On 4 June 4 2010, NewsDay appeared on the streets of Zimbabwe for the first time - the only independent daily newspaper in the country since the Daily News was forced to close in 2003. Trevor Ncube, the chairman of the paper's publishing company Alpha Media Holdings, spoke with Becky Anderson of CNN and Bob Garfield of NPR's On the Media about the challenges facing the paper at its launch and how it was coping under the Mugabe regime.
Trevor also gave an insight into the realities of setting up and operating a paper in Zimbabwe to South Africa's bizcommunity.com.
The Times in London described the launch as "the most significant accomplishment of the power-sharing Government between President Mugabe and the Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, to carry out democratic reforms. It ends seven years of a state-enforced monopoly by The Herald, the propaganda broadsheet devoted to Mr Mugabe and his party."
Read more here.
]]>The winners were announced on June 15th by John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Jose Zamora at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Zamora's father, Jose Ruben Zamora, received the award in 2003 for his work as publisher of Guatemala's El Periodico.
The winners will be honored at ICFJ's Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 9. Christiane Amanpour, the host of ABC News' "This Week," will serve as master of ceremonies.
Find out more here.
]]>The charge arose from the publication of an opinion piece by a US-based Zambian legal professor during the trial of Post news editor, Chansa Kabwela, in August 2009. Ms Kabwela was charged with obscenity offences after emailing officials, including the health minister, photographs of a woman giving birth outside a hospital in Lusaka during a hospital strike. The Post did not publish the photos. In October 2009, a court ruled that Ms Kabwela had no case to answer.
The Post - a former MDLF client - is well known for its criticism of the government. Mr M'membe and his paper have suffered numerous acts of intimidation during the Post's 19-year existence.
Mr M'membe attended last month's MDLF Media Forum in Slovakia. Watch an interview in which he explains the role The Post plays in the life of Zambia and why he continues to support the causes of freedom and fairness.
]]>Researchers, who carried out in-depth interviews with dozens of Radio Pikon Ane listeners and others involved in the establishment of the station in November 2009, have published a detailed assessment that provides unique insights into the harsh realities of life in one of the most under-developed parts of Indonesia and the profound impact that the radio station is having.
Radio Pikon Ane broadcasts to an area suffering from one of the highest poverty rates nationwide, with over half the district's population living below the poverty line, compared to a national average of less than 17 percent. Malnutrition is common-place and food scarcity a seasonal routine. Less than 12 percent of the population in the district has completed primary school.
In an area where basic services are all but non-existent, the research found that Radio Pikon Ane is addressing these problems and, in doing so, improving the quality of life of its listeners.
In a subsistence farming community such as this, selling produce at market represents a valuable opportunity to earn cash, but until recently farmers were at the mercy of brokers who determined prices. By broadcasting news about crop prices in the provincial capital and allowing the farmers' cooperative to coordinate the sale of produce via the radio, Radio Pikon Ane has improved their bargaining power and increased their ability to command higher prices.
The station is also playing a key role in health care, particularly important in a district where even the most basic health facilities are virtually non-existent, maternal and neonatal mortality rates are high, and where over half the population suffer from respiratory tract infections and almost 100 percent annually report having diarrhoea. In many instances the illnesses suffered are avoidable, and Radio Pikon Ane is seeking to educate people about this.
As a woman interviewed for the study explained: "The station often reminds about washing our hands before we eat... because you might get ill..." With Papua having the highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the country, radio's ability to increase awareness of it and its implications is vital. One man told the research team: "I heard about HIV/AIDS on the radio. It was a program about how dangerous the disease is and how ... we could catch it and give it to our wives. We have to be careful and take care of our families."
A less expected breakthrough has been a growing awareness and acceptance, among both men and women, of women's rights. Regular Radio Pikon Ane listener Kores Wetipo explained how radio programs on the subject have changed his behaviour. "I listened to [the programs], and most of what they said made sense. Now I never beat my wife... There are lots of men here who don't understand about women's rights. Lost of them beat their own wives.... There has to be lots of programs about women's rights so the men understand about them."
Radio Pikon Ane's positive impact on all aspects of life is impressive, but its most remarkable success to date was in getting local schools reopened that had been shut for months or even years. Reports by the station about the almost total breakdown of the school system in the area due to chronic teacher absenteeism initially met with no response from the authorities. But after national radio news agency KBR68H also started to investigate the problem, the local education department belatedly took action. Astonishingly, it took no more than the broadcast of warnings from the local government that teachers who failed to return to work would face administrative sanctions to solve the problem.
"The remote location and its lack of development meant that there were many challenges in setting up this station," admits Santoso, Managing Director of KBR68H. "We even had to set up a micro-hydro system so that the area could have electricity. But we are very proud of what we have been able to achieve in collaboration with the local people in the area."
Tessa Piper, Indonesia Program Director for MDLF, which commissioned the research, argues: "Through this radio station we have been able to prove that it is possible to have a profound and positive impact on the lives of tens of thousands of people in a part of the country that has otherwise been largely off the development radar. Given the modest costs involved, the potential for replication of this model, not just in Indonesia, but in other developing countries, is significant."
Radio Pikon Ane was established in September 2007 by Indonesia's only independent national radio news agency, KBR68H, and the Indonesian Association for Media Development, an NGO, with support from MDLF and the Dutch government.
Watch a video on Radio Pikon Ane here.
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The Times in London described the launch as "the most significant accomplishment of the power-sharing Government between President Mugabe and the Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, to carry out democratic reforms. It ends seven years of a state-enforced monopoly by The Herald, the propaganda broadsheet devoted to Mr Mugabe and his party." Read the full article here.
The launch of NewsDay happened within days of the Zimbabwe Media Commission announcing on 26 May that Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) was to receive a licence to publish the paper. Four licences were granted - to Daily News, NewsDay, Gazette and Mail. AMH was the first to publish.
The paper's publication follows more than a year of delays in issuing the licence, first in appointing the Zimbabwe Media Commission, then in the Commission granting licences. The delays were due to the reluctance of Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, which rules in coalition with the Movement for Democratic Change, to allow an independent daily newspaper to publish in Zimbabwe.
AMH is partly owned by Zimbabwean Trevor Ncube who publishes South Africa's Mail & Guardian, an existing MDLF client known for its investigative journalism.
MDLF has provided AMH with financing to launch NewsDay and to set up a printing house in Harare, which opened in October 2009.
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The superb images are accompanied by four essays covering some of the greatest challenges facing independent journalism.
The images range from the Srebrenica massacre to the Haitian earthquake, by way of the Moscow theatre siege and the Asian tsunami. The book highlights the valuable role independent media have in informing their audiences of local and global events.
The book's designers, Tronvig Group, have posted a blog explaining the thinking behind the design.
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Vin Crosbie, Adjunct Professor of Visual and Interactive Communications at Syracuse University in the USA, identified four trends that are transforming the media landscape: the convergence of media appliances into a single mobile device; the transformation of information scarcity to overload; the rise of individuated media; and the growing impact of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries on the media.
Jeremy Wagstaff, award-winning writer, columnist and commentator on technology, social media and journalism, examined the massive changes in how news is collected and reported, and the impact it is having on media businesses. In a world where news is often gathered and distributed by people involved in breaking events, such as bombings or floods, using Twitter and other social media, news outlets need to change how they work. He said that they have to make information smarter, to cede control to their audiences and to add metadata. Media need to embrace the role of collator and curator as well as collector, and help enable the public to create news and information through sharing and collective intelligence.
David Dunkley Gyimah, videojournalist and Artist in Residence at the Southbank Centre in the UK, outlined his vision of a different kind of storytelling in videojournalism, one in which pictures drive the story, rather than the narrative driving the pictures. He also explained his belief that VJs will develop a kind of cinema vérité cinematography to help drive their reporting.
Other future vision presentations included Rosental Alves, Director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, who portrayed a media landscape changing from the current desert - one dominated by a relatively small number of traditional media companies - to the complex abundance of a rainforest, where information flows through a symbiotic network of individuals and media outlets. Ivan Sigal, Executive Director of Global Voices, explained that one of the main challenges facing media is to organize, contextualize and explain this abundance of information.
Bernard Poulet, Editor of L'Expansion in France and Chair of MDLF's Board of Directors, warned that we are entering a difficult period of transition as the media moves from the traditional business model, which is proving to be unsustainable as advertising collapses, to a future model that is as yet unknown. One possible future was outlined by James O'Shea, Co-founder and Editor of Chicago News Coop, USA. His organization brings together a large number of members who are dedicated to building communities through quality journalism.
Mixed with crystal-ball visions were practical sessions on how to make use of the most important trends impacting on news businesses, such as creating a network of citizen journalists, attracting a younger generation of readers and developing mobile platforms for news delivery.
There were also discussions about the massive importance of video, including the reflections of two clients - one which had provided training (Video Journalism Movement) to another (Krestyanin) - and the importance of media businesses improving their environmental performance.
The final session was the most poignant of all, with journalists from Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Burma, Nepal, Guatemala and China describing the difficulties of operating a media business there. They talked of beatings, jailing, censorship and murder. But the audience also heard how independent information can have a positive impact on society, such as how the broadcasting of a shocking two-minute video clip showing a young woman being beaten in the street by the Taliban led to an outpouring of support for social and religious tolerance in Pakistan.
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This was the message from the first session of the second day of MDLF's Media Forum in Bratislava, Slovakia: Video - Mother of all Trends. Participants watched examples of quality videojournalism - clips that were moving, insightful or funny - and how a short training carried out by online client VJMovement with the Russian daily Krestyanin enabled its reporters to produce effective video reports within days.
The flexibility of video is also a driving factor. A short video clip can be cut up and used as still photographs, adapted into a video blog, turned into a promo and the audio track used as a podcast. The session featured:
The session carried on the forward-looking theme of the meeting, following the first day's focus on what the media will look like in the future and what trends are shaping the media industry.
The biennial event brings together more than 130 clients, funders and friends for two days of discussions and presentations.
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In addition to examining media-defining trends, clients will share their views on issues as diverse as how mainstream media can find peaceful co-existence with citizen journalism, integrated newsrooms and how news can be delivered through mobile devices. There will also be a session called "And you thought you had a tough time?", which will shine a light on the challenges of producing independent journalism in countries such as Zimbabwe, Nepal and Pakistan.
]]>The scale of the investment propels Sourcefabric into the ranks of one of the largest European open source projects for news and media.
"CAMP has implemented some truly outstanding projects over the past decade, providing valuable support to independent media in countries as varied as Indonesia, Belarus and Sierra Leone," said MDLF Managing Director Sasa Vucinic. "Spinning it off as Sourcefabric, an entirely independent organization with funding secured for at least three years, is a testament to all it has achieved."
Sourcefabric will take over the development of the open source software MDLF originally commissioned and released under the Campware brand. This includes the acclaimed Campsite content management system for media organizations and the Campcaster radio playout and automation system.
"We will greatly increase development of software development projects targeted at independent media," said Sourcefabric Executive Director Sava Tatić. "Sourcefabric's goal is to make the best software for media organizations, be they in Bamako or Basel. News media are just realizing the value, flexibility and power of open source, and we plan to firmly entrench it in the industry mainstream," he added.
The home of this expanded mission, a new website and community platform, will be launched on 10 May 2010 at www.sourcefabric.org.