford Daily. She reminded me that Mel's wife, Annaleee Whitmore, had been the first female managing editor of that publication. Mel's thesis advisor, meanwhile, was Chilton R. Bush, who developed Stanford's journalism program.

These tidbits represent just the surface of what's out there to discover not just about Melville Jacoby, but about what the world, and especially the Pacific Rim, was like as World War II loomed.

I can't wait to learn more.

What about you? As I prepare to write this story, and as I seek further support, what questions do you have about Mel, about his story, and about the world in which he lived and worked?

As you think about these questions, check out this cool press card of Mel's!