In light of a Government unable and unwilling to investigate violence against journalists and independent media, satire is one way in which violent events, processes and individuals can be held up for public scrutiny more frequently. In the first submission to the site, Banyan News Reporters publishes a piece on how TV Remote Controllers are [...]
Archive | January, 2009
Crowdsourcing Obama’s inauguration
CNN, using Microsoft’s amazing Photosynth, aims to crowdsource a 3D vista of Barack Obama’s Presidential inauguration on 20th January 2009. This will be the most digitised Presidential inauguration in history, and I suspect many cable TV networks will rely heavily on the digital content generated by those present, in addition to their own content, in [...]
Citizen journalism on Groundviews and Vikalpa’s YouTube channel interrogates assassination of Lasantha Wickremetunge
The Editor in Chief of the Sunday Leader and one of Sri Lanka’s best known journalists Lasantha Wickremetunge was murdered on 8th January 2009 en route to work. He was beaten and shot repeatedly and succumbed to his injuries in hospital. The first post on Groundviews on the assassination can be read here. Lasantha was [...]
Dialog OfficeNet+ rocks on a holiday
This is not a scientific evaluation of Dialog’s WiMax actual speeds, which in the past and even today have simply not matched advertised speeds. Being Thai Pongal perhaps, speeds today on Dialog’s OfficeNet+ connection are terrific and are the best speeds I have ever experienced in Sri Lanka. This is a screenshot of a 480p [...]
YouTube for anger and activism in Sri Lanka
Largely on account of two short videos capturing reactions to the assassination of the Editor in Chief of the Sunday Leader and senior journalist Lasantha Wickremetunge in Sinhala and English, Vikalpa’s YouTube Channel was the 59th most viewed channel on YouTube yesterday. At the time of writing this post, the Sinhala video has been viewed 1,846 times [...]
New and powerful voices for media freedom in Sri Lanka?
Some of the best writing on the recent arson attack on MBC / MTV studios comes from two renown voices in the Sri Lankan blogosphere. Indi’s article The Media War is a very good counterpoint to the analysis of given by Dayan Jayatilleka in my interview with him yesterday when I asked him about the [...]
UDHR: A historical record of the drafting process
It’s websites such as the new UN archive on the drafting process that led up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that showcase the potential of the web to make information otherwise inaccessible instantly available globally. The UDHR 60 years on continues to be a bedrock for democracy. The documents archived on this [...]
Media Re:public – Interrogating new and online media
Media Re:public is a series of papers exploring the potential and the challenges of the emerging networked digital media environment. As it’s website describes the project, The transformation of the media world is well underway, facilitated by the spread of digital tools. A myriad of innovative new media organizations have sprung up to take advantage [...]
Seriously blogging after 32 years of journalism: DBS Jeyaraj
“My writing has been appearing on the web for many years now. I’ve also been associated with some websites like www.tamilweek.com, www.transcurrents.com and www.federalidea.com for the past few years. In that sense I do have been on line for quite a while. Yet , there’s a reason for this blog. Upon reflection I find that [...]
