Frontline Club bloggers
Dan joins the frontline
Welcome to Daniel Bennett, the latest addition to the From the Frontline blog. Daniel offers a unique perspective here. As he says on his blog he is “a PhD student researching the impact of blogging and new media on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism. He writes about how changes to news journalism are […]
RAF technician deletes blog after criticising Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Afghanistan
I used to follow a blog about the life of an RAF technician who services Chinook helicopters. He called himself ‘Sensei Katana’ and was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan in January. Just over a month later his blog disappeared without warning and now all you see when you visit his website is this. According to the […]
Cash for (second-hand) content?
A week ago, TechCrunch reviewed DigitalJournal‘s citizen journalism relaunch. The thrust of the piece was the revenue share for contributors: Digital Journal offers a Citizen Journalism site in a similar fashion to Instablogs, OhMyNews, Newsvine, Norg Media and others. Members contribute news items for the site, and in theory the wisdom of the crowd combines […]
“This Could be Heaven or This Could be Hell”
The music wasn’t exactly my cup of tea – I could have done with a bit more Khaled and a little less Eagles – but it was music in the heart of Khartoum. And that was the point. In a city once dominated by Islamists, life is starting to relax and the music is starting […]
Leaving Nairobi
MGQ. A complex grouping of consonants represents Mogadishu in its airport 3-letter code. Mogadoxo to the Portuguese, Hamar to the Somalis, the city represents so much of the dashed dreams of the 1990s. Ticket in hand, I’m a little apprehensive about a place that exists more in rumour and myth than in reality. Journalist colleagues […]
How many non-immigrant visas does the United States grant in Mexico per year?
In the year ending September 2007, the U.S embassy in Mexico processed applications for 1,300,000 non-immigrant visas (visitor, student, temporary work, and other categories) according to this page on the site of the U.S Embassy in Mexico. This year the embassy is projecting more than 1,600,000 applications – and projections are generally overtaken by actual […]
Holiday in the United States? Not this time
A good friend of mine, Juan, was denied a tourist visa to the United States this week. It’s technically known as a B-2 visa. Juan’s girlfriend is from the U.S, and he wanted to travel with her to her home state later this year to attend her sister’s wedding and to meet her parents for […]
From Harare
Incase you haven’t read this on the Zimbabaloola blog… This is definitely worth your time reading, For ten years ZANU PF loyalists have convinced themselves that the MDC and the democratic opposition was a creation of the British, the Americans, and the white farmers. Any black member of the MDC is a sell-out and an […]
On the Road with Darfur’s Hybrid Peacekeeping Force
The helmets have been painted blue, but no-one has got around to removing the Amis logos from the old African Union vehicles No-one can doubt the enthusiasm of the new UN-AU hybrid force (Unamid) in Darfur. Morale has risen and its officers seem to have rediscovered the can-do attitude they lost as the old African […]
Alex Strick van Linschoten joins the Frontline
Alex Strick van Linschoten has been living and working in Afghanistan on and off for the last five years. He’ll be writing a blog here at From the Frontline called A war reporter on the road. He starts in Kenya, but he’ll also be blogging from Somalia, Chechnya and Iraq over the coming months and […]
Letter from Harare
So many people have written to send us their best wishes and to let us know that we are in their thoughts at this time, that I have decided to write a short analysis of the situation here, almost three weeks after the election. I apologise to all of you who have written to us […]
Outwardbound
A sigh down the telephone line. “Somalia is not so much a failed state, as a state that never became a state,” a very wise and English-tinted voice tells me. I’m speaking to Professor I.M. Lewis on the phone about the country where I’m due to spend the next month and am momentarily overcome by […]
Arrest warrants issued for Cacho case
Warrants for the arrest of five public employees involved in the illegal detention of journalist Lydia Cacho (pictured) have been issued in Mexico after the nation’s Supreme Court decided at the end of last year not to pursue legal proceedings against those involved in the case. The Attorney General’s office, which represents a special office […]
General Winter’s last stand
Just when we thought the winter was finally well and truly over last week the skies opened and the snow began to tumble out with a vengeance. Not the pretty white flakes that settle for a moment and then instantly melt leaving just a small glistening trace of their short magical life. But huge great […]
What doesn’t make the headlines
Colombia is often misunderstood and misspelt. Here is a list of things about Colombia (the good and bad) that I believe don’t get the media attention they deserve and may even surprise you. Colombia is home to the second largest internally displaced population in the world, after Sudan. There are about 4 million displaced people […]
iMobile.com already gone? Nevermind…
Another mainstream entrant into the citizen journalism space, this time from CBS and sporting one of the worst URLs yet – http://www.cbseyemobile.com. That’s ‘eye’ as in ‘i’ as in ‘iMobile’, of course. Snappy strapline, too: At first glance, it’s much of a muchness with CNN’s iReport and similar sites. As you would expect, there’s an […]
And you can take your 24hr rolling news channel with you!
