About newsdesk

What we do

newsdesk brings local Hong Kong news together in clear, accessible English. We focus on everyday developments that can be hard to follow without reading Chinese, helping readers stay informed about what is happening in their city and neighbourhood.

Why I started newsdesk

I'm Kari Gunnarsson, the founder of newsdesk. I've lived in Hong Kong for eight years. While the city has great English-language publications, they tend to cover the big stories, and I found myself missing the kind of neighbourhood news I was used to reading back in Europe.

I've had a few people ask if I'm a fictional AI character. I'm not. Here's my LinkedIn profile.

The example I always come back to is simple: back home, if I saw smoke, I could go online and quickly find out what was happening. In Hong Kong, I often struggled to find that information in English, even when local Chinese-language outlets were already covering it.

I work with AI in my day-to-day work, so exploring how technology could help bridge this gap felt like a natural next step. That's why I started newsdesk.

Isn't this just AI slop?

Yes.

Yes, it is.

But I personally find it helpful, so I've decided to share this personal project publicly in case others find it helpful too. Many of these stories simply don't get reported in English because they aren't big enough. Even when they do, the coverage often arrives after the moment when it would have been most useful.

I'd also like to think that the pipelines we're using here are fairly sophisticated and provide some value. We always cite the Chinese-language sources we use, and we don't just translate individual reports: we write a new story based on multiple sources (we require at least two sources before writing a story).

Overall I personally use the site and find myself getting useful information about the city I live in much faster way than I was before, hopefully others will be able to have similar experiences.