The Misrata trainees have so far done justice to their town’s reputation as a hard-working, can-do kind of place, and are well on their way to fulfilling the mission we set out: to produce four videos in four days. They seemed to be satisfied with our second day spent covering production basics, as many of [...]
Our second workshop is being held at the office of the Misrata Media Union. The MMU is an organization that hopes to work for the support of all Misrati journalists. They provided Small World News a warm welcome. They have a large conference room more befitting an executive boardroom than a training space. I’m learning [...]
Tonight we’ve arrived in Misrata, the site of our next workshop. The city lies along the Mediterranean coast 187 km (116 miles) east of Tripoli and is Libya’s third largest, a commercial hub hit hard by the war. It’s been a year since revolutionaries cleared the city of Qadaffi loyalists after months of deadlocked fighting, [...]
Small World News just completed the first in a series of video boot camps around Libya. Our first location was the capital, Tripoli. Several trainees work for television stations and production companies, while some are freelancers. We covered the basics of civic journalism, visual storytelling, and video production. First we asked the trainees to propose [...]
Small World News is in Libya for the third time since the revolution began. Although the revolutionary edge of the nation’s enthusiasm may have subsided, the enthusiasm itself has not. Libyans are excited to build their country, and actively looking for partners to provide assistance and mentorship. This desire led directly to the creation of [...]
Our partners and colleagues over at the Engine Room are dedicated to organizing the best practices and experiences in the world of tech development. Taking what they find and openly sharing it for all of our benefit. This is why it’s important for all of us to take their social tech census. By pooling our knowledge together [...]
Earlier this month I went to work at IREX Georgia in Tblisi, on behalf of Small World News, to give workshops for their Gmedia initiative. The workshops were focused on digital advocacy, with participants from many different types of media, NGO’s and even some independent individuals. They all came with a desire to learn more [...]
We’d like to announce that we’ve started producing our first training guide, Small World News’ Guide to Safely and Securely Producing Media. We’ve wanted to produce this guide for a long time now, and we thrilled to finally have the time and the resources to make it happen. We’re planning to release this free downloadable [...]
Previously we’ve written here about how citizen media – the stories of those on the ground – can be used to provide much-needed context for journalists, analysts, and policy makers. Knowing the specifics of what’s happening, and learning it from the locals themselves, ensures better intelligence and therefore better decision making. But what does citizen [...]
Mark Rendeiro is in Georgia this week training locals to use new media tools for public campaigns, specifically related to advocacy. He’s blogging about his trip on his website Citizen Reporter. While some nations in the EU curse their governments for not representing them in what is financially a very troubled union, here we find [...]
From the Wall Street Journal: Syria shut down most of its Internet and mobile data connections early Friday, adopting a strategy used by other governments in the Middle East during critical points of the uprisings. But the attempt to gain an advantage over the opposition groups by unplugging or partially blocking the Internet, which has [...]
From Donia Jarrar’s blog: On April 8th, 2011 I had the opportunity to give a TEDx Talk as part of TEDxUofM at the historic Michigan Theater in front of a 1700 member audience. I was very lucky to be able to speak as a part of such an inspiring group of people, and that I [...]
From President Obama’s speech on the Middle East and North Africa, delivered this morning at the State Department: We will continue to make good on the commitments that I made in Cairo ” to build networks of entrepreneurs, and expand exchanges in education; to foster cooperation in science and technology, and combat disease. Across the [...]
Last weekend, the Small World News team attended Digital Journalism Camp 2011 in downtown Portland. Digital Journalism Camp is about spending the day with the people who are actively changing journalism. You’re going to learn from ” and share with ” the people who have found solutions to the challenges you face, whether you’re a [...]
David Kenner wrote this week about President Obama’s news sources for Foreign Policy‘s Passportblog: With one sentence, the New York Times raised dozens of Middle East pundits’ hopes that their words were reaching the most powerful man in the world. “At night in the family residence…Mr. Obama often surfs the blogs of experts on Arab [...]
In March 2011, Brian Conley and Louis Abelman journeyed to Benghazi to lay the foundation for Alive in Libya. Entering Libya through the Egyptian border in the east, and arriving just three weeks after the revolution began, they set about making contact with local citizens at a media center set up by the opposition movement. [...]
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