[video:youtube:Mvou7v8hiIM] News arrives that Ethiopia is cutting diplomatic relations with Qatar: The Government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia has decided to break off diplomatic relations with the State of Qatar. This decision has been taken after long observation of Qatar’s activities in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia has displayed considerable patience towards Qatar’s […]
Citizen Cameramen
By the time the members of the original Frontline TV agency hit Grozny in the mid-90s to report on the Chechen war, it became clear that the market for pictures and video was changing. Newer, lighter, cheaper cameras meant it was easier than ever to become a film maker. This fact, coupled with the diminishing […]
Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism
In this provocative analysis of the West and its relationship, or lack thereof, with Islam, George Weigel, the biographer of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, drafts what he describes as a call to action to address jihadism. Weigel, a conservative Catholic theologian based in Washington, rejects the commonly used term “Islamic fundamentalism” in […]
Mexicans spending more on bribes
The fact that there exist official statistics on the amount and size of bribes paid in Mexico is perhaps indicative of the level to which corruption and the ‘informal economy’ is ingrained in Mexican Society. The latest figures from Transperencia Mexico show that Mexicans spent 42% more on bribes last year than in 2005, splashing […]
Kebabs in a Circle
Agache – or chicken and beef kebabs with peanut sauce The Friday before I left for El Fasher found me at a soiree on the banks of the Nile, just outside Khartoum. We lounged around on carpets set beside a mango grove and surrounded by candles. Our food was a sort of kebab – chicken […]
Threats against journos continue through April
The month of April started off badly, and it doesn’t look like letting up anytime soon. Two journalists received menacing phone calls this week as a result of reports they’ve written.
Warriors by Gerald Hanley
When Gerald Hanley left Somalia after serving there during World War Two he was optimistic about its future. A new movement was emerging that put Somali identity ahead of tribal loyalty along with a hunger to improve their lot with independence. “There cannot be anywhere in Africa such ready and hungry people, with such swift […]
Travel alert issued for Mexico
The U.S State Department issued a travel warning for Mexico yesterday, prompted by the increasing violence on the U.S – Mexico border. ‘Violent criminal activity fueled by a war between criminal organizations struggling for control of the lucrative narcotics trade continues along the U.S.-Mexico border. Attacks are aimed primarily at members of drug trafficking organizations, […]
April update: Violence against journalists continues
April is shaping up to be a bad month for journalists in Mexico.
Travelling Trolleys
Trolleys in El Fasher So that’s what happens to luggage trolleys at Heathrow once their wheels are deemed too wonky. They end up at El Fasher airport, North Darfur, where they are wheeled up and down approximately 10 metres of paving before they get stuck in the sand.
Olympic Dreams
Abubaker Kaki is world indoor 800m champion. He trains with blocks of concrete for weights There can’t be many Olympic medal prospects who use bits of rubble for weights and train on a track with gaping holes. Yet Abubaker Kaki Khamis, a genuine hope for Sudan in the 800m, has to make do with the […]
From the Frontline clubroom
The Frontline Club is profiled in The Independent newspaper today. Chris Green heads into the clubroom and rummages through the glass cabinets full of memorabilia left by the foreign correspondents and war reporters who make up the club’s membership. Among the bits and pieces he finds is Vaughan Smith‘s mobile phone, “We heard there was […]
$4.6m… for, erm, what?
Citizen journalism outfit CJReport.com is suitably chuffed to raise $4.6m in funding from Sequoia Capital, an a+ venture capital company. So what does CJReport.com do? On CJReport, anyone can edit (even anonymously) and start contributing to stories in the usual categories (business, technology, entertainment, …). Users can write their own stories and upload their own […]
MSM moves qik-ly for once
In an earlier post, I echoed Steve Outing’s assumption that mainstream media would be characteristically slow to adapt to and adopt the potential of live video from mobile phones. So it was a surprise and a pleasure to read about the Sacramento Bee using Qik to capture the procession of the Olympic torch through San […]
