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Viewpoint: How Obama secures his legacy
“Obama ran as a two-term president, and has the potential to make the next four years transcendent. But only, as Ellis Cose explains, if he rolls up his sleeves and gets to the hard work of governing.”
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Crowdfunding Citizen Journalism in Cairo
“Mosireen, a media collective in downtown Cairo that has become a vital source of video reports about life in post-revolutionary Egypt, is engaged in an online crowdfunding campaign.”
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The 15 Best Movies About Journalism
The list. The 15 Best Movies About Journalism
“1. His Girl Friday (1940)
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Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell butt heads in this story of an ex-husband and editor trying to win back his star reporter and ex-wife, whom he still loves. But it’s about more than that. It’s about the dehumanization of their subjects. There’s one bleak exchange about changing the time of a hanging to make the evening edition. It’s cutthroat. Russell’s character laments that she doesn’t want to be a reporter, she just wants to be a woman. It’s a bit dated, but the ethical dilemmas are devastating. And in the end, Hildy is more journalist than lady.
2. All The President’s Men (1976)
There’s three types of freshman journalism majors: ones who want to be Carrie Bradshaw, ones who want to write for Rolling Stone, and ones who want to be Woodward and Bernstein. I was the last one. All The President’s Men follows the Watergate scandal and features Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as sexier versions of Woodward and Bernstein. Nice.” -
Pamuk’s Second Novel Released In English
Radio Interview: Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk’s 1983 novel Silent House is being released in English for the first time this week. All Things Considered host Robert Siegel talks with the Nobel Laureate about what took so long to get the book translated and how he’s changed as a writer since it was first published in Turkish nearly 30 years ago.
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Book: The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings
“The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings sheds light on the historical context and initial impact of the mass uprisings that have shaken the Arab world since December 2010. The volume documents the first nine months of the Arab uprisings and explains the backgrounds and trajectories of these popular movements and regime strategies to contain them. It provides critical analysis and at times first-hand accounts of events that have received little or superficial coverage in Western and Arab media alike. While the book focuses on those states that have been most affected by the uprisings, including Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, it also covers the impact on Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq.
As the initial phase of the uprisings subsides, counter-revolution sets in, and grand narratives crystallize, it is important to take note of the diversity of reactions that emanated from activists, scholars, and others as the uprisings were first unfolding. In this sense, the volume archives the realm of possibilities, both imaginative and practical, optimistic and pessimistic, that were opened up as people sought to make sense of the rapidly unfolding events.”
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Where does language come from?
“How do we understand what words really mean? New science suggests we make meaning by creating mental simulations.
Making meaning is one of the most important things we do. For starters, it’s something we’re doing almost constantly. We swim in a sea of words. Every day, we hear and read tens of thousands of them. And somehow, for the most part, we understand them. Constantly, tirelessly, automatically, we make meaning. What’s perhaps most remarkable about it is that we hardly notice we’re doing anything at all. There are deep, rapid, complex operations afoot under the surface of the skull, and yet all we experience is seamless understanding.Making meaning is one of the most important things we do. For starters, it’s something we’re doing almost constantly. We swim in a sea of words. Every day, we hear and read tens of thousands of them. And somehow, for the most part, we understand them. Constantly, tirelessly, automatically, we make meaning. What’s perhaps most remarkable about it is that we hardly notice we’re doing anything at all. There are deep, rapid, complex operations afoot under the surface of the skull, and yet all we experience is seamless understanding.”
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What it was like to work at Newsweek at its best.
“Tina Brown, the founder of the Daily Beast and editor of Newsweek, announced this week that the print magazine was headed to the morgue file, dead after nearly 80 years. A digital offering called Newsweek Global will take its place. Those of us who worked at Newsweek through the turn of the century wish the new venture well, but we can’t escape the feeling that there’s been a death in the family.
Until the Washington Post Co. sold the magazine in 2010, I qualified as a “lifer,” a concept that no longer exists in the American workplace. Over nearly three decades at Newsweek in the pre-tweet era, I was the magazine’s media critic and later a columnist. I interviewed and wrote about five American presidents and authored more than 50 stories, almost all of them on domestic affairs.”
