Journalism
From the Mosul frontline
Salam Adil at Global Voices does an excellent job of rounding up the latest from the folks on the streets of Basra, Mosul and beyond. He dedicates a blog post “to the extraordinary bloggers of Mosul who are living on the front line of a war zone” Here are the words of Aunt Najma, In […]
Commuting with Putin
Ever wondered what Vladimir Putin’s ride to work is like in the morning? Luke Harding, The Guardian’s Moscow Correspondent, has been putting his multimedia reporting skills to work to try and tell you. Click the image above to check out Luke’s stalking skills. How about doing something like this next time you’re in Russia, Heathcliff?
Global incident locator
Following on from the BBC’s Foreign Correspondent’s map of the world, I discover the Global Incident map. The idea is pretty simple. Incidents of terror, war, conflict and the like are fed into the map. You can click incidents to find out more and go to the original news source.
War reporter trauma
Ian Stewart, former West Africa bureau chief for AP, was shot by a boy soldier while travelling in a car through Freetown in Sierra Leone in 1999. The bullet lodged in the back of his brain and left him paralyzed. He recounted the experience, subsequent trauma and “survivor guilt” at the weekend during a conference […]
Grigory Pasko on Russian media
[video:youtube:n9OUmV-B14M] Journalist and blogger Grigory Pasko talks about how the murder of Anna Politkovskaya changed freedom of press in Russia, and discusses the new role of the internet.
Baghdad rental
I’ve just finished listening to this and it’s superb. This American Life is an excellent weekly podcast and the episode that I just noticed in my subscription folder will no doubt have Frontline folk who’ve lived and worked in Iraq in stitches, Radio reporter Adam Davidson went to Iraq to report on the war. He […]
Photojournalists on photojournalism
[video:youtube:6kFxY4yGbQA] Mediabistro runs a session on photojournalism with freelancers and staff snappers from Getty, The Washington Post, AP and Sipa Press. How is the newsroom changing, how is the rise of digital impacting print media and, especially, what is this multimedia journalism malarkey all about? link
We need puppy dogs in Iraq
[video:youtube:LDy7vn7-LX4] Billionaire Sam Zell who owns the Tribune Company (Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and New York Newsday) fires off two barrels during a Q&A at the Orlando Sentinel. Photographer Sara Fajardo questioned the media moghul twice about softening news coverage and Zell was not best pleased. Gawker has more, The journalist in the […]
The batteries are running down
46 year old Sebastian Junger launched his career as a war reporter 15 years ago by travelling to Bosnia with no credentials or contacts. Following a stint in Nigeria, where he reported on militants attacking foreign oil companies, he ended up spending last year with U.S. soldiers in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. Talking to […]
It’s too dangerous
ABC News war correspondent, Terry McCarthy, talks about working in Iraq and how it is almost impossible to report from outside the green zone, “It’s a very dangerous war to cover and to go out and get those ‘feel good’ stories,” he said. “Being out among the people is extremely dangerous, so we have to […]
Touch and go journalism
In Tehran, and blogging for the LA Times, Ramin Mostaghim talks about how one western journalist (+ editor) were flown in – to an alleged Ministry of Intelligence hotspot-come-hotel – to interview President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and promptly flown out again after the interview. Ramin argues this kind of “touch-and-go journalism” has become all too common […]
The day I became a journalist
As BBC foreign correspondet Kim Ghattas prepares to move to a new posting in Washigton D.C. On BBC radio’s From Our Own Correspondent show she talks about her upbringing in Lebanon during the civil war and of how, at thirteen years old, she decided to become a journalist, I still remember the day I decided […]
Conflict blogging
iConflict is a new website set to launch this month. According to comments from one of the founders of the site, Jason Haber, on the DigiDave blog, the time is right for a citizen-generated war reporting website, Unlike other social media news sites, ours is very focused. We aren’t covering Britney Spears, we aren’t covering […]
Mapping BBC Foreign correspondents
Oliver at the Journalism.co.uk blog points to an interactive map – or “Google mashup” – of BBC Foreign correspondents, stringers and bureaus around the world. Click the map above to explore the locations and people. Now, if we could get a “conflict map” and lay it over the top of this map we might be […]
Think Balkans, not Rwanda
Picture originaly uploaded by DEMOSH The last thing a massive news organisation should do is inflame an already volatile situation by using inflamatory words and phrases with deep historical significance. This is, I hope, why almost all of the mainstream media reporting on the current situation in Kenya has tended to steer clear of the […]
“I am here to take you to the airport”
