New Project Makes News Gathering in the Arab World Take a New Turn

A lot of news organizations already know what “crowdsourcing” is. Some have already started using it. However, a new real-time crowdsourcing project is making news gathering take a new turn. “Alive.in” knows how!

“Alive.in” is a project launched by international news startup Small World News. The startup’s team is using a group of Arabic translators to crowdsource the translation of the real-time messages left on @speak2tweet, a service launched by Google and Twitter during the Jan. 25 revolution in Egypt, allowing callers to tweet by calling one of three numbers and leaving a voicemail.  

Founded by American journalist and media specialist Brian Conley, the project first started with crowdsourcing the Egyptian revolution news. When Conley learned about Google’s collaboration with Twitter, he thought it’s time to put this service at a stronger use through Small World News, which he co-founded in 2005. The goal, according to the project’s website, is “to reach a wider audience.”

He then contacted Steve Wyshywaniuk, co-founder of the startup, and told him about Google’s new technology. “It hit him instantly that with the number of translators we’re connected to, he could assemble a team to help translate the calls,” Wyshywaniuk told ReadWriteWeb.

Conley then started reaching out to Arabic translators via Twitter, reported RWW. He then created a Google Docs spreadsheet from which they could collaborate on transcribing the messages and then translating them from Arabic to English, Spanish and German.

And that’s how “Alive in Egypt” started.

Today, “Alive.in” has expanded and is now covering Iraq, Libya and Bahrain.  Citizens of those countries are contributing with real-time photos, calls, videos and tweets, reaching out to the worldwide audience.

The new project has taken news gathering into an even more advanced path, thanks to the technology and the creativity of journalists and media enthusiasts like Conley, Wyshywaniuk and their hard-working team. Today, mainstream media outlets needs to rethink their strategy and apply new technologies at best use so that they survive and provide their audience with more up-to-date news.
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Note: The team of “Alive.in” encourage those interested in helping translate the messages they crowdsource by emailing translate@alive.in. Those interested in being involved with the project can contact @BaghdadBrian or @SmallWorldNews on Twitter.

(بالعربية)

Celebrating Investigative Journalism in the Arab World

Representing ICFJ at the conference.

Investigative journalism in the Arab world has been an alien type of journalism that was never really powerful or effective, if existed. But in recent years, it has become more and more visible, despite the risks and dangers Arab investigative journalists face in defiance of their totalitarian governments.

The visibility and the new activity of this type of journalism appearing in several Arab news outlets has become more and more known and encouraged, thanks to international and regional media assistance organizations. Investigative journalism today is better than ever in the Arab world and is still in progress. Today, Arab investigative journalists are defying taboos and challenging high-level officials with facts they obtained through thorough investigation and reporting.

Such a vast improvement was evident at the Third Arab Investigative Journalism Conference, which was organized by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), a Amman-based, regional media support network that seeks to support independent quality professional journalism, through funding in-depth journalism projects, and offering media coaching.

During the conference, which was held from November 26 to 28 in Amman, Jordan, three investigative journalists from the Arab world were awarded the Seymour Hersh Award for Best Investigative Report.

I had the honor to represent my employer, the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) there, meeting the winners and several other prominent Arab and international journalists such as Drew Sullivan from the United States, BBC’s Tim Sebastian from the United Kingdom, Mark Hunter from France, Hisham Qassem and Yosri Fouda from Egypt and others hailing from 16 Arab countries.

This year’s award was presented by ARIJ, in coordination with ICFJ, which last year honored American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh with its Founders Award for Excellence in Journalism, recognizing his outstanding work over 40 years. 

Me with the first place winner, Dlovan Barwari

The winners of the ARIJ/ICFJ Seymour Hersh Award were from Iraq and Egypt. Iraqi journalist Dlovan Barwari, whom I had the honor to work with for the Washington Post in Iraq, received the first place award for his investigative report that tackled the issue of the female circumcision in the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan. His fellow Iraqi journalist, Milad Al Jibouri, won the second place for writing a report in which she investigated the recruitment of young Iraqis by militants and armed groups, taking advantage of their traumatic war-tainted childhood. The third place winner was Egyptian reporter Siham Al Pasha who investigated the use of poisonous material in furniture-making in Dumyat, Egypt and how this material is imported in broad daylight.

The three winning reports competed with 16 other reports that reached the finalists list. They were written by reporters from Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine.

To further boost independent quality investigative journalism in the Arab world, ICFJ has partnered with ARIJ to create six investigative units in Arab newsrooms. ICFJ’s Knight International fellow Amr El-Kahky is creating these first investigative reporting units in Jordan, Palestine and Egypt.

