The television media was covering the abduction of one Captain Richard Phillips almost non-stop over the week leading up to Easter. When it was announced that 3 of the 4 pirates holding the captain were killed and he was rescued, the commentators on all the major networks exploded in an orgy of nationalist hoo-rah fervor. They succeeded in showing they could Faux News with the best of them.
They did not succeed, however, in helping us better understand the Somali piracy issue. What might a news agency need to provide insight into the causes of Somali pirac? First of all, they need you the viewer/reader/listener/audience to take a vested interest in learning more about Somalia’s pirates, or pirates in general.
Somalia is a great example of a situation where pirates have a very clear cause and a very clear, though incredibly difficult, solution.
But as I was saying, let’s imagine we have a news agency funded initially through small investment or foundation money. If we establish a bureau in Nairobi, we can cover many subjects in sub-Saharan east Africa. One of the easiest ses of tools available to mobile journalists was presented in the form of the Reuters Mobile Toolkit. Unfortunately, in the last 18 months since it was made public, we’ve seen little in the way of new and innovative journalism being done with these basic tools.
So this is where I suggest a new way to create media, community funded and supported, i.e. community invested news. This has been discussed before, here for example. I’m just going to take the idea, and suggest how we can apply it, in this case to learning more about Somali pirates.
Let’s assume we’ve funded the equipment for a team based in Nairobi-more about how to fund that in a later post, but my previous model for Afghanistan looks a bit similar to what I’ll be proposing.
So, imagine if you could tweet your own questions for Somali pirates and have them answered via audio or perhaps even video within a few days? We can do that right now, utilizing skype, mobile phone networks, and even Utterli or drop.io. When news came that the pirates were killed and Captain Phillips freed, our correspondent in Harardhere could have provided immediate access to the response of locals in the pirate village. Viewers at home could have asked their own questions of the locals supported by Somalia’s pirate economy.
In the days after Captain Phillips was freed, rather than speculation about the potential for Somalia’s pirates to band to join forces with Islamist militias, rather than interviewed so-called “experts” about what might or might not happen, our community-funded team could be asking local residents.
The most affordable form they could be producing content in would be text blogging. With the support of the audience, our local producer will be able to produce audio, video, photo, or perhaps more interactive reports. The quality, and quantity of coverage depends on the audience’ level of interest and willingness to support.
Wouldn’t you like to know that you could influence Anderson Cooper, Brian Williams, or Keith Olbermann’s coverage? With Small World News, of course you have a say in the coverage, because you’ll help write our paychecks.
As always, please email us or leave a comment below, especially if you have assistance or advice to offer!
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RE: 4/14/2009, Somali: A New Look at Piracy?
Dear Small World Editors,
Your citing the use of Reuter’s Mobile Toolkit was interesting, particularly useful to a stringer.
Your subsequent suggestions that this toolkit allows for on the scene interview is less useful because just randomly getting a direct quote from someone in a crowd is good only in adding color and texture to the story (especially if the person is irate and frothing in the mouth with emotions) but it doesn’t advance the core content and give clarity to the story being covered.
From the mainstream world-press, I have not seen or heard any mention of a simple but critical fact that world-shipping of goods to Europe must sail through the Gulf of Aiden (where most piracy occur) to the Red Sea then the Suez Canel as a short cut to European destinations, otherwise shipping has to go completely south to the Indian Ocean pass Cape
Town then sail northeast completely around the African continent in the Atlantic Ocean clockwise to reach the strait of Gilbraltor to reach Europe–an impossible route.
This is Somali’s grave threat to the stoppage of world commerce and that’s why it is the crisis that it is.
Regards,
Franklin W. Liu
FrankWYLiu@aol.com
Hi Mr. Liu,
Our intention at Small World News, far from being to “randomly get a direct quote” is, as you can read in Alive in Baghdad’s mission statement:
Alive in Baghdad employs Iraqi journalists to produce video packages each week about a variety of topics on daily life in Iraq. Through the work of a team of Americans and Iraqi correspondents on the ground, Alive in Baghdad shows the conflict through the voices of Iraqis. Alive in Baghdad brings testimonies from individual Iraqis, footage of daily life in Iraq, and short news segments from Iraq to you.
We have been producing nuanced stories about the complicated issues facing Iraqis in Baghdad since 2006. We also briefly ran a bureau in Mexico and produced stories from Gaza during the latest incursion by Israel.
Our goal is to empower local stringers to produce quality journalism that provides our audience with knowledge they won’t come by otherwise. By pushing a model that depends on the readership/viewership to support financially the content they want to see, we believe we will begin to build a network that has community investment and will stand the test of these trying times.
perhaps you’d be interested in our previous work: http://aliveinbaghdad.org , http://aliveinmexico.org , or most recently http://aliveingaza.org
Thanks for your interest.
Regards
Brian Conley
CEO
Small World News