. >> how do you deal with those challenges in the mandarin and cantonese communities? then i can anthony just respond to that? he wanted to respond to that. >> more like build on what was being said, which was that actually, what we decided to build for local at yahoo! was an open platform. that is why oakland local is a partner of ours. we realized that it is not in our interests to hire somebody in every neighborhood. what we said was why don't we build a platform on which the myriad of local content providers that have begun to spring up can ride, and the key here is that they are looking for distribution. even patch is looking for distribution, and one thing yahoo! has is distribution. when yahoo! provides you with a platform, you see it. publishers recognize that it is a fire hose. so we launched in october 30 neighborhoods. we are now up to about 400 neighborhoods in new york, san francisco, san jose, peninsula, a detroit suburb, and chicago. we are going to be launching in cleveland and dallas, end of april/early may, and as we iterate on product, we will get be

one hour of cantonese news and one hour of mandated -- one hour of mandarin is. challenges are daunting and hard to overcome here in the past, we were protected by our own language. we are the only game in town. but once you are online, that advantage will go away very quickly because those people will go on line -- everybody is your competitor. even if you have your language, there are hundreds of thousands of chinese websites. how do you overcome that? there is no silver bullet. for me, i think the right thing to do is really build up your community. you empower your community. the part of your community, and people -- it is not the you have a story that only i reported it, which is great, but it is not going to happen every day. so what do you give your audience for your readers to keep them coming back to your site or tv station to try to find the news they want? it is really up to how you feel your community -- how you connect and go into your community, make your voice known, make my face known to my community. i think once you establish that, it is very ha

executive producer of the "daily mandarin and cantonese newshour." next to him is the director of multimedia and technology programs at the night digital media center at uc-berkeley. next is the managing is theidd -- managing director at idd ventures sf. nexus' the editor in chief of marketwatch.com, part of news corp. -- next is the editor in chief. the co-founder and senior community manager of oakland local, a nonprofit media that promotes public discourse on issues. in the front row is a media analyst, who publishes an was a key developer of the mercury center. next to him is an assistant professor of broadcast and electronic media at san francisco state university. next is the managing editor for local news at -- i'm sorry. he is not at yahoo!, right. he is editor-in-chief of patch.com, a division of aol that provides news to specific communities. very local. after him, we have the managing director for local news at yahoo.com, guiding the company's local coverage nationwide. last but not least is the senator who represents san francisco and san

argument to say here in hong kong but the role of english in hong kong is actually helping protect cantonese as a sort of a past in proof against encroaching quote unquote mandarin ok john paul if i can go to you a lot of people in and i want to go into a big discussion here but it is easier is global value free does it have any values because we there's a large a great argument in linguistics that you know it will take the english language for example it has a lot of built in values in it and and a world view and how to look at values in society it is global. or is it completely devoid of any kind of value in terms of having values. well. being what i call english you know far enough in leash has devalue of being enough and we used this and i didn't say you can say it was easy you want for reasons a duke or president obama's inauguration speech because you don't know websites and would do it in english and say exactly the same thing but if you where heard somewhere into g.q. still ten pounds more people would have to stand it now you know gratian species for americans but nonetheless there

talking about being wish languages evolving and you mentioned how it is a barrier to or protecting cantonese there but i mean one hundred years from now we may be talking having the same program a different set of characters obviously but how chinese mandarin chinese is invaded the world and how it's either promoted its language or polluted other language we could see people like ourselves you know speaking in a pigeon chinese. well i'm not too sure about that i mean i think that the no doubt that mandarin is increasing in importance in the world and more and more people across the world are getting interested in learning it as a foreign language but it's not going to displace english really i can't see that happening for at least another sort a hundred years or more and i doubt it is going to happen i think that the world of languages is being rebalanced at the moment that's for sure and i think you see there are more important things actually going on in the world and english is implicated in them for example in china and most primary school children are learning english now from really qu

if you were to cover communities, for example, who speak mandarin or cantonese, and you do not speak a word, that is not necessarily a limitation. action--- definitely be part of a journalist's training and anyone who is of having will have a better shot at telling stories. -- multilingual will have a better shot at telling stories. >> we are out of time. i want to thank all of our panelists. thank you all. and thank you all for coming. [applause]

we are able to provide our services, follow-up questions in english, spanish, cantonese, and mandarin. and then -- and then, roger, you will -- >> yes. i am an attorney in private practice. the laws in this area are strict compliance laws, and they are very specific. the federal law since 1990 indicates issues from 1998. all businesses, such as a grocery store, a dentist's office, restaurants, a doctor's office, virtually anything that a member of the public comes into the -- comes into needs to be a barrier-free. we will go over what barriers are. every public accommodation needs to be wheelchair-accessible. there are also other other forf disability. most of the issues we are hearing about are wheelchair accessibility issues. there is a small group of private individuals who are wheelchair-down that go around the city and they look at small businesses. and i dare say anybody in small restaurants have some accessibility issues. it is another attempt at making your building wheelchair accessible. i am not sure which of you may be merchants and which it may be landlords. the law applie