The one mile road starts with one step, so says the proverb. Investigative journalism in the Arab world is taking its baby steps. It’s flourishing and advancing to create better societies and communities. Kudos to ARIJ and ICFJ for making this happen!

WikiLeaks Iraq War Logs Are Out. Nothing New! Now What?

We all knew it. We all experienced it. We all weren’t surprised by it. And by ‘We’ I mean Iraqis who went through the successive years of mayhem since the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003. 

The information in the 391,832 U.S. military documents that were released yesterday by the Whistle-blower website WikiLeaks did not come as a surprise to me. You shouldn’t be surprised either. Iraqis have been talking about this over and over for years on blogs, newspapers, TV and radio stations and through human rights organizations.

The Iraqi people have been frequently complaining since ever about torture conducted by the Iraqi police. They have said it nonstop that the foreign security contractors have been killing civilians haphazardly, and sometimes for no reason. Shiite militias controlled the streets of many cities in Iraq and appeared to be well trained by Iran to kill and torture.

Many thought we were exaggerating or saying things that are not supported by facts, but now our words are finally backed up by evidence! I’m happy these WikiLeaks documents finally came out. However the questions remains: Now What?!

The U.S. government apparently knew all about the killings of innocent Iraqis, Iran’s training of Shiite militias and Iraqi security forces’ abuse and rape of teenagers in prisons. Nevertheless, they decided not to take actions, not to intervene!

So what will the United States do in response to the that? Apologize to Iraqis? I don’t think so. Even if they do, will this bring back the lives of the thousands of civilians killed in the war? It won’t. Will it make Iraq safer? It won’t either. Will it change the current miserable political situation there? Not at all.

As an Iraqi, I don’t need an apology. I need justice. I need to see those who committed crimes against my fellow Iraqis get what they deserve. As for the Iraqi torturers, I don’t see them being brought to justice anytime soon, simply because they are under the same sectarian government that let this happen under their watch. We need a new government. We need new people to run the country and make this happen. Iraqis made their choice in last March elections, but the sectarian powers are refusing to give it to the moderates who were elected. Until this happens, I don’t think justice will ever be achieved in Iraq.

Newsweek iPad App: Creative and Smart

I was lying in my bed, getting ready to sleep while holding my iPad which I bought two days ago. I responded to emails, tweeted, and checked my Facebook homepage after I brushed my teeth, a ritual I have been doing before going to bed since my life became completely digitalized when I bought my iPhone nine months ago. One last thing I remembered to do: check if there are any interesting apps to download.

As a journalist/editor/writer, the first thing I look for is news! I found some really interesting news apps such as the AP, abc News, the New York Times and Mashable. Nothing too fancy or different than those of the iPhone until I found the Newsweek magazine app!

Wonderful, smart, creative, innovative and addictive is all I can say to describe this app. It actually intrigued me to open my sleepy eyes and write this post on my iPad for the very first time since I bought it.

Like many news outlets struggling to keep up with the falling revenues of print editions, Newsweek is no exception. It actually charges for its content, even though their app can be installed for free.

I was a little bit disappointed in the beginning when I saw that, but when my eyes caught the free iPad issue of the magaine, with the headline “Politics in The Age of Obama,” I was kind of intrigued to click- or touch to be specific. I downloaded it and I’m happy I did.

My index fingers navigated through the issue and found the magazine to be look fancier and nicer than its print editions. My first thought as I saw it was, “This is so creative and smart!”

I kept digitally flipping through the pages and reached the page where Newsweek’s editor and Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Mencham’s remarks on the this new innovation: (for larger view, please click on the image)

The iPad is such a great invention. Now I don’t really need to buy any print edition, sadly speaking, but it’s the digital age and we have to cope with it. This device helps me gather everything I like in one place, and easily navigate through them with the tips of my fingers. I can read my favorite book, read the news, check my emails, post photos, tweet, facebook in a new revolutionary way. Yes, the computer does that too but it’s more convenient to carry a light tablet rather than a heavy lap top around! Besides, it just feels better and nicer!

There are still a lot of people who are resisting the digital way our life is heading to, and it’s fine. Let things take their course in life like they did when clay tablets, paper and Web browsing were introduced.

I was among those who strongly resisted paying for news, claiming that I could easily get it for free online, until I remembered that nothing was for free and that as a journalist I should support that because that’s how journalism will survive like it did when people paid for the newspapers and magazines before content became available for free. 

