News
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 […]
Johann Hari wins the Orwell
The Independent’s Johann Hari has won the Orwell Prize for journalism. One of the five stories the judges picked up on was his extraordinary piece about France’s role in the Central African Republic – if you haven’t already read it, do so – you won’t be disappointed. He thanked the stringers he has worked with […]
Barry Bearak retells his Harare prison experience
New York Times reporter Barry Bearak was arrested in Harare during the farcical election process that began last month, and that continues with no firm outcome a month after it began. He retells his story in the American press, I’d been caught at it red-handed, my notes spread across my desk, my text messages readable […]
Journalists stamped
Five journalists feature on a new range of stamps issued by the US Postal Service. The stamps were announce last year and have just appeared. The journalists featured are: Rubén Salazar, a TV and Los Angeles Times reporter killed when covering a 1970 war protest in East Los Angeles. Martha Gellhorn, who covered the Spanish […]
Psyops on steroids
[video:youtube:wmRUXkWBUd0] “Pentagon infiltrate media with pro-war propaganda” Cripes. I’m shocked…
Back in Afghanistan
Frontline Club member John D. McHugh is back in Afghanistan. As revealed on this blog a wee while back, he is working for The Guardian. He’ll be producing six films, taking pictures, writing stories and updating his blog. To kick things off, the newspaper has published edited highlights from his blog, along with pictures and […]
Let it out
CBS News foreign correspondent Kimberley Dozier, who recently participated in the Frontline Club event in New York, talks about how writing and discussing the more horrific experiences she has encountered as a war reporter has helped her cope, “If you don’t talk to a therapist, talk to you wife, your buddy, write about it. Just […]
Judah Passow on Israel and the Palestinians
[video:brightcove:1522869105] Judah Passow, one of the leading UK based photojournalists, presents images from over 25 years covering the Middle East was at the Frontline Club. He discusses his pictures and how they demonstrate the complex human reality that exists on both sides of the divide.
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 […]
Africa’s Dark Heart
There are few place names as darkly tantalising as The Congo. It’s not just that the name wears an aura of mystery. It is much more portentous than that. The challenge is to work out why a region in the centre of Africa that does not appear markedly different from other equatorial parts of the […]
Been in Afghanistan too long?
[video:youtube:Jev5YJWJv0o] Michael Tomberlin lists ten telltale warning signs you should watch out for if you think you’ve been in Afghanistan too long. The number one reason, he says, is when you find yourself doing something like the above video… But I quite liked reason number 9, You think a burqa is an appropriate anniversary gift. […]
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 […]
Andrew Gilligan discusses journalism
Download this episode View in iTunes You can now watch the event here. Andrew Gilligan, former BBC Radio 4 Defence and Diplomatic Correspondent, Journalist of the year 2008 and the man at the centre of the Hutton Inquiry and the “sexing up” scandal, told his side of the story at the Frontline Club last […]
Jay Price and Dick Gordon talk war
News & Observer reporter Jay Price will be in conversation with WUNC‘s Dick Gordon tonight at UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. It promises to be an informal chat between two reporters – one print, the latter radio – about their experiences reporting war zones. Gordon worked mostly as a foreign correspondent during the […]
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 […]
Sydney Saize on trial
Sydney Saize was arrested in the Zimbabwean town of Mutare in January 2006. He is charged under the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act for reporting at a school where two teachers were assaulted by pro-government supporters, According to the police, Saize violated Chapter 10.27 of the draconian Access to Information and Protection […]
Colin Farrell on the fictitious frontline
A series of slides from the production set of Triage – a film about the psychological toll of reporting the Bosnian war on a photographer played by Colin Farrell. The film is due for release in 2009. More on the screenplay at Javno.
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 […]
Does the West love to hate China?’
[video:brightcove:1509865726] With recent events in Tibet raising questions about international support for the Olympics, a recent panel debate at the Frontline club discusses the possibility of boycott. The panellists are Shirong Chen from the BBC World Service, Tom Porteous of Human Rights Watch, The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall and Liu Weimin from the Chinese Embassy. Isabel […]
Why the white suit?
[video:youtube:3a12GtYsuwE] Frontline Club member Martin Bell is interviewed about Iraq and Afghanistan in Cherwell. The BBC war correspondent for thirty years reveals why he took to wearing the white suit that helped make his name in politics, ‘Because I’m superstitious. Keeps me alive in dangerous places. During the war in Croatia, in 1991, I had […]