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The newsonomics of The New York Times’ expanding global strategy
“This has been the year of global expansion for the world’s biggest news companies. The Wall Street Journal launched its Deutschland digital edition in January, and Alisa Bowen, WSJ’s head of product, tells me additional international expansion, along with video, is a top 2013 priority. The Financial Times, which had retrenched from non-English language initiatives a number of years ago, just launched a new Latin American homepage on FT.com and rolled out a new mobile app for the region, while initiating “digital printing” through HP. Reuters and Bloomberg have both also upped their presence in the market. For the Times, the Brazil edition follows on its China edition launch in June. (For more on this developing phenomenon, see “The newsonomics of global media imperative”).
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NPR leader outlines strategies for digital survival
When Gary E. Knell took over as CEO of NPR in 2011, his assignment was clear, if daunting: “to provide an economically sustainable platform for journalists.” Knell, who spoke at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism on Monday, joined NPR at a time when the organization faced not only internal strife, but also a business environment still reeling from a decade of digital disruption. His response was that of a realist. “You can’t stop technology. People will demand programming when and where they want it,” Knell said. “To not be in the digital space means you’ll be replaced. And you’ll never come back.”
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Journalism, youth and politics in Jordan
Journalism, youth and politics in Jordan. AmenFM (Arabic Channel) 89.5. Guest Speaker on ‘Successful Women” with Suheir Jeridat.
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Morocco Cracks Down on Democracy Rappers
The North African country has locked up musicians deemed to be critical of the state. Now one jailed rapper’s entourage is fighting against time to get his message out and rally the country’s floundering democracy movement.
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Interview with Janine Di Giovanni
Posted by James McAuley
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“Janine di Giovanni is a war reporter who has covered nearly every major violent conflict since the late nineteen-eighties. But in her most recent book, “Ghosts by Daylight,” she focusses her reporting skills on a different sort of struggle: that of trying to live a normal life as a wife and mother in light of the horrors she’s witnessed. As her marriage, to another war reporter, crumbles (the two are separated), di Giovanni reflects on learning to speak the languages of war, of destruction, and, finally, of love…” -
Blog: NEO-COLONIALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS
A blog of interest on various issues; insights on the Mideast.
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“A bit about me: I’m 23, I’m half-Dutch, half-Egyptian, and I grew up in Lusaka, Zambia. I moved to Egypt for university, where I studied sociology, psychology & anthropology. Then I moved to the Netherlands, where I got an MA in Islam in the West and then another one in Development Studies. I just started a PhD.” -
Teaching journalists to read
“Every six months or so, The Audit, CJR’s financial-journalism blog, holds a breakfast to update interested parties on how the blog is doing. Each breakfast has an invited speaker, and so it was that I found myself at 7:45 this morning in a very posh Upper East Side club, being offered an array of ties to choose from before being allowed upstairs to take my seat between Nicholas Lemann and Victor Navasky.
The main thrust of my speech, which rapidly became a spirited and high-level discussion, was that journalistic entities — newspapers, magazines, websites, and, yes, Columbia J-school itself — have to start putting much more emphasis on reading, as opposed to writing.”
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When Satire Conquered Iran by Slavs and Tatars
“Published between 1906 and 1930, Molla Nasreddin was a satirical Azeri magazine edited by the writer Jalil Mammadguluzadeh (1866-1932), and named after Nasreddin, the legendary Sufi wise man-cum-fool of the Middle Ages. With an acerbic sense of humor and realist illustrations reminiscent of a Caucasian Honoré Daumier or Toulouse-Lautrec, Molla Nasreddin attacked the hypocrisy of the Muslim clergy, the colonial policies of the US and European nations towards the rest of the world, and the venal corruption of the local elite, while arguing repeatedly for Westernization, educational reform, and equal rights for women. Publishing such stridently anti-clerical material, in a Muslim country, in the early twentieth century, was done at no small risk to the editorial team. Members of MN were often harassed, their offices attacked, and on more than one occasion, Mammadguluzadeh had to escape from protesters incensed by the contents of