So let’s embrace it instead of resisting it, and let’s have quality digital journalism material rather than free bad-quality information that could negatively affect our lives.

And here is to more blogging via the iPad and to finally going to bed!

Digital Manipulation Blunder and Defiance

A serious journalism ethical question was recently raised in the Middle East after Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram published a doctored photograph, falsely depicting President Hosni Mubarak leading the Middle East peace talks.

The photograph was first spotted by Egyptian blogger Wael Khalil who posted the doctored photo, showing Mubarak in the front and the original one that shows he was in fact walking behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah II, as American president Barack Obama led the men to a media event at the White House.

In a front-page Op-Ed, Al-Ahram’s editor-in-chief Osama Saraya was shamelessly defending the fabrication, explaining the doctored photo was an “expressional” picture showing Egypt’s historic role in the peace process.

“The expressional photo is a brief, live and true expression of the prominent stance of President Hosni Mubarak on the Palestinian issue, his unique role in leading it before Washington or any other,” he wrote.

It is really shameful that such statement comes from the editor-in-chief of the newspaper himself. Mr. Saraya appears to be worried about satisfying the totalitarian regime, rather than reporting the truth.

Even if Mubarak, as Saraya claimed, is leading the efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East, wasn’t it better for the paper to portray that in words and facts, rather than a fabricated photograph spotted by bloggers?

I must say I am very disappointed with how some professional journalists present the information to their people, and I’m very much impressed with the role the Egyptian bloggers are playing in working as fact-checkers and monitors to the Egyptian press!

Give Iraq a Break!

When Saddam Hussein used his tyrannical methods to control Iraqis, he left an entire population traumatized. I mean really traumatized, not my-cat-don’t-speak-with-me traumatized!

This is a fact, but what surprised me today as I was reading the news is finding out that there are Americans who claim they are traumatized by him!

Jane Arraf of the Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday that Iraq will pay $400 million for Saddam’s mistreatment of Americans. She writes:

The claims include compensation for emotional distress from the children of two contractors seized near the Iraq-Kuwait border in 1990.

Emotional distress?! Seriously? The entire population of 25 million are already traumatized, not only by the actions of the dictator who brutalized his own people, but also by the two successive U.S.-led wars and the 12 years of international sanctions when hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died of hunger. Talk about emotional distress!

It is really disturbing to see such people file law suits against a country that is trying to stand up on its feet to rebuild and revive its life. What is more disturbing is that those people are so inconsiderate that just because they have “emotional distress” they want to prevent millions of dollars to be used in rebuilding a country that their very own country took part in its misery.

So let the “traumatized” contractor’s sons enjoy yet another beautiful day at school with their brand new backpack the Iraqi government paid for, and let the real traumatized Iraqi children battle their bomb-filled, insecure way to get to school.

Give me a break! Give Iraq a break! Isn’t it enough what had already happened?

The Hurt Locker: An Invitation to Think!

Now I know what this fuss was all about and why “The Hurt Locker” won all these Oscars. Simply, the movie is stunning from the very beginning to the very end.

There are two strong themes in the movie: courage and war addiction.

The protagonist of this film, Staff Sgt. William James appears to be enjoying the horrors that accompany his bomb-defusing job in war-torn Iraq. He is courageous and seems to be fond of what he does even though he knows he might die in any moment as he defuses bombs.

This kind of addiction does not stop there. It follows him home. What soldiers, citizens and reporters go through in a war zone change everything in their lives, something that was strongly portrayed in the film. Back in the U.S., James’ wife appears to be indifferent about the horrors he saw in Iraq. This is a major problem many armed forces members and reporters face after they leave the war zone for home. It becomes too normal for them to live there and that’s why I think many of them return back to the war zone or go somewhere disturbed by conflict to relate to. Others get divorced!

From an Iraqi citizen’s perspective, I think the film was believable. Director Kathryn Bigelow and the rest of the cast did a wonderful job in portraying how Baghdad looked like during the war. To me, the setting was very similar to that of 2006-Baghdad. Empty streets, trash everywhere, fear in the eyes of everyone, distrust everywhere, broken glass and insurgents running freely in the streets of Baghdad. What made the film even more authentic is the Iraqi actors who speak Iraqi Arabic.

The film is by all means a great portrayal of how war looks like. It invites people to think twice before uttering stupid words in front of those who witness war, like my grad school classmate who told me that he cat was “traumatized” back in 2006 when just a few weeks before that I had seen dead bodies in the streets of Baghdad. It invites people to endure hardships that might be nothing if compared to what others do in war zones.

Hello stranger! I’m tweeting nearby your house. Come attack me!

Keeping privacy is something I learned to control instinctively, thanks to years of wars and the former police state where I lived that forced me to understand how to protect myself from interferers.

Our digital age has become a little bit difficult to control with the dozens of social networks available nowadays, which I’m kind of obsessed with. However, I’m reconsidering all of that. I have no longer become the private person I used to be, and I need to put an end to that.

On my iPhone I have an app called “Echofon” which I use to read the latest tweets tweeted by the people I’m following on Twitter. It’s a really cool app, that is very intuitive, fast and easy to use, unlike the extremely-slow twitterberry app that I had on the BlackBerry I had before I switched to the iPhone.

While “Echofon” is really good, it recently added a new feature that became available after I installed the latest update of the app. It offers the “Nearby Tweets” feature which allows the Twitter iPhone user to basically see whoever is tweeting nearby his/her place. This is not it. The feature depends on the iPhone’s GPS technology, allowing the user to locate the tweeting people on Google maps, identifying their exact location accompanied by the Tweeting person’s twitter page, photo, Web site link and the entire timeline of his/her tweets. See the screenshot posted in this entry.

As I noticed this, I have become so disturbed. I actually can walk to the tweeting person’s house and recognize him/her through his/her photo posted on their Twitter page. What disturbed me the most is that there are psychos in this country who can basically hurt you if they disagree with what you say or tweet, to be specific. So through this app, I can easily be attacked and even if I’m not attacked I don’t have my privacy anymore.

I don’t want some people to know where I live. Period!

This is not the first time I come across a privacy breach. Last month when Google announced its Buzz social media network, I woke up to see that I’m following literally every Gmail person in my contacts list. That was not the worst part. Thank goodness millions of people complained that the flawed Buzz system was ruining their privacy that it finally changed.

In Iraq, Google Earth made me nervous all the time. Insurgents, known for their use of technology, were able to locate basically anything they wanted through that satellite service.

Today, it’s not only the redundant and repetitive Google Buzz but also Linkedin (which I totally find useless), Foursquare (which I see as a place where people go to get coupons because some weirdo tells them they became the kings or Queens of their neighborhoods), FMyLife, Jaiku, Plurk, Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Yammer, Qaiku, Geni.com, Hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut, Skyrock, Qzone, Vkontakte, RenRen, Kaixin, ASmallWorld, studivz, Xing, RunAlong.se, Bebo, BigTent, Elgg, Hyves, Flirtomatic, etc… The list is too long for me to count.

All of these are too much. I find most of them useless, except for Facebook which I consider the most “private” amongst them. At least I know I can control who sees my content and even what content they can see!

You might have heard this before. Technology is making our life better but it’s also hurting us. I strongly believe we should stop for a minute before we tweet or facebook our content because this may put us or/and the others in danger.

The Battle for Kirkuk

Iraq is still in a transformational form. The post-Saddam era is just at its beginning and the struggle for power in the war-torn country is moulding how the Land of Two Rivers is shaped.

Among the things that are yet to be solved in Iraq nowadays is Kirkuk. The oil-rich northern Iraqi city has been fought for by Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans, each claiming it is theirs.

Josh Rushing of Al Jazeera English’s Fault Lines travels to Northern Iraq to look at one of the most serious divides the country faces.

Check it out:

http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/MQtTkGOj-ok&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00

CNN: Using Fear to Get Votes in Iraq

While I was checking the latest news on my iPhone on my way back home from work, I came across a very interesting video report about the latest propaganda war appearing on some Iraqi TV channels.

According to CNN, Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s satellite channel “Afaq” is broadcasting images of Saddam’s regime’s horrific torture methods that were used against many innocent Iraqis and political opponents. Images of beheadings and torture are connected to the election campaign Maliki is running in with a slate called, “The State of Law Coalition.”

This left me thinking deeply about how fierce the elections campaign has become. It looks like the old-fashioned bribing method candidates still use to buy votes is no longer that effective. Apparently, gruesome images are more powerful. I think they are.

I’m wondering if this is the right time to show such images on TV when Iraqis are forcing themselves to forget their past and move on with their lives to salvage whatever remained in this country and build a better life among each other. The wounds of the years of civil war are still fresh and the last thing we need now is to open them again.

I wonder if what Salih Al Mutlak, the banned Sunni politician, said is true that they are doing this “because they don’t have anything else to deliver to the people.” It kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?

Click on the video below to view the entire report!

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=international/2010/02/18/bs.damon.iraq.bomb.dogs.cnn