Blogs
Blogger Tariq Baiasi sentenced to 3 years
The Global Voices Advocacy group points our attention to the case of Syrian blogger Tariq Baiasi The blogger, who has been in prison for almost one year, has been sentenced to three years for leaving a comment on “suspicious websites”, The State Security Court in Damascus has sentenced Tariq to three years after lessening it […]
David Axe joins Frontline
David Axe joins the From the Frontline blog ranks this week. David is the author of Army 101 and War Fix. He also writes for the Wired Magazine Danger Room blog, keeps a personal blog called War is boring and uploads his cartoons to Flickr. Staying with the ‘boring’ theme, David has called his Frontline […]
Twittering from the frontline
In case you didn’t know… we have a Twitter account. Twitter is a free, easy to update microblogging tool. We use it predominantly to broadcast to subscribers when there are new updates to any of the From the Frontline blogs. You can find out more about how Twitter works here. If you already use Twitter, […]
Reporting from Mogadishu
Apologies for cross posting on Alex’s blog… Alex is back in Nairobi writing up the story he worked on in Somalia and he’s on deadline. Therefore, just a quick post from me to guide you to the BBC Radio 5 Live interview with Alex for the iPM show and, repeated again, for the Pods and […]
Live from Somalia
Frontline blogger Alex Strick van Linschoten is in Somalia blogging as news breaks that the leader of Al-Shabab has been killed. Alex is working with the French photographer Philip Poupin in Mogadishu and as well as blogging he is posting his own pictures to his Flickr account.
Dan joins the frontline
Welcome to Daniel Bennett, the latest addition to the From the Frontline blog. Daniel offers a unique perspective here. As he says on his blog he is “a PhD student researching the impact of blogging and new media on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism. He writes about how changes to news journalism are […]
Alex Strick van Linschoten joins the Frontline
Alex Strick van Linschoten has been living and working in Afghanistan on and off for the last five years. He’ll be writing a blog here at From the Frontline called A war reporter on the road. He starts in Kenya, but he’ll also be blogging from Somalia, Chechnya and Iraq over the coming months and […]
Frontline bloggers talk
Live from Zimbabwe, live from Mexico and live from the Frontline club clubroom three of our From the frontline bloggers – Anita, Deborah and Kyle – talk about what they blog about on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pods and Blogs show. It’s a great and varied listen. I recommend.
Anita Coulson blogs from Zimbabwe
Now blogging with us at From the frontline is Anita Coulson. She’s ex-BBC and an Africa specialist. She is in Zimbabwe to cover the elections and blog what she sees and hears on the streets of Harare and beyond. It’s a fascinating read and blogged in difficult circumstances. The internet connection in Zimbabwe is too […]
Dig the new breed
Interesting blog by Geofrrey Hiller that aims to bring to our attention the work of “a new breed of documentary photographers”. Each post focuses on one image from one photographer. As the blog blurb says, “Verve is a reminder of the power of the still image.” Images like the one above by Candice Feit taken […]
Online Free Expression Day
Reporters without Borders today launch the first Online Free Expression Day. This will be an annual event happening every March 12 to help protect bloggers who are increasingly targeted in countries with state controlled media. The campaign focuses on Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Eritrea, North Korea, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam, “Today, the first time this […]
Former Scoopt head honcho blogs for Frontline
Great to have Scoopt founder Kyle MacRae blogging with us here at From the Frontline. Kyle founded the world’s first citizen journalism photograph agency – Scoopt.com – in 2005. He’s been at the forefront of digital media industry ever since. He sold the company to Getty Imgaes a year ago and just last week left […]
Burmese bloggers continue to risk their lives
Some five months on since the violent suppression of the protest movement led by monks in Burma and the situation for bloggers is no better. The bloggers, who were such an important part of getting images, video and eyewitness accounts out of the country, continue to blog about life in Burma and relay information overseas. […]
Media priorities
It’s hard not not hard to agree with the first comment on this blog about Frontline Club member Marcus Bleasdale’s multimedia report from the Democratic Republic of Congo. “nonstop media coverage because one of our Governors had some sex with an expensive whore, but this gets nothing.” link The commenter is, of course, referring to […]
Buying a sandwich in Baghdad
The New York Times run Baghdad Bureau is shaping up to be quite an interesting group blog. Today, Balen Y. Younis who is an Iraqi employee of The New York Times, writes about working for the newspaper, the reaction of friends when he told them he was going to work for the western media outlet […]
