Bloglines...

Here is a link to my Bloglines list of feeds.

Getting ideas for entries

Where do you usually get the idea of the theme of the entry that you post on your blog?

Darren Rowse writes about the ways to find ideas of entries for the blog. He assumes that conversations, reader questions, reader comments, other blogs, books, newspapers, magazines, mad ideas, experience, brainstorming and archieves are the ways of getting ideas for the posts.

Also here Rand writes about 10 web tools to help generate blog content ideas. It gives the way how you can find ideas for your posts and where. I hope it will help you to make more valuable entries.

No more Wars!!

War is one of the most awful thing that happens in the world. It takes life from lots of ordinary people and destroys everything. War destroys the city, land and people's mentality.

According to the article "Three years of slaughter in Iraq" there are 86 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the begginging of the war.

This article says that in Iraq war, the largest journalists have been killed since the World War II.
Also you can find some more statistics about the journalists killed in wars.

No more Wars!!

Toward press freedom

When you visit Reporters without boarders’ website, at a glance you will see the phrase of how many journalists around the world are imprisoned until the time you visit their site. Today it was written ‘139 journalists are imprisoned around the world’. There are not only these imprisoned 139 journalists, but perhaps lots of journalists are threatened and killed around the world. And maybe it means there is no freedom of speech and democracy at all. Journalists, around the world are trying to remove violations on the press freedom.

In the article “Journalists’ hunger strike goes on in a climate of growing tension”, we can see in Azerbaijan, there are some journalists like Gnimat Zahidov, Shahin Agabeyll and Fikret Faramazoglu, who are hunger striking against press freedom violations. I hope these journalists’ endeavor for press freedom would be not vain.

For further information you can read an article called "17th Day of support for imprisoned journalists" and there you can also find some useful statistics.

Violation of the freedom of speech and press freedom

On 17th of November, a vietnamese Pham Hong Son was arrested and beaten by the police. He was one of the oppositions online, and according to the article "Cyber-dissident arrested and beaten by police in Hanoi during APEC summit" there are some more cyber oppositions who were threatened. Pham Hong Son was banned to go out of his house at the end.

This article says in Vietnam, there is no democracy and freedom of speeh. The government is violationg the rights of freedom of the speech.

And this violation happened not only in Vietnam, but in Iran also. In the article "Government filtering makes two websites inaccessible" the Iranian government have blocked two independent websites - tik.ir and meydaan.com. According to the article, there was no official reasons for blocking these two websites. This article also says that the Iraninan government filters the Internet use.

It seems these kind of violations come up more often in these days...

Tips to make your blog more readable

What do you think of the ways to make your blog more readable?
To keep the entries short and use some images?

Chris Baskind writes about "five ways to make your blog more readable" and he thinks those ways are to focus your content, reduce the amount of text on your page, stick with simple fonts, dump the blogger bling and be smart about color. I found there very helpful and if you are interested in making your blog more readable just go and read it! :)

Here is some more tips on how to design with color - five simple steps to designing with color and five simple steps to designing with color part 2

Censored Internet use in Singapore

Now, people in Singapore are not free to express their opinion on the Internet. They used to, but not now, because a new law on the usage of the Internet was proposed. According to the article “Internet threatened by proposed new rules, while blogger prosecuted over video of himself speaking in public” Singaporean government is warning Singaporeans living abroad by sending messages about this newly proposed law. Singaporeans should not critique their government, any insults on religion. Govenrment will self-censor their citizens even online where people could only freely express their thoughts. And this article assumes of the rise of this newly proposed law is because of several bloggers’ criticizing articles about the government on their blogs. Yap Keng Ho is one of the oppositions and was accused of posting video clips of himself speaking publicly. Yap Keng Ho’s blog is still available. It seems to be a bad news for Singaporeans.

Internet black holders



There are 13 Internet enemies newly estimated in the world. They are Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. The article says that there are three countries removed from the black list of the Internet which are Nepal, Maldives and Libya but still some bloggers in Egypt were put in danger or imprisoned, so I think there still is some control and repress from the authorities on bloggers and think it should be on the list too.

In this article you will find in details how the president, government and authorities control and censor the Internet use and Internet users in those listed Internet black holders.

Predators

Reporters without boarders calls king of Saudi Arabia Abdallah Ibn al-Saud, president of Russia Vladimir Putin, dictator of North Korea Kim Joung-il and other authorities and military powers as predators of press freedom, and have portraits of them at their website. Reporters without boarders explains that behind the violations of the press freedom, there are powerful people who are usually presidents, ministers, heads of armed force and leaders of religious group who have power to torture, imprison, kidnap and murder journalists. And have created the list of portrait of the predators of press freedom in order to disclose them better. It seems to be an useful source for journalists!

Changing culture of communication

Everyday, in our ordinary life, we are facing with new technologies and products. As this is time for globalization, everything is changing and developing. Journalism is not exception here. Appearance of the new information technology has brought lots of changes in global term and as a consequence, online journalism has developed.

Firstly, use of the Internet changed our way of getting news. According to the research “The use of the Internet by America’s newspapers” done by the Bivings group (Bivings, 2006), in 2002 only 27 million people used Internet to read news but in 2006, 44 million American adults get news from the Internet every day.

Secondly, Internet has developed a new way of journalism – citizen journalism. With the appearance of the participatory journalism, weblog has appeared. Weblog is shortened to blog and is a sort of website where bloggers make entries (wikipedia). Steve Outing, in his article called “The 11 layers of Citizen Journalism” (Outing, 2005), explains 11 different layers of participatory journalism.

The first layer is writing comments, which the readers by leaving comments to articles, add new information or give some points that was missed by the writer. And Outing believes this makes the original text better.

