The television media was covering the abduction of one Captain Richard Phillips almost non-stop over the week leading up to Easter. When it was announced that 3 of the 4 pirates holding the captain were killed and he was rescued, the commentators on all the major networks exploded in an orgy of nationalist hoo-rah fervor. They succeeded in showing they could Faux News with the best of them.

They did not succeed, however, in helping us better understand the Somali piracy issue. What might a news agency need to provide insight into the causes of Somali pirac? First of all, they need you the viewer/reader/listener/audience to take a vested interest in learning more about Somalia’s pirates, or pirates in general.

Somalia is a great example of a situation where pirates have a very clear cause and a very clear, though incredibly difficult, solution.

But as I was saying, let’s imagine we have a news agency funded initially through small investment or foundation money. If we establish a bureau in Nairobi, we can cover many subjects in sub-Saharan east Africa. One of the easiest ses of tools available to mobile journalists was presented in the form of the Reuters Mobile Toolkit. Unfortunately, in the last 18 months since it was made public, we’ve seen little in the way of new and innovative journalism being done with these basic tools.

So this is where I suggest a new way to create media, community funded and supported, i.e. community invested news. This has been discussed before, here for example. I’m just going to take the idea, and suggest how we can apply it, in this case to learning more about Somali pirates.

Let’s assume we’ve funded the equipment for a team based in Nairobi-more about how to fund that in a later post, but my previous model for Afghanistan looks a bit similar to what I’ll be proposing.

So, imagine if you could tweet your own questions for Somali pirates and have them answered via audio or perhaps even video within a few days? We can do that right now, utilizing skype, mobile phone networks, and even Utterli or drop.io. When news came that the pirates were killed and Captain Phillips freed, our correspondent in Harardhere could have provided immediate access to the response of locals in the pirate village. Viewers at home could have asked their own questions of the locals supported by Somalia’s pirate economy.

In the days after Captain Phillips was freed, rather than speculation about the potential for Somalia’s pirates to band to join forces with Islamist militias, rather than interviewed so-called “experts” about what might or might not happen, our community-funded team could be asking local residents.

The most affordable form they could be producing content in would be text blogging. With the support of the audience, our local producer will be able to produce audio, video, photo, or perhaps more interactive reports. The quality, and quantity of coverage depends on the audience’ level of interest and willingness to support.

Wouldn’t you like to know that you could influence Anderson Cooper, Brian Williams, or Keith Olbermann’s coverage? With Small World News, of course you have a say in the coverage, because you’ll help write our paychecks.

As always, please email us or leave a comment below, especially if you have assistance or advice to offer!

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3. Somalia the future home of AFRICOM?

On April 9, President Obama sent his 2009 supplemental budget request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to Congress. Predictably, most of the media coverage was simply carried over and adapted from the previous battle over funding for the military.

For example, some attention has centered upon the stiff opposition to Secretary of Defense Gates’ decision not to order additional F-22 fighters. While this discussion is important, particularly on the usefulness of F-22 fighter planes in Iraq, there was something else in this supplemental budget that seems to have escaped notice.

We find this on page 6:

$0.8 billion to support the Palestinian people, strengthen the Palestinian Authority, and provide humanitarian assistance for the crisis in Gaza.

Read the Whole Article

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It’s rare to hear about Afghanistan these days, despite the so-called re-deployment of forces and a new direction for the “war on terror” under a new president. But when we do hear about Afghanistan it often looks something like this:

KABUL (AP) — The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan says its troops have killed four suspected militants and detained two others during a raid in the country’s south.

A coalition statement says the raid targeted a Taliban bomb-making cell in Maywand district of the southern Kandahar province Monday.

Southern Afghanistan is a center of the Taliban-led insurgency, where thousands of new U.S. troops have been ordered to join the fight by President Barack Obama to try to reverse militant gains of the last three years.

I’ve re-posted that in full, because it’s the ENTIRE ARTICLE. That is what often passes as an article fro Afghanistan these days. Where are the photos? What did the “militants” look like? Who did they work for? Where is the evidence of the “bomb-making cell?”

Re-read the article. Its quite clearly a republishing of a Coalition press release. Now let’s imagine this story in another way. You visit a news website and see the headline “4 insurgents killed in southern Afghanistan.” On the site in front of you, you see a series of photos, in this case, the house that was raided. Next you notice there is an icon with a ubiquitous “play” triangle, you click it and are brought immediately to the scene in Afghanistan, you can hear the ambient noise and a voice in English, perhaps stilted, or a local language, voiced-over in English, describes the scene and proceeds to interview a number of neighbors, “what did you know about this house? Did you see what happened? What do you think about the coalition forces?”

And below this, a brief update written in text, contextualized with an idea of what the government/security situation is like in this area, speculation as to who these “militants” might be, something about the number of incidents in the region lately.

Or better yet, perhaps you came to read an article titled something like “Life in Khost, a day on the border with Pakistan.” You’ve come to read this article because via Twitter you posed the question “what do locals think about the increase in US troops in the border region of Afghanistan?”

You find a detailed piece describing life and the livelihoods of several Afghani residents, including photos, and, again, an audio clip that can be played immediately from your browser with a series of Afghanis relating their opinions about the presence of US troops and a short description of their daily life. In this case there is also a series of short video clips you can play back, for once you’ve really gotten a feel for what life might be like in Afghanistan, and from the Afghani perspective.

This isn’t a bizarre “Reality television” pitch, but a real possibility, right now, that could be implemented within a few months, possibly even weeks. What it lacks is funding and the clear presence of an interested and supportive community.

An internet connection in Kandahar will run $300/month for enough bandwidth to post stories, photos, and perhaps highly compressed video. A decent salary for an Afghani would be 300/month. So for $1800/month 5 producers with a decent internet connection could begin producing media in Afghanistan.

The other start-up costs depend on the quality and type of the media desired. Using Utterli its possible to record and post audio dispatches via mobile phone directly to the web, in this case the added cost to cover would be the phone credit and travel.

For $1500 we could purchase 10 Flip Video cameras which would be enough to produce basic quality video as a start, with the added advantage of extra cameras for loaners and backups in the predictable case of broken or stolen equipment.

Of course this can’t be done without sending someone to Afghanistan to courier equipment and training for the local producers, setting an initial cost, besides equipment, at perhaps 15k for airfare, a stipend, and basic expenses.

If we can raise 25k we can start a journalism project in southern Afghanistan, where there are no longer ANY journalists based full-time. Proving the model in southern Afghanistan is a big step towards building a nation-wide news organization, as well as beginning a project on the other side of the border, inside Pakistan.

I’m certain 25 thousand dollars sounds like a lot, given the state of the world economy. However, given President Obama’s policies of escalation in Afghanistan, and our utter lack of knowledge about the situation on the ground, can we afford *not* to be getting quality on-the-ground news from southern Afghanistan?

I look forward to working with each and every one of you to build a crowd-funded news organization to provide the information we truly want to be reading/watching/hearing.

More models to come.

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1. Small World News, it’s Big
2. Small World News: A New Era of Entrepreneurship
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Brian Conley on RocketBoom

John Yemma writes about the speech given last Thursday by Marty Baron, Boston Globe editor, in the CS Monitor “Editor’s blog” Connecting the Dots.

Mr. Baron raised the hopeful image of a “new era of entrepreneurship.” This very image has been raised before many times. The question we should concern ourselves with is of course, where will it lead?

The New York Times purchased the Boston Globe in 1993, at the time one of its top regional competitors, and one of the nation’s most acclaimed and profitable newspapers. Although analysts say its been losing money since then, and the Globe had a 10% circulation drop in a six month period in 2008, the question has to be asked yet again why this occurred?

I remember the Boston Globe being the only paper covering the 2000 Presidential Debates with the courage to clarify the fact that police officers were the first to use violence against demonstrators, which later escalated into something resembling a full-scale riot by the end of the evening. However, I can’t help feeling that the quality of the Globe’s coverage decreased dramatically from this highlight in 2000 until the present-day.

I also can’t help feeling that the cause of such a decrease is directly tied to the profit motive. There was a previous era of entrepreneurship, just after World War I, when journalism truly began to flourish. Unfortunately individuals such as William Hearst and others, the first media moguls, were the ones whose motives for an earlier version of “a million page views” led to the eventual situation we find ourselves in today.

But it wasn’t their profit motive alone, it was also our failure to recognize that although freedom of speech must be a vehemently defended right, where there is a tendency toward profit and a bottom-line motive, regulation is a necessity.

Had the New York Times been prevented from purchasing its rival the Boston Globe in 1993, and other similarly monopolistic moves throughout the US media industry, perhaps a new era of entrepreneurship might have flourished sooner, one that recognized if we wish to have honest, forthright, quality journalism, we need to protect, cultivate, and value journalism as something which should never have a primary directive of selling soap. Either we are in the pursuit of honest, informed journalism, or we are in the business of selling soap. I don’t believe it can be both.

Last week I started to imagine for you a new world of journalism. I’d like to continue that with a few questions,

What do you want to see from journalists and newsmakers in the future?

What do you desire most that’s not available in your news currently?

Would you pay a subscription fee to support journalism that mattered to you?

What if it provided you the ability to ask questions of those interviewed?

What if it enabled you to interact with the producers and subjects of content?

What else might convince you to pay to support journalism that matters to you?

______

Please comment below and reblog!

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Award Winning Web Video from Small World News

I’d like to imagine a world where an alternative global video news and documentary network has been established. A network that enables those in the areas most at-risk from human-trafficking, destruction of the environment, availability of deadly weapons worldwide, and internal disputes due to ethnic rivalries, competition for resources, and others. Such a network might have enabled Iraqis to learn from Rwandans and others about the dangers of ethnic conflict, and alternate realities behind its origins. It could enable those at risk from genocide or ethnic cleansing to speak directly to the international community rather than, as in Darfur, forcing refugees to depend on NGOs and States with their own agendas at work.

But the best thing about such a network is that its possible now. The only thing that limits our capability to build such a network is a moderate amount of funding and a vision. With the affordability of DV equipment, and more and more, HD and mpeg4 equipment, a broadcast quality mobile production studio, with archiving capabilities, can be outfitted for well under $10,000.00.

I believe within a few years time we can create an international network, with community video units, aka “bureaus” operating in five regions or more, producing and distributing content for their local community. However, what gets me really excited, is knowing that utilizing the internet we can now broaden the reach of those teams to one that is truly global. We can create a new “60 Minutes” style program, where the stories are defined by those most affected, where using twitter and blog commenting and other outlets the viewers and community members alike can drive the discussion and offer questions and feedback.

But we can also broaden our reach beyond video, utilizing tools such as Utterli to enable members of the community to make radio reports on an individual basis(see our work on Alive in Gaza), or partner with Ushahidi to assist mobile phone users to contribute from areas where a video unit has worked recently or is preparing to travel.

We can utilize video to build a focus, a groundswell of attention, and then broaden to other social media tools that in some communities will be better suited for long-term and regular usage.

Alive in Baghdad, as one of the most award-winning, though arguably one of the least-funded, web video projects, has shown the viability, the strength of this medium. We can distribute the stories of individuals and communities in crisis across not only their community, country, or continent, but the globe. In so doing, we may be able to curb many of the great intractable issues of our day.

All we need to accomplish this is possess the will to do it and, as always, a little funding.

We need your support to make this happen. If you’re a grant writer, or you know grant writers, please write.

If you have suggestions about funding sources, or locations you’d like to see us put this model into action, please write.

If you have resources, whether funds, equipment, skills or otherwise that you’d like to contribute, please write.

Comment below or email us at smallworldnews at Gmail dot com, and let us know how you can help or give us your own testaments about our work.

Together we can imagine a world of many voices, a big world made small. Together we can build Small World News.

On behalf of my colleagues worldwide, from Kenya to Iraq, Mexico to Afghanistan, I look forward to working with you in the future,

Brian Conley

Director, Small World News

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It was recently revealed that sometime in January, several Israeli F-15s and F-16s entered Sudanese airspace and attacked a convoy of 17 trucks, supposedly filled with weapons bound for Hamas in Gaza. The attack killed 39 people, all Eritrean, Sudanese, and Ethiopian nationals, as well as injuring an unknown number of bystanders. The official reasoning was that this was designed as a deterrent to Iran smuggling weapons to Hamas, as well as display of Israel’s capability to strike, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, “everywhere there is terror.”

However, this attack may have had catastrophic consequences, not only for Israel’s battle against Hamas, but for the US War on Terror, and on a much greater scale, those suffering from the horrible human rights crisis in Darfur. To understand how, we must examine in detail the events leading up to the Israeli attack, the attack itself, and the fallout from the government in Khartoum.

Read the Whole Article

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While westerners are busy wrestling with their own taboos of government intervention and racial politics, a different taboo is re-entering the consciousness of Iraqis. The improved security environment has allowed the alcohol trade to boom, and while Iraqis welcome the business momentum, they are once again forced to reconcile their dual identities as proud Muslims and vulnerable people grappling with the trauma and depression of war.

Even though it was commonly understood that Saddam Hussein and his inner circle regularly partook of alcohol, the sale of liquor was for the most part banned during his rule. The accepted reasoning behind this was to bolster Saddam’s image as a pious Islamic ruler. However, much like in the United States during its Prohibition period, liquor stores continued to operate in Iraq, albeit as unlicensed dealers on the black market. These underground liquor establishments suffered occasional harassment from Saddam’s security services, but after the American invasion and the anarchy that followed, the harassment escalated to new, hellish heights.

[Continue Reading at Alive in Baghdad]

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During the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, I had the somewhat unpleasant task of covering “Shake Your Money Maker,” a protest, or demonstration, or something like that. Basically, a bunch of conspiratorial, Austrian school economics folks (and a few lost or confused peace activists) gathered around the Denver Mint downtown and attempted to “levitate it” (also known as yelling slogans at it). However, what I actually ended up covering was a confrontation between between radio host Alex Jones and pro-torture advocate Michelle Malkin.

Since this happened during the DNC in the middle of a very polarizing election campaign, Malkin immediately went on FOX News and her blog to slam Alex Jones as some sort of Liberal Left Wing Democratic operative (for his part, Jones claims to be an “independent”). But now the political landscape is changed dramatically. The Republican party (the low taxes, small government guys) is nowadays less popular than the Chinese Communist Party (the harvesting organs from live dissidents in a moving vehicle guys). Michelle Malkin and her plucky conservative movement need all the friends they can get.

Read the Whole Article

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Experts, policy makers, and academics have been talking about hypothetical military combat in space for decades, particularly during the 1980s with the introduction of President Reagan’s so-called “Star Wars” program to shoot down Soviet nuclear missiles. However, there’s evidence to suggest that warfare in Earth’s orbit is very quickly accelerating from merely hypothetical to a strategic reality.

This week Russian Deputy Defense Minister Gen. Valentin Popovkin revealed that his country has been developing Anti-Satellite weapons technology, particularly “basic, key elements” needed to shoot down a satellite in near earth orbit. Regarding similar programs by the Americans and Chinese, Popovkin said, “We can’t sit back and quietly watch others doing…such work.”

Of course the Russians would have to emulate any military program that both the US and China have, but this isn’t your everyday imperial arms race. They think the US already shot down one of their satellites.

Read the Whole Article

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In the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 3, I was doing some research for the latest episode of Alive in Baghdad, specifically looking for Iraqi reactions to President Obama’s speech announcing the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. One of the reactions I came across was from the Mujahideen Central Command of Rafidan, a Sunni Islamist, Iraqi insurgent group allegedly responsible for the brutal murder of two CIA agents in Baghdad in 2004.

Originally posted on Dandelion Salad, I followed the Rafidan communique back to its source at Al-Basrah.net, an Iraqi insurgent media organization focusing on Sunni Arab Nationalism and resistance to American and Iranian domination. Here’s where it started getting weird…

Read the Whole Post

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