Evolution of African Blogs
How Bloggers Covered Kenya Violence, Deal with Racism, Sexism
Mark Glaser is traveling this week, but we’re happy to have Sokari Ekine filling in as a special guest blogger. Ekine started the award-winning Black Looks blog in 2004, and covers challenging issues such as gender, sexuality and racism. Glaser will return to the blog next Monday. Within 24...continued...
Not Being There
The Efficiency (and Shame) of Long-Distance Reporting
My writer friend Marlene once had a dot-com job that seemed odd. She wrote for a travel site about various countries but never traveled to those countries. She simply aggregated information from other websites and did extensive online research before writing about them and putting together guides. But strange...continued...
Return to the BOBs
7 Lessons Learned While Judging World-Changing Blogs
I spent the past week in freezing wet Berlin, helping judge the Best of the Blogs awards once again, an international competition run by the German public media outlet, Deutsche Welle (DW). There were some surprising winners, some heated arguments among the judges flown in from around the world,...continued...
Who’s a Journalist?
Even in U.S., Bloggers Get Little Protection
Earlier this year, there was a debate in journalism circles and in the general public about who could be considered a journalist, as San Francisco videoblogger and media maker Josh Wolf was jailed after refusing to turn over video footage to federal authorities. After spending 226 days in jail,...continued...
Digging Deeper
BBC Trains Iranian Journalists through ZigZag Online Magazine
Iran has a thriving blogosphere and a large educated and Internet-savvy class of people. But because it’s a closed society, most journalism training does not address the importance of objectivity and balance in reporting, nor does it stress the importance of online journalism. The BBC World Service Trust has...continued...
Burma Unrest
Can Internet, Blogs Sustain the Saffron Revolution?
When the ruling military junta in Burma cracked down on protesters, killing unarmed Buddhist monks, the world was watching. While mainstream journalists have to work undercover in Burma for fear of the junta’s wrath, Burmese citizens and tourists were able to shoot photos and videos of the protests and...continued...
Breaking Government Blockades
YouTube, Flickr Become Forces for Cultural Change
The term “social web” brings to mind images of people around the world interacting with each other without borders or barriers. With the arrival of more and more sites that help us connect, express ourselves and share media, it seems like we’re advancing toward a more open Internet, in...continued...
Digging Deeper
Can Citizen Journalism Make a Difference in Jordan?
Ramsey Tesdell would like to bring the concept of citizen and community journalism to Jordan, an Arab country that has a long history of state-controlled media. Tesdell, 23, along with three other early 20somethings, launched the site 7iber in May as a place for “people-powered journalism,” hoping that average...continued...
Digging Deeper
Traditional Journalism Job Cuts Countered by Digital Additions
If you follow the world of traditional journalism, you can’t help but notice the seemingly constant stream of layoffs and buyouts at news organizations. But media observers don’t often emphasize the flip side: As newspapers and broadcasters slice their senior-level workforce, they are also quietly building their digital and...continued...
Try, Try Again
Orkut, Friendster Get Second Chance Overseas
What do Brazilian and Indian Internet users have in common? A favorite social networking site called Orkut, a Google web property which, when it was launched in 2004 was meant to put its parent company on the social networking map in the U.S. Orkut may not have taken off...continued...
Digging Deeper
New Media Literacy as Important for Educators as Students
For so long, the focus of media literacy education has been on helping students understand the media they consume. What are the biases? Who owns what outlet? How are news reports produced? But with the rise of new media, perhaps the focus of media literacy education should shift to...continued...
Digg Goes Global
Community-Edited News Sites Abound in Other Languages
Back in 2004, when developer Kevin Rose launched the community-edited news site Digg, he could not have imagined it would launch a global phenomenon. A simple application that allowed users to contribute web links and vote on stories to push them to the front page somehow appealed to so...continued...
Pasadena Now Ruckus
Reporting from Afar Might Work, But Not for Local News
While much has been made of the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries, until recently the field of journalism had remained largely untouched. Earlier this month local news website Pasadena Now announced its decision to outsource work to India, specifically reporting of City Council meetings. The site’s owner,...continued...
Blog Evolution
Judging the Best Weblogs in the World at The BOBs
Last Friday, I was sitting in a conference room on the 37th Floor of the Park Inn in Berlin, Germany, along with people from Brazil, Holland, Spain, France, Russia, Germany, China and other far-flung places. We had all been flown into town by German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle to...continued...
African Watchblog
Keeping an Eye on the Kenyan Parliament
Mark Glaser is away on vacation this week, but we’re happy to have Ory Okolloh filling in as a guest blogger. Okolloh writes the Kenyan Pundit blog and graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2005. She is currently based in South Africa working as the Legal and...continued...
World View
The China and Africa Story
Mark Glaser is away on vacation this week, but we’re happy to have Ory Okolloh filling in as a guest blogger. Ory writes the Kenyan Pundit blog and graduated with a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2005. She is currently based in South Africa working as the Legal and...continued...
Digging Deeper
Cafebabel.com Breaks Down European Borders with Grassroots Media
In all the various efforts to unite Europe under the framework of the European Union, European Commission, and Euro currency, there is still one effort that has largely failed: creating a truly pan-European media outlet. But a group of college graduates who met in Strasbourg, France, thanks to a...continued...
Digging Deeper
Can Witness, Global Voices Make Human Rights Video Go Viral?
There is an impulse when we see quirky videos we like on YouTube to email them on to friends or co-workers. When those catchy videos start accumulating viewers, marketers say it’s gone viral through word-of-mouth popularity. So what if you could take videos shot by citizens of human rights...continued...
Digging Deeper
Journalist Paints Bleak Picture for Media in Zimbabwe
The government shuts down independent newspapers. It jams radio signals from outside the country. Internet access is sporadic. Inflation is out of control. A bill is in Parliament that would allow the government to censor private email communications. Welcome to Zimbabwe, the south African country born out of the...continued...
Your Take Roundup
BBC, Deutsche Welle Best Sources for Mideast News
When U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Beirut today, there were numerous ways to report and interpret that news. The U.S.-based Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) saw it this way: Today’s visit of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice means Israel is racing against the clock. While the conflict rages...continued...
Rare Good News
Bloggers Freed From Jail in China, Egypt, Iran
With bombs dropping in Lebanon and Israel, sectarian violence rising in Iraq and civil war in Somalia — among other bad tidings — we are in dire need of good news and a reason to get up in the morning. Thankfully, there has been a spate of such news...continued...
Digging Deeper
Chinese Entrepreneur Downplays Censorship Problem in China
When Google launched its web search engine in China, and admitted having to censor search results, we made a big stink about it here in the U.S. And when Microsoft admitted to censoring its MSN Spaces blogs in China, we made a big stink about it. And when any...continued...
Digging Deeper
Blogs, Wiki, Google Bomb Used to Free Egyptian Activist
Last August, when I was working on a story for Online Journalism Review about activists using technology to organize protests in Egypt, I made the mistake of focusing too much on blogs. One of the people I interviewed, Alaa Abd El Fattah, was quick to pounce on me for...continued...
Live from London
We Media’s World Tour from Reuters
LONDON — First, the good news. I can report that the halls of the We Media conference were buzzing today with people slagging the overproduced Big Media lovefest at the BBC yesterday, and heaping praise on the second day’s global focus and more intimate setting at Reuters’ headquarters in...continued...
Free Hao Wu
Blogosphere Unites to Help Jailed Chinese Filmmaker
It’s a strange sensation reading through the personal musings of Hao Wu on his Beijing or Bust blog. There is an entry, Teacher for Life, in which Hao recollects a recent meeting with a former teacher. The entry is dated February 22 — the same date that the Beijing...continued...
Digging Deeper
Singapore Tries to Squelch Political Blogs, Podcasts
While many Americans have been focused lately on online censorship in China, few have noticed a similar practice in other countries such as Singapore. That island state is a parliamentary republic in theory, but has really been run by one dominant party in its history of independence since 1965...continued...
Israeli Elections
Live Blogging the Next Best Thing to TV
Before the 2004 U.S. elections, I considered political news on the Internet to be an addendum to the breaking news I would get from cable TV or the serious journalism of newspapers and magazines. But as the 2004 elections neared in October of that year, I realized that any...continued...
Digging Deeper
Internet Gives All Sides in Israel-Palestine Debate
Many people living outside the Middle East would like to understand the political situation in Israel and Palestine. But the more you read online at blogs and opinion sites, the more you realize that it’s not a simple situation of good vs. evil, or us vs. them. There are...continued...
Riding Talk Revisited
Politicians Speak Out About CBC Forums
In early February, I looked at an interesting project by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) called Riding Talk, where they provided a moderated forum for each and every riding (electoral district) in Canada before the late January elections. I had hoped to include the thoughts of a few politicians...continued...
Digging Deeper
Reporters Without Borders Backs Online Freedom Act
While the Republican-majority U.S. Congress has favored less regulation of big business, one GOP lawmaker, Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, has shown a willingness to regulate technology and Internet businesses in their dealings with China. Smith held prominent hearings on Capitol Hill on Feb. 15, compelling representatives from...continued...
Your Take Roundup
Congress Takes Action on China Collusion
Various technology companies in the West have helped the Chinese government in its longtime efforts to censor the Internet and do cyber-surveillance. Over the years, these companies have excused their behavior with a variation on the same theme: We have to follow local laws when we do business in...continued...
World Wide Flame War
Topix.net Forums Give Window on Cartoon Flap
Pre-Internet days, a newspaper in Denmark that printed cartoons could be assured that they wouldn’t be seen in other parts of the world. Those days are over. With protests and riots still burning bright in the Middle East over cartoons depicting Mohammed, we cannot ignore our global neighbors even...continued...
Digging Deeper
CBC Offers Moderated Forum for Every Precinct
The hodge-podge of political discussion boards online can give you a headache. Usually it’s a matter of who can scream the loudest and attack the fiercest. And if the subject is economics, someone will spout off on abortion. Plus, how can you find the right forum for the issues...continued...
