Category: media

Blogging for a Cause: Global Voices Advocacy

ZemantaZemanta, a Firefox extension that automatically suggests related tags, links, photos and articles for your blog posts and e-mails, is running a competition to encourage blogging for worthwhile causes. The five blogs that get the most votes will each win $3,000.

I vote for Global Voices Advocacy because of the phenomenal work its bloggers do to protect freedom of expression and free access to information online. GV Advocacy (or Advox, as it’s also known) is connected to Global Voices Online, a project for which I’ve been writing about the blogren for two years.

Global Voices Advocacy - Defending free speech online

In addition to reporting on issues like blogger arrests and Internet censorship, Advox works on a number of projects to help bloggers and other online activists — definitely worth my vote.

Interested in supporting Advox? The deadline for the competition is June 6, 2009, and you must include the following sentence in your post:

This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.

Miami V(o)ice(s)


Global Voices team members Lova, Jeremy, Lokman and Jillian.
Not pictured: Amira, Eddie, Georgia, Ivan, Leonard and Solana.

I got back from Miami today after four days of passionate conversations about the authenticity of travel (and travel writing) and whether or not Mates of State actually sing a cover of These Days and what to name our cheese babies. I was also lucky to share breakfast sandwiches, beaches, swimming, a sweet backyard pool and a bright green stuffed ferret that looked more like a jalapeño pepper than an animal with some of the best housemates I’ve ever had south of the Mason-Dixon line.

(I also went to We Media Miami 2009, which you can read about here and here. A huge thanks goes to them for sponsoring part of our costs to attend the conference, which challenged the way I think and communicate about new media as a member of the “Dream Generation.”)

Jeremy wrote earlier about how blessed he feels to be working with Global Voices, and I want to echo his love for the organization and the amazing people that constitute it. I am so happy to have found this community, and jumping back into writing for them has made me happy in a way few things apart from the blogren do.

To my Global Voices housemates: A big giant Florida cheers! And I’m still pulling for the next GV summit to be held in Lawrence, Kansas.

In search of a few good journalists

I leave today for two weeks in Kampala, a trip I’ve been looking forward to since I left Uganda 15 months ago. While there, I’ll be doing research for a professor at Columbia University as part of my master’s program in Economic and Political Development.


Training session through BBC’s Communicating Justice program

The research includes a survey of African journalists in Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda who have received training in business/economic reporting. The goal is to contribute to a better understanding of the effect that journalism training has had on the media climate in these countries and on the careers of the journalists who did the training. We will share our work with the NGO and donor community, particularly the Revenue Watch Institute, to help them develop future journalism training programs and improve the ones they have.

I’ve contacted many of the blogren directly to ask if they know of anyone who has had substantial training in economics/business journalism (at least 4 weeks) from places like the Reuters Foundation, BBC Trust, Cardiff, IIJ or ICFJ who might be willing to be interviewed. I have a great list of names, but I wanted to throw out an open call:

If you or anyone you know is interested in participating, leave a comment below or e-mail me.

GVO Uganda: Mwenda, 3 others arrested in newspaper raid

My latest piece is up at Global Voices Online:

(UPDATE: Andrew Mwenda has been freed on bond, see his letter to supporters on the TED blog.)

Bloggers and independent media outlets in Uganda are reporting that three journalists and a photographer at The Independent, an opposition newspaper based in Kampala, have been arrested and that the paper’s offices have been raided by Ugandan security forces. One of those arrested was Andrew Mwenda, who was previously charged with sedition for his coverage of the death of Sudanese vice president John Garang in 2005.

Read more »

Andrew Mwenda arrested

Edit: As of Monday, Mwenda is out of jail on bond, but he is supposed to report to police on Tuesday.

Reuters reported Saturday that Andrew Mwenda, one of Uganda’s — if not Africa’s — most tenacious journalists, has been arrested along with two colleagues, Odobo Bichachi John Njoroge. The Daily Monitor is saying a photographer, Joseph Kiggundu, has also been taken.

Mwenda’s paper, the Independent, has an account of the arrest and the raid that followed it:

At [Mwenda’s] house, the police confiscated his lap-top, flash disks, 43 CDs full of information – both official and private, a manuscript of a book he has co-authored with Prof. Roger Tangri on Elite Corruption and Politics in Uganda. After that, Mwenda was driven to the offices of The Independent.

…

Then the search starts from the editors’ offices but not before some ugly scenes. Herbert Labejja, the magazine’s office assistant, demands one of the men to clean his shoes before he enters the office. In response, the operative who had earlier pushed his away past Musede sprang, collared him and shook him around accusing him of being big-headed as Labejja struggled to free himself.

But it was only the beginning; a few minutes later the two are locked in another exchange as the officer dragged Labejja out of the washroom, informing his colleague that he (Labejja) was hiding a gun there.

In the office, Bichachi’s continuous pleas to establish what seditious material the group was looking for went unanswered as they turned the lockers, poured documents, ransacked drawers and anywhere they suspected the seditious material was kept.

Outside, the besieged journalists and other employees were busy on their phones, mostly messaging, even as they went about trying to figure out what the raid this time was about until the phones were confiscated and they were barred from leaving the inner open space, not even to use the washrooms.

A Facebook group has been set up to keep people informed on the efforts to have him released.

Also, among the ten things Tumwijuke wants to know:

4. Why Andrew Mwenda is arrested and it makes international headlines and yet when 13 journalists in radio stations around the country were (between January and March this year) arrested for doing their jobs, publicly threatened by politicians and sacked for speaking the truth it barely made the news briefs in the local media.