Social networking sites have brought new opportunities for journalists, and new problems
Social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo are awash with video and pictures uploaded by the general public. News organisations are grappling with what they can and can’t use from the sites, but there is no agreed standard and recent months have seen them make a litany of mistakes. In January, Steve Herrmann, Editor of […]
Phoning Fallujah
One of the Iraqi journalists working for McClatchy Newspapers and blogging at “Inside Iraq” is chuffed – to say the least – that after nearly five years of waiting, the phone lines from Baghdad to Fallujah are up and running again, It will sound silly, not worth it but it made me happy, smiling and […]
Back in the HotZone
Kevin Sites is back up with a post from Sri Lanka, Kevin Sites covered Sri Lanka as violence erupted between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels, pushing a nation with so much to lose back to the brink of all-out war. In rebel-held territory Sites interviewed Tiger fighters about their tactics and reported on the […]
Hans Jaap blogs from Baghdad
Hans Jaap is a Dutch journalist working for Radio Netherlands and he’s based in Baghdad. It’s not the threat of bombs that bother him in the Iraqi capital, it’s the fear of kidnapping. And for a moment the other day, he thought it was about to happen to him, My interpreter Ammar and I had […]
From the Mosul frontline
Salam Adil at Global Voices does an excellent job of rounding up the latest from the folks on the streets of Basra, Mosul and beyond. He dedicates a blog post “to the extraordinary bloggers of Mosul who are living on the front line of a war zone” Here are the words of Aunt Najma, In […]
Rob Crilly in Nairobi
Nairobi-based freelance journalist Rob Crilly is the latest addition to the blog stable at From the Frontline. Rob started blogging at South of West late last year. He’s been very busy with coverage from Kenya for The Times, Irish Times, Christian Science Monitor and The Daily Mail during the recent violence there. You can listen […]
From the Frontline from Zimbabwe
Blogging from Zimbabwe is Zimbabaloola. This is latest addition to the From the Frontline stable of blogs. Zimbabaloola is an anonymous blog written by someone living in Zimbabwe. The blog will cover the elections in Zimbabwe, the reality for the people living there and what hyperinflation means on the streets of Harare and elsewhere. I’ll […]
Julius Strauss joins From the Frontline
Former war reporter, Julius Strauss is now blogging here at From the Frontline. Julius started his war reporting career as a freelance snapper during the Serbo-Croat and Bosnian wars. In 1996 he became the Daily Telegraph’s Balkans Correspondent. After covering the aftermath of the Bosnian war and the war in Kosovo he worked in Romania, […]
Missing Burmese blogger spotted
IFEX reports that a Burmese blogger has gone missing from his home in Rangoon. The blogger, Nay Phone Latt, was allegedly arrested on 29 January according to his mother, Daw Aye Aye Than. Although her son’s whereabouts cannot be confirmed, eyewitness accounts on Mizzima suggest he is being held at the Ministry of Home Affairs, […]
Conflict blogging
iConflict is a new website set to launch this month. According to comments from one of the founders of the site, Jason Haber, on the DigiDave blog, the time is right for a citizen-generated war reporting website, Unlike other social media news sites, ours is very focused. We aren’t covering Britney Spears, we aren’t covering […]
A soldier in Helmand
I’m very pleased to announce the latest addition to the From the Frontline blog stable – the Soldier’s Blog. This is the blog of an anonymous Danish soldier about to deploy to Helmand province in Afghanistan. He’ll be blogging about the daily life of a soldier before and during deployment. He hopes to be able […]
Vaughan Smith up for a Guardian gong
OK. Here’s some great news. Club founder and journalist whizz of the old school, Vaughan Smith, is up for a gong at the inaugural Media Guardian Innovation Awards, or MEGAs, for his live blogging, video reports, twittering and picture taking from the frontline on this very blog. He is up against two other blogs in […]
Best part of three years embedded
You might not agree with the way he sees things in Iraq, but Michael Yon has spent longer there than any other reporter. Three years and holding. Yet, he’s not strictly a reporter. He’s an embedded blogger and he has a transparent agenda. The New York Times profiles Yon, [Yon] does not work for any […]
Life imitating journalists
Rob Crilly in Kenya wins my vote for snap of the week. Rob, when you gonna start blogging at Fromthefrontline… ???
Anastassia in Bogotá
The first of our new bloggers is up and running today. Anastasia Moloney is a British freelance journalist based in the Colombian capital, Bogotá. She’s a regular contributor to the Financial Times, a contributing editor for the Washington-based website World Politics Review and she has previously blogged for The Guardian’s Comment is free. She’ll be […]