The second layer is citizen add on reporter, which the readers by adding sources to the original text in order to improve it.

The third is open-source reporting, which is needed the participation of the both writer and his/her readers. Readers are asked to write their experiences on particular issues that help the writer to write articles and usually journalists use this as a draft before publishing their articles officially, so that the public made feedbacks and the journalists themselves could publish the better articles.

The fourth is blog. In the research done by Bivings group (Bivings, 2006), they mentioned that blog is a very useful and effective way for journalists to communicate directly with their audiences, which means blog is a good tool for two-way communication. But there are always disadvantages and weaknesses for everything. Shayne Bowman and Vhris Wills in the article “We Media” (Bowman and Wills) listed pluses and minuses about blog. They said blog is easy to set up, operative and maintainable by low price or for free, endures everybody to have their own space and to be a writer, publisher, and distributor of the articles. But on the other hand, it requires higher level of responsibility, and hard to attract people’s attention.

The fifth is newsroom citizen transparency blog, the blog which shares the newsroom’s inner workings with the readers or viewers.

The sixth is edited stand alone citizen journalism site, in this blog the issues are more private and diversified. It is edited by the editors and editors should guide to its’ writers which topic is worth to write.

The seventh is no edited stand alone citizen journalism site, where no single mistakes are corrected by the editors. Outing thinks this is something real participatory journalism where the pure works of the citizens are shown to the readers.

The eighth is add a print edition, which is printed version of stand alone journalism.

The ninth is combination of professional journalism with citizen journalism. Usually citizen reporters and editorial staffs. Bigger part is done by citizens and rest of them is done by professionals.

The tenth is integrating citizen and professional journalism under one roof, where professional journalists’ articles and citizens’ articles are shown together. Usually pro’s works are for pay, citizen’s works are for free.

The eleventh is wiki journalism, where the readers are editors. Wiki journalism gives ability to anybody to write and post articles and also anybody is available to edit any story that has been already posted. Now participatory journalism is very common and used by majority of people.

Finally, Internet has changed our culture of two-way communication. People used to write letters, send postcards, and call by telephone in order to communicate with people in a distance. But now, we use messengers, e-mail, and blogs in order to communicate with people and communications became global.

As invention of the Internet developed online journalism, and online journalism advanced two-way communication, every time new technology improves our daily life. New information technologies have brought many changes in our culture, advanced our life in global arena, but we should try not to abuse these technologies and thankful for this given convenience and should make efforts to save and maintain our culture of communication like writing letters, sending postcards in order to make the society warm-hearted.


References


Bivings group. (2006, August 1). The use of the Internet by America’s newspapers. Retrieved from http://www.bivingsreport.com/campaign/newspapers06_tz-fgb.pdf

Bowman, S. and Wills, V. We Media. Retrieved from http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/download/we_media.pdf

Outing, S. (2005, June 13). The 11 layers of Citizen Journalism. Retrieved from http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=83126

Wikipedia. Blog. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Opportunity to know about press freedom of America!

In an entry called "Freedom of the press in USA" from Madina's blog, you have a chance to get some idea of freedom of the press and speech in USA. Madina had analyzed on Walter Dean's speech, who is a journalist in America and introduces you with some ideas of press freedom in America.

Hope you will find fun in Madina's blog!! :)

Gap between coverages...

A few days ago the 61st session of U.N. General Assembly had ended. Here I will be analyzing how were the U.S. president’s speech and Iranian president’s speech covered by many different newspapers from other regions differently.
“The devil came here yesterday” – phrase told by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in U.N. General Assembly, the devil indicating U.S. president George W. Bush, was covered in about all news stories. In this session of U.N. General Assembly, there were two main forces – America and anti-American countries. Fox news says that Bush had told the president Chavez as a closer ally of Iran and other Middle Easter countries that he would be troublesome to the U.N. General Assembly. If to concentrate only on speeches of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and American president George W. Bush, Ahmadinejad seemed to be angry with Bush but Bush made a speech to the nations of the Middle East rather than to the governments or leaders. Bush also in his speech he blamed the leaders of the Middle East as referring them “extremists who support and sponsor the terrorism” wanted to persuade the nations of the Middle East. In one article called “Iranian president criticizes America’s abuse power in Security Council” from a Korean news site called NewsIs, wrote president Ahmadinejad at the U.N. General Assembly censured American government violently but the president Bush separated Iranian government with its nation and informed his intentions. In the article called “Iran’s leader declares intend to speak at U.N.” covered by The New York Sun before the beginning of the U.N. General Assembly, mentioned whether Ahmadinejad declaring that he intended to attend the U.N. General Assembly and to debate with Bush about Iran’s nuclear program was serious or just in order to give restless to the American opponents. And this phrase referred in The New York Sun seemed to be somehow pro-American as it treated the situation which included theirs own country. If look from other region’s point of view, a news story from gazeta.kz, the Kazakhstani newspaper, says that the biggest ordeals happened in American history was to bear patiently the president like Bush after Bush had told to the nations to abide until they reach to a peaceful world. May be this newspaper’s journalists didn’t like Bush’s so-called peace proclamation. By the report done by AP, it mostly concentrated on Bush and Ahmadinejad’s speeches. It seemed to be objective as both sides were referred equally. It referred those leaders’ not face-to-face debate as a spar.
Interestingly American press covered this issue in details but other regions’ media covered it very shortly and didn’t give much information. Also it was easier to find information according to this issue in Western media than in other countries’ media. It seems this issue is a very important one which regards to the World Peace, but treated not so important in many regions and maybe the priority for journalists is to give information to people more world widely.