Category Archives: community

NPR: The Two-Way: ‘Gay Girl In Damascus’ Turns Out To Be An American Man

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"The revelation came hours after NPR approached Britta Froelicher, his wife, with some evidence that connected her with Gay Girl In Damascus. Other news organizations appeared to be zeroing in on the couple, too. Over the past week, we've been talking to people who kept in contact with "Amina." Some of them had been in contact with this online persona for as long as five years."

New York Times: ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ Blogger Admits to Writing Fiction Disguised as Fact

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"Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old graduate student ... explained that he had initially created Amina, his Arab lesbian character, as “a handle” he would use when he wanted to contribute comments to online discussions. His aim, he said was to use the character to present 'a perspective that doesn’t often get heard on the Middle East and that was also a challenge for me, as somebody who has aspirations as a novelist, to write in a voice of a character who is absolutely not me.' ... Before Sunday, Mr. MacMaster had denied that he was the blog’s author when reporters from two publications, The Washington Post and The Electronic Intifada, confronted him with circumstantial evidence that seemed to connect him to Amina Abdallah Arraf."

New York Times: Case of a Gay Girl in Damascus Blog and Sifting Syrian Fact From Fiction

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"[After] it was widely reported by news organizations that the blogger, who writes as Amina Abdallah Arraf, had been snatched off the street in Damascus on Monday, doubts were raised about whether the author of the blog had, in fact, been detained. These doubts were spurred, in part, by the realization that all of her prior contacts, whether with friends who had come forward or journalists who had interviewed her, were conducted via e-mail. ... "

Guardian: A gay girl in Damascus – or a cynical hoax?

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"Despite the efforts of major news organisations, bloggers and enterprising individuals on the internet and Twitter, no one – journalist, activist, friend or Facebook contact – has been identified who has ever spoken to Araf face to face. Sandra Bagaria, a French Canadian had exchanged more than 500 emails with her, but on the one occasion she had tried to speak to her in person she got no answer. A reporter from NPR would later call the number and reach a pharmacy in Damascus. They had never heard of Araf. ... But if the Gay Girl in Damascus is indeed a hoax, it is a fantastically elaborate one. Cached pages on social media and dating websites suggest "Amina Araf" has an internet identity dating back at least to 2007."

virtualeconomics: A citizen journalism model that really breaks news?

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"London-based citizen journalism start-up Blottr ... led the news agenda for much of Monday by breaking the day's major UK news story. ... First publishing a few minutes after 10am, Blottr broke the news of a bomb alert in London and over the day added pictures, detail and coverage of the events in the square and the controlled explosion carried out in Trafalgar Square around 9am. Sky and the BBC picked up the story around 3 hours later... "

virtualeconomics: A citizen journalism model that really breaks news?

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"London-based citizen journalism start-up Blottr ... led the news agenda for much of Monday by breaking the day's major UK news story. ... First publishing a few minutes after 10am, Blottr broke the news of a bomb alert in London and over the day added pictures, detail and coverage of the events in the square and the controlled explosion carried out in Trafalgar Square around 9am. Sky and the BBC picked up the story around 3 hours later... "

Nieman Journalism Lab: How journalists can make use of Facebook Pages

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Facebook's Vadim Lavrusik provides tips for journalists on how to use Facebook Pages. He suggests individual reporter Pages, "social storytelling" to give users a behind-the-scenes look at the newsgathering process, establishing a "professional" persona to allow readers to see rather than personal pages seen by friends, curating a news stream from other sources, livestreaming video.

Steve Rubel: As Curators Proliferate, Media Brands Face Loyalty Crisis

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"Suddenly media brands are facing increased competition from an array of upstart curators that are growing in popularity. These services, which include Flipboard, Feedly, Zite, Pulse and News360 - a Russian app that's my personal favorite, pictured above on the Blackberry Playbook (client) - curate and organize news from hundreds of sources often by topic into rich displays that are available on virtually every mobile platform. Some of these tap into your personal social network to make the experience even more personal. All make it easy to share."

Scripting News: Journalist or not? Wrong question

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Dave Winer: "fights over who's a journalist or not are pointless. However, there is a line that is not pointless: Are you an insider or a user? Insiders get access to execs for interviews and background info. Leaks and gossip. Vendor sports. Early versions of products. Embargoed news. Extra oomph on social networks. Favors that will be curtailed or withdrawn if you get too close to telling truths they don't want told. All the people participating in the "journalist or not" debate are insiders. They are all compromised."

New York Times: Death of Osama Bin Laden: How Significant a Moment?

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Ingenious interactive captures and visualises reader sentiment: "We asked readers the following questions: Was his death significant in our war against terror? And do you have a negative or positive view of this event? Readers — 13,864 of them — answered by plotting a response on the graph and adding a comment to explain the choice. Each light blue dot represents one comment. Darker shades represent multiple comments made on a single point."

Reuters: Osama Bin Laden is dead – prove it

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"[The] editors on the Global Picture Desk found inconsistencies that immediately made us suspicious. There was odd pixilation and blurring and his face was darker in some areas than others. The biggest problem was that the picture looked familiar somehow. Quickly looking through dozens of our archive pictures we found that the bottom half of Osama Bin Laden’s face was identical to a picture of him speaking at a news conference in 1998. ... The fake picture was locked in our system so that it couldn’t be sent out but would be saved for future training exercises. Meanwhile, the fake picture quickly gained momentum in cyber space."