Archive for online publications
Arabic comics (under CC) that rock!
While off in Beirut, I had the great chance on saturday to take part to the live 24/24 hours comics marathon Grand Papier. I was in Hatem’s cosy flat in Hamra, West Beirut. Hatem is one of the artists who have founded Samandal, the Lebanese comics magazine (online and hardcopy) that is released under Creative Commons license.
This was the great atmosphere I’ve found over there:
The marathon featured online contributions from different cities in the world, like Beirut, Brussels, Paris, Montreal, even Papetee. Everybody was connected thru a webcam
Everybody was invited to write his/her own story starting from a common picture posted online, and everybody worked out something according to his/her style and fantasy.
Samandal‘s folks are not new to these extravangances. They are the first ones who organised a remix party, encouraging the invited artists to play with their works released under Creative Commons, doing cut up and re-publishing the stuff.
The comics feature different Arab artists, who write stories both in Arabic and French or English. Great strips can be found from countries that you would never have imagined, like the Dubai hyppie series, coming from UAE and describing in an hilarious way the daily life of a young Emirati; or like the manga strips, Japanese way, perfectly re-designed by young veiled ladies living in Lebanese refugee camps.
Samandal can be found on the Internet and it is also distributed in a very cool hardcopy edition available all over the places in Beirut (including the airport) and some other Arab countries. The team is very open to submissions coming from all across the Arab world. Next deadline is on 31st may.
Thanks to the Samandal‘s folks for having invited me to the marathon and for doing such a cool thing under CC.
Facebook war happening in parallel to Gaza war
As Global Voices reports today, it seems that many “pro-Gaza” Facebook groups have been hacked, apparently by the Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF) who states to be “leading the fight against antisemitism and antiterrorism on the web” and “promoting jewish pride, knowledge and unity”. So it now seems that a parallel “war” is now happening on the virtual world of the Internet..
To know more about Gaza..
..have a look to those websites: Menassat, which is a Lebanon based project very much focused on media. They have a very good Arab media community which you could eventually join. Today their homepage headlines is: “Ground offensive continues amid media blackout”. Global Voices’ Middle East section is also doing a great job and gives an idea of how the bloggers’ community here in the Region has been very active trying to fill the information gap on Gaza.
Ammon news, a great grassroots experience in Jordan
I came to know this very interesting webnews project in Jordan called Ammonnews (the ancient name of Jordan’s beautiful capital Amman). One of the two guys who’s behind it is named Sameer Al Hayari, a very cool Jordanian in his forties who had this brilliant idea two years ago with his colleague Bassel Okoor. They both had a journalistic background, but they felt they would have need something more. A media which would have enjoyed less constraints, both in terms of freedom of expression and also in terms of distributing the news. And to publish “live” news, of course. It was 2006, in Jordan there was no such thing as a news webportal grassroots based.
I just met Sameer, he was sitting in Donner Cafe, the place in Amman where they usually meet up to write down stuff for the website. It’s like an office, an open office, where everybody gathers every evening to write down articles, smoke narghila and drink tea together. It’s like an open space, wireless of course, people keep coming and going, some of them sit at the table and write down pieces of news, some others drink tea and discuss about politics. Other people just come to bring fresh news, about what’s happening in town. Or they come to speak with Sameer. His phone is ringing like crazy while the websites is updated live. A modern, cool, networked newsroom!
Contributions come from the web and mobiles, from citizens that want to debate local issues, and from professional journalists that enjoy giving Ammonnews their articles for free. Why? Because the website has become the “place to be”.
“When we started we were just the two of us”, says Sameer while smoking narghila the oriental way. “We wanted to create something new, something fresh, and we just did it, without any funding, just with our pocket money and our passion. Our model was Detnews.com, so we asked the webmaster to design a website on the similar scheme. Then we asked our network of journalists’ friends to send us contributions, and little by little the site started to be well known. After one year of life, the former goverment shut down the website because of its free spirit in talking about politics. This provocked a huge phenomena, never seen before: people were just protesting cause the website has become so popular that the people wanted it to stay. So the government was pushed to re-open it”.
“After this, the website boomed and the number of contributors and readers increased very quickly. So we started to take advertising, mostly coming from local companies, and this has become our business model. Now we have ten people working for us, and we are doing very well. We will open an english service soon, inshallah!”.
Well, if you google them in Arabic, you will see that they has become a source for other news organisation, like Radio Sawa (the American radio station in Arabic) among the others. And all the people in Jordan take it as a reference for being informed about what’s happening in the country, also the government people are calling them to react to articles and debate about what they have published. It’s a virtuous circle between readers and news makers, professionals and amateurs, government and citizens.
I think Ammonnews is a great example of how a grassroot experiment can be born, become well known and find also a sustanaibility and a business model. And, again, it’s another good example of how Jordan is quickly moving forward to innovation and creativity. A place to watch out for future trends in the Arab region.
Ana wa Sameer in Donner Cafe, Amman
Ammonnews “office” in Donner Cafe, Amman
Arab media and society new issue is on line
The fall edition of Arab Media and Society journal is on line with lots of interesting essays. Larry Pintak, director of the prestigious Adham Center of Television Journalism in the American University of Cairo, is dealing with the Indonesian media. Indonesia is the biggest Islamic country in the world and there are not many analysis available on it, so this is a good opportunity to know what kind of lessons the Arab press could learn. Coming back to the Arab region, there is Courtney Radsch ‘s article on the Egyptian blogosphere which gives interesting insights on one of the most “à la mode” topic in Western media. Not to forget Paul Cochrane’s paper on the Lebanese media battle. Enjoy!
