Jan

31

Invitation to All Nepali Bloggers

Filed Under BLOGAN | 20 Comments

Join Fellow Nepali Bloggers for A Cup of Tea!

An invitation for all Nepali bloggers
(And also those interested in Nepali Blogosphere)

Feb 2, 2007 at Freedom Forum, Thapathali

This is a gathering of Nepali bloggers to talk various issues (all bloggers are free to talk on any issue they want) plus the formation of Bloggers Association of Nepal (BLOGAN).

Venue: Freedom Forum, Thapathali
Date: Friday, Feb 2, 2007 (Magh 19, 2063)
Time: 12:00 noon

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Jan

22

Delightful Reading

Filed Under Uncategorized | 3 Comments

My friend Deepak Adhikari has written an article about blogging in NepalMonitor.com titled (Some) Thoughts from Nepal on Blogging.

An unprecedented numbers of visitors logged on to the blog and demanded more up-to-the-minute updates on events unfolding in Nepal. That was the time when I actually realized the power of the medium called blog. At times, I was exhausted, but I did not give up in that. I thought continuous update was critical in this technology-driven world. Amid curfew and massacres in the street, I gathered the nuggets of information and posted it instantaneously. It was painstaking. I could see how the Internet transforms the way we communicate.

And of course, there is a bitter truth for me and probably all the bloggers.

We bloggers in Nepal need to talk to each other and share our experiences. I must say this is what is lacking in Nepali blogosphere. We at Kantipur Complex regularly discuss blogs but that is a rather confined effort. The idea of Blog Association Nepal (BLOGAN) was proposed but it has not made much headway. One good example of a collective forum for bloggers is Nepali Voices, started in October 2006.

And, let me take this opportunity to congratulate him in advance for his marriage. May the poetry of your life be the best ever piece of poetry of the world.

Jan 28 is the auspicious day of wedding and her name is Kavita, the poetry of my life. Poetry apart, the joys and sorrows, I believe will be halved and shared. You need someone to care, more importantly you need to be loved and I feel fortunate to be worthy of this bond.

Some more reading on Citizen Journalism:

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Jan

20

On Citizen Journalism

Filed Under Best of Blogs | Comments Off

Easy to say – blogs are a form of citizen journalism. It looks like a mid-way for all those supports and/or criticize the theory that believes blogs are a form of journalism. What I dislike about it is not the views or the definition of the citizen journalism itself but the way people, even citizen journalists, believe the implementation of it by the mainstream media.

Wikipedia defines citizen journalism as:

act of citizens playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information

It also adds that JD Lasica, a citizen media theorist, classified media for citizen journalism into five types in his article in Online Journalism Review.

1) Audience participation (such as user comments attached to news stories, photos or video footage captured from personal mobile cameras, or local news written by residents of a community),
2) Independent news and information Websites
3) Full-fledged participatory news sites (OhmyNews),
4) Collaborative and contributory media sites (Slashdot, Kuro5hin),
5) Other kinds of “thin media.” (mailing lists, email newsletters), and
6) Personal broadcasting sites

When citizen journalism is defined, people tend to give examples and those examples generally comes in the form of mainstream media. Like one published in The Kathmandu Post:

Is Kantipur or any other mainstream media giving out more space to the letters to the editor is integration of citizen journalism? Or Kantipur Television (or other television’s vox populi) Janmat an integration of citizen journalism? For me, it’s a big NO.

For me to be a citizen journalism or citizen journalism initiatives, the content (news or views) provided by the citizens have to be published without censoring and selection (all those that are socially okay in terms of language). Do the mainstream media’s letters to the editor section follow that ideal? Or can people go to television’s station asking for promotion of their ideas?

Let’s think about it.

Further reading:
The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism

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