From Weibo to the West: Tea Leaf Nation Partners With The Atlantic

Here’s some pleasantly surprising news this morning from the folks over at Tea Leaf Nation. The relatively new blog which scours Chinese social media (particularly the microblogs) looking for the interesting stories from China, has teamed up with The Atlantic in a content partnership.

TLN explains that moving forward, some of its content will be co-edited by The Atlantic’s international editor and then featured on both TLN and on The Atlantic’s website.

Speaking as fellow China watchers, it’s great to see that one of the best ‘bridge blogs’ out there is being recognized for its work in telling real, human stories from China — because lets face it, many US media orgs get China all wrong all too often.

To see TNL’s speedy progress over the past year is certainly encouraging news for any young online news startup, including our own. As I understand it, the site was funded out-of-pocket, though they may be seeking foundation funding soon.

I encourage you to check out the blog, as well as the video below from the recent 2012 MIT Knight Media Conference where TLN’s co-founder and co-editor David Wertime explains a little more about the blog (starting at about the 10:45 mark).