News
Ian Parry Scholarship deadline June 20
The deadline for the Ian Parry Scholarship is June 20. Entrants need to upload a digitial portfolio of their work to the Ian Parry website before the deadline, Ian Parry was a photojournalist who died while on assignment for The Sunday Times during the Romanian revolution in 1989. He was just 24 years old. The […]
Three ‘Sky’ journalists arrested in Zimbabwe
Three South Africans arrested last weekend in Esigodini, Matabeleland South, in alleged possession of broadcasting equipment belonging to television network Sky News, appeared in court yesterday facing charges of contravening provisions of the Post and Telecommunications Act. The three, Bennet Hassen Sono, Resemate Chauke, and Simon Maodi, jointly charged with Craig Mark Ram Edy (42), […]
Christiane Amanpour wins Fourth Estate Award
CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour will receive the National Press Club’s Fourth Estate Award. The award is given annually to an “individual who has achieved distinction for a lifetime of contributions to American journalism”, “I have always believed this to be a noble profession, and I am passionate about reporting the incredible stories of […]
Portrait of a fixer – Daoud Hari in Darfur
Daoud Hari, author of The Translator, is profiled in the Daily Telegraph during a book promotion trip to New York. After his village in Darfur was attacked by Janjaweed militia he took to helping NGOs and foreign journalists get the story out. He became a fixer. ‘The journalists were very different from the NGO people,’ […]
31 very interesting things: 5. Madeleine Peyroux
I’ve never signed up to the theory that cover versions are rubbish. They’re rubbish if they’re just a cheap attempt to fill an album slot or add five minutes to your live set. But taking a song from one genre into another has provided unexpected delights. Until now, my favourite was The Ramones’ version of […]
The case of Trent Keegan
Freelance photographer Trent Keegan was murdered on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. His body was found in a ditch on Wednesday, 28 May. I’m not going to say much more about this at the moment, but I’d like to point you Nairobi-based, Frontline blogger, Rob Crilly who knew Trent and is following the case. As […]
Top 10 journalistic uses for Twitter
Here’s a brief guide to the top 10 journalistic uses of the microblogging tool Twitter. It’s not all useless banter about cats and cookery… Sources – Use Twitterlocal to find out if anyone is tweeting from where you want to report, see what they’re tweeting about, whether they might be useful/interesting and see if they […]
Saving Darfur
It hasn’t quite reached the levels of ferocity seen between Alex van der Waal and John Prendergast last year, but there’s been lively debate under way at the Guardian’s Comment is Free site about Darfur and the role of peacekeepers. It opened with Julie Flint, co-author of Darfur: A New History of a Long War, […]
Trent Keegan
The Committee to Protect Journalists has taken up the case of Trent Keegan who was found dead in Nairobi on Wednesday morning. “This is a devastating loss for those who knew Trent Keegan, a photographer who worked to document people in need of a voice around the world,†said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. […]
Latin America promotes but doesn’t respect human rights
Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico have been strong on promoting human rights internationally and in supporting the UN human rights machinery during 2007. But unless the gap between their policies internationally and their performance at home is closed their credibility as human rights champions will be challenged, according to this week’s report […]
James Nachtwey thanks fixers
[video:youtube:FVArFUxyNFM] The Frontline Club magazine this month mentions the inaugural Frontline Club journalism awards. These awards will raise money for the Frontline Club Fixers Fund. James Nachtwey recently praised the fixers who help him work as a war photographer in his President’s award acceptance speech at the Overseas Press Club in New York, As journalists […]
Twitter’s quicker
“Just heard a big blast near badi chowpak. Donno what it was.” Not much of a quote, but it was enough to get the story out. Sandil Srinivasan, or 2s as he is known on the micro-blogging service Twitter, was in Jaipur on 13 May when the first of a series of nine synchronized bombs […]
Sudan v Chad (Replay)
There I was all set to travel to Khartoum for the World Cup qualifier between Sudan and Chad and then this arrives from Fifa… In view of the current situation between Sudan and Chad, FIFA has decided to suspend the 2010 FIFA World Cupâ„¢ preliminary competition game between Sudan and Chad, which was originally scheduled […]
Journalism award for Uganda film
[video:google:-7506651516025190367] The RFK Memorial Journalism Award goes to HDNet for their World Report programme, “A Silent War, A Violent Peace,” about Uganda’s civil war. The award will be presented at the Newseum tonight, according to TVNewser, “Kira Kay and Jason Maloney risked their lives to do the Uganda story, and to be recognized with an […]
Photographer Killed
Police here in Nairobi think they have found the body of freelance photographer Trent Keegan. They have still to do a formal identification. He called me yesterday, saying he’d just arrived in town and did I want to team up on some features? It looks like he may have been killed by a hit and […]
Interview with Alex Strick van Linschoten
Frontline blogger Alex gets interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live – great bit of insight into how one the Frontline bloggers operates, where he goes, how he approaches work and travel. Worth a listen.
Chad Refugees Race the Rain
On its own, Chad is one of the poorest and most desperate countries in the world. Now, to make matters worse, Chad finds itself sandwiched between conflicts in Sudan and Central African Republic. Hundreds of thousands of refugees (pictured) from those countries have flooded into Chad in recent years. The U.N. is struggling to keep […]
Declan Walsh in Garmser
The Guardian’s Declan Walsh reports from Garmser, on the frontline of the fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan via audio slideshow on the newspaper’s website.
BBC Radio 5 Interview
This link will take you to an MP3 of my interview yesterday with Chris Vallance on my way home from the airport. Light listening.
Embedded reporting from the inside
The cameraman writer on the Imagejunkies blog has a great post providing some insight into the process of “embedding”, the logistics of TV reporting from a war zone and how sometimes the interests of the military minders don’t always match the interests of the reporters on the ground, There is a vision that we can […]
Do you or don’t you dumb it down?
Writing on the BBC Reporters blog, James Reynolds questions whether his reporting from the Chinese earthquake showed too much/too little or was too intrusive. This is a recurring debate that seems so often to evenly split between those who want to show everything and those who believe the news should be sanitised. James questions whether […]
Cristi Hegranes wins Bravery in Journalism award
Cristi Hegranes works in a bar by night, by day she’s “a media innovator” and this year’s winner of the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism. Hegranes founded a nonprofit, the Press Institue for Women in the Developing World, to train women in the developing world as journalists and then hire them to […]
Operation Return Home Unless You Want to be Beaten
A few weeks back the Irish Foreign Minister visited the displaced people in Kenya. He was introduced to the crowds at Kitale’s stadium by the District Commissioner. It was a flying visit, but it wasn’t difficult to pick up the fear among people in the camps: No-one wanted to go home until security was improved, […]
Reporting restrictions
David Carr writes in the New York Times about The Wars We Choose To Ignore. With war coverage shrinking to a mere drip – “3% of all American print and broadcast news as of last week” – down from 25% last September according to Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, Carr highlights some […]
Who is Asne Seierstad?
Stephen Moss asks the question – Who is Asne Seierstad? A journalist, a writer, or something inbetween? Maybe a “literary journalist” he argues, The nomenclature matters. I met the American reporter Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone, recently, and while I admired the way he had gone to Baghdad to report on the […]
Cornell Capa dies aged 90
Capa is remembered for coining the phrase “the concerned photographer,” describing those who use their photography to contribute to humanity’s well-being. The idea has been an inspiration for countless photojournalists over the last five decades. link Capa founded the International Center of Photography in 1974 as a place to store his brother Robert’s archives and […]
Simon Kasyate wins Uganda journalism award
Simon Kasyate wins Uganda’s 2008 Investigative Journalist of the Year award. His winning TV feature focussed on a displaced family’s struggles to rebuild their life. Kasyate won from a field of 73 entries entered by 65 journalists. “My argument has always been that the biggest threat to media practice in Uganda is not so much […]
When hope turns to fear
You could see it on every face, in every pair of eyes. Here a hesitant smile; there a glint of hope. The weary and the hungry lined the early morning streets of Bulawayo as the elections results started seeping out, you could already smell the scent of change in the air. I had arrived in […]
Create your own media
Former CNN and AP news correspondent Peter Arnett said the dominance and influence of the international media is waning during a speech in the Ghanain capital Accra this week, He challenged the media to endeavour to tell the people what they need to know but not what the international media say. ‘You must not look […]