In today’s Washington Post, freelance reporter Nicholas Schmidle talks about the dangers of reporting from Pakistan and how he was forced to leave, The police came for me on a cold, rainy Tuesday night last month. They stood in front of my home in Islamabad, four men with hoods pulled over their heads in the […]
Risks to ethnic press in America
The San Francisco Chronicle highlights a Committee for the Protection of journalists report that states since 1976, 11 of the 13 journalists killed in the United States in apparent retaliation for their reporting worked for the ethnic press, “It’s exactly that kind of person who covers the local community in a grassroots level who is […]
Alaa Abdul Kareem buried in Najaf
Alaa Abdul Kareem, who was killed on Tuesday when a bomb went off on the road between Balad and Samarra, was buried in Najaf yesterday. Kareem had been working for the TV station, Al Furat. Asad Khadhim, Chief Correspondent for the station, talked to the New York Times about his funeral, Mr. Kareem was married […]
Watch the birdie
[video:youtube:iFFK655bbEU] A TV news reporter in Canada gets more than he bargained for when reporting on an infestation of Canadian Brown Finches. This is one reporter with a nose (and mouth) for a story…
No more Mr. Nice Guy
[video:youtube:o1OQ3warWkU] Talking on The Book Show, club member and seeming regular on this blog, John Simpson talks about his attitude to reporting, particularly war reporting, and how it has changed in recent years, A man that drops a bomb from 16,000 feet. The man or woman that straps explosives around him or herself and goes […]
Infotainment
Writing in The Long Term View, a publication of the Massachusetts School of Law Michelle Pulaski, professor of communications art at Pace University, Pleasantville, N.Y. drums out the now standard – “The media didn’t do its job in the run up to the Iraq war” – line. She describes the nightvision footage as having a […]
Missing what’s important
In an interview Salam Adil at the excellent blog aggregator, Global Voices, sums up the limitations of the mainstream media working in Iraq, Many times the mainstream media, by sheer virtue of being a foreign organisation, completely misses what is important. Blogs can fill in these gaps or provide insight into what is happening that […]
“Journalists are fair game”
Terry Anderson, the Associated Press war correspondent held hostage in Lebanon for six years during the 1980’s, speaks out about the present day safety situation for journalists, “[Iraq] is the most dangerous war that journalists have ever covered, by far,” Anderson said. “Eighty percent of the murders of journalists around the world are never investigated. […]
Joe Sacco podcast
Like a cross between cartoonist R. Crumb and international correspondents such as CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Sacco’s comics are a personal narrative that feels inseparable from the dangerous places he visits. link That’s how Brian Libby describes war cartoonist Joe Sacco on Oregon Live. Sacco has an exhibition running at Pacific Northwest College of Art until […]
Journalism centre for Qatar
Reporters Without Borders and the Emirate of Qatar are working together to create a new center for journalists in dire situations. The centre will open in Doha, Qatar by next March, The center is expected to have a medical facility and temporary accommodation for Arab and Muslim journalists who have been injured or are under […]
Partytime in Ramadi
Peter Carlson scans through the magazines for the Washington Post and finds an article in the Virginia Quarterly Review by David J. Morris, a marine veteran turned journalist/college teacher. Morris returned to Ramadi in October. The reception he got this time around was quite different from the first time he arrived in the summer of […]
Blackberry at the ready
This week’s ‘My Week’ column in the Press Gazette is written by Paula Newton, CNN International security correspondent, as she heads out to Kenya. Although, despite being a security correspondent, she seems to have snubbed inflight security procedures with excessive Blackberry use on approach to Kisumu airport, As we flew into Kisumu in western Kenya […]
Alan Johnston back at work
Alan Johnston gets back to work today. He’ll be the new presenter of From Our Own Correspondent for BBC World Service. Kate Adie, who currently presents the BBC Radio 4 version which is aimed at a British audience, will continue to present that edition. The Press Gazette has more, Commenting on his new job, Johnston […]
Martin Bell puts boot in
Former BBC foreign correspondent and man in white suit MP Martin Bell puts the boot into the media obsession with the Madeleine McCann story describing it as “necro-news” But that’s not all, He went on to say the Six O’Clock News was being presented by the “auto-cutie on duty”. He then turned his fire on […]
Chicago Tribune foreign correspondents speak
The Chicago Tribune features an excellent series of short video profiles of five of the newspaper’s foreign correpondents; Laurie Goering, Tom Hundley, Evan Osnos, Kim Barker and Christine Spolar. Christine is a Frontline Club member and she talks about her life as a reporter from early days through Bosnia, the Balkan war, London, Liberia, Chicago, […]