Blogs
And the next Club Quiz is booked for 30th March
Marcus Berkmann is preparing our next quiz. Again, it will be £5 (donation to the fixers’ fund) to enter, maximum 6 people per team. We start at 7pm, 30th March.
Snowdrops
More and more snowdrops are appearing everywhere in the farm. Spring is not far away. I can’t wait.
Whitehouse.gov launches blog as Barack Obama is sworn in as President
So change has come to America. And change has come to the White House website. The new administration has launched a Presidential blog. It will ‘serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world’. No promises that the President will be doing the […]
Gaza media coverage – BBC bits and bobs
Just a couple of other things I picked up today from the BBC. 1. Here’s Robin Lustig’s blog again, writing from a point of view on Gaza. “You want to know what it’s like in Gaza at the moment? It’s Hell on earth. But that’s nothing new – it’s always Hell on earth here. Since […]
On the road with Robert Adams
Robert Adams, one of the original Frontline TV cameramen and a founder member of the Frontline Club, is on the road. For six months Rob, his family and some friends will be on the road in Africa. From their home in Harare they’ll head to Cairo, Cape Town and back to Harare and all points […]
Thinking of going to Somalia?
Well if you are, Rob has some sage advice… and be sure to read the comments. Frontline bloggers David and Alex both blogged from Somalia earlier this year. I hope they don’t go back for a while. Not sure my nerves could take it.
Mumbai – twitter, blogging, and social media
I’m collecting a series of links on how Mumbai has been covered by blogs and social media. You can find all the links on my delicious account.
The only Twitter user in Kanadahar?
Is Alex the only Twitter user in Kanadahar? I think he probably is. Frontline blogger Alex talks about his life, his work and Twittering from Kandahar on the Tech Radar blog. “Get yourself set up with a Twitter account. It’s a nice, low-cost way of letting people know if you get into trouble or are […]
Donations for David Axe
Frontline blogger David Axe is heading to the Horn of Africa again and is looking for donations, Six months ago my readers contributed nearly $2,000 to help me fund a month reporting from Central Africa. This time around I’m asking for $3,000 to help jump-start my piracy coverage. Donations will help pay for air fare, […]
Massive explosion in Kandahar
Frontline blogger Alex was in Kandahar when a “huge explosion near Kandahar stadium” went off. I caught up on this a bit late as I’ve been training all day, but Alex had the wherewithall to poke his head on to the balcony, snap some shots, send a series of messages to Twitter, upload a picture […]
Daniel Bennett on the Nick Meo brouhaha
Frontline blogger Dan is doing a great job trying to get to the bottom of a rather confused story relating to Nick Meo’s report on a bomb explosion just outside Kandahar recently. I recommend you go and read through both Dan’s posts on this. Start with the summary of the debate that continues to rage […]
Live from the Baghdad embed
Eric Owles, a journalist embedded with US forces in Iraq, answers questions from readers on the New York Times Baghdad Bureau blog. The post is part of a series of embed posts on the NYTimes blog Q. Are you given special training ( Boot Camp for Journalists?) so that you’re qualified to be embedded with […]
Saddam Hussein’s nephew blogging?
This is the sort of post that comes with a significant disclaimer – I can’t entirely verify the authenticity of the blog. But I thought I’d point you in the direction of a blog whose author claims to be one of Saddam Hussein’s nephews, Al-Hussain Arshad Yassin. In this post Al-Hussain offers a defence of […]
WRL: Reporting Afghanistan and the secret service blog
1. ‘Bill-and-Bob’, who describes himself as a ‘citizen soldier with 26 years of service’, comments on US media coverage of the war in Afghanistan: “Wars are expensive. The war became tedious on television news and the sensationalization of the American death toll became a daily litany that constantly reminded the American public that we were […]
9/11: “A galvanising point for the blogging world”
In Reporting War, Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan suggest that the attack on the World Trade Center seven years ago was a significant moment in the history of war reporting. As mainstream media servers struggled to cope with the volumes of traffic accessing their websites, bloggers inevitably dropped their usual subjects and began piecing together […]
Blogging from the Middle East
Jaron Gilinsky, a Jerusalem-based video journalist and editor Falafel TV, guests on Mark Glaser’s MediaShift blog this week. He discusses how blogs are helping humanize conflict in the Middle East, If you can find the good blogs, you will be exposed to a very real slice of Middle Eastern reality that wasn’t possible 10 years […]
John Hemming hitches a Humvee to Kandahar
Jon Hemming Reuters chief correspondent in Afghanistan, heads to Kandahar with a convoy of U.S. troops, Normally as a reporter driving around Kabul, I take great care to avoid being anywhere near a foreign military convoy as they are the Taliban’s favorite target. But when you’re inside a Humvee, the tables are turned and you […]
Blogs ‘fail’ in coverage of Russo-Georgia War
Joshua Foust argues that blogs have not lived up to expectations in covering the Russo-Georgia War. He homes in on what he describes as ‘large blogs’- the Small War Journal, Instapundit, the Washington Monthly etc. He’s disappointed that they seem to have relied on the same set of sources as the mainstream media: Soon after […]
Russo-Georgia War: cyber-propaganda
“In its war with Georgia, the first truly global user-generated conflict, Russia’s digital guerillas have been drafted into a state-waged propaganda war” The opening paragraph of an excellent article by Evgeny Morozov on Open Democracy. He argues that the Web’s democratic potential has been undermined by the agendas of nation-states and maintains that ‘digital guerillas’ […]
Live from Kandahar… soon
[video:youtube:VOiLs95QpV8] Frontline blogger Alex made his way down to Kandahar last week – you can see a bit of his recent journey through Arghandab district in the short clip above. He’ll be based in the southern province for the next eight or nine months. Well worth keeping an eye on his blog. He’s putting up […]
Cyberwar, blogging and other Russo-Georgia War links
I’ve just got back from an all too brief holiday and this morning I’ve been collecting some stuff on the conflict between Russian and Georgian forces in South Ossetia and beyond. 1. While most of the attention has rightly been on the physical war that has been costing Russian and Georgian lives, Wired has nevertheless […]
Top tips for reporting from Sudan
Heading to Sudan? Ever wondered what to look out for? Rob has the lowdown with his top tips for working in the African nation. I particularly liked number five, Don’t bear an uncanny resemblance to the previous BBC stringer who got kicked out. link
Frontline Twitter power
I’m on holiday for a week, but I’d like to send you all over to Daniel’s blog. He’s blogging a series about the journalistic uses of Twitter. Meanwhile, Deborah in Mexico talks about her multimedia blogging work for the LA Times. And Rob is grumbling about the price of swimming lessons in Sudan, $40 – […]
Using Twitter to follow the Bangalore bomb blasts
A series of bombs was detonated in Bangalore earlier today. The latest reports indicate that seven devices exploded, in five different locations in the Indian city. The police have confirmed that at least two people died in the attacks. Mukund Mohan, a technology entrepreneur, has been reporting on the events using microblogging tool, Twitter. He […]
Identity of ‘LT G’, former Kaboom milblogger, revealed
The man behind the popular military blog, Kaboom, is 25 year old Matthew Gallagher. His blog was shut down after he failed to allow a blog posting to be vetted by a superior. He was serving with the 25th Infantry Division’s 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment. His platoon was based in a small village north-west […]
Reporter’s Notebook 3: Do not stand near the military band
[video:youtube:SrRsTLC4Gkw] Via the good folks at Abu muqawama.
Editorial preferences
[video:youtube:L5XIhIpVUfI] Photo District News has more on the disembedding of photojournalist and blogger Zoriah Miller, “The official reason which they chose to use for disembedding me was that I had supplied the enemy with information on the effectiveness of attack,” he said. “I told the public affairs officer, listen, I really have to disagree with […]
US Army worried about falling behind new technology but still ahead of most
My Frontline colleague, David Axe, has written an interesting piece over at Wired.com about the US Army’s use of social media tools. He reports that Army Secretary Pete Geren is worried about senior army leaders falling behind new technology. David nevertheless thinks the Army is ‘way ahead of the other US military services when it […]
War Reporting Links: The ‘state’ of the British military
1. Standpoint have published an article by a Ministry of Defence insider claiming that the department is ‘unfit for purpose’. Though I’ll be glad to see the back of the cliché, there’s some interesting observations here. Too many civil servants and consultants, not enough military understanding the insider claims: “I once attended a meeting of […]
Zoriah Miller says he was censored
Democracy Nation talk to Zoriah Miller, the American photojournalist we previously blogged about here and here, who was booted out of Iraq last week. He describes the aftermath of the attack he photographed that led to the US Army immediately disembedding him, I immediately began to take as many pictures as I possibly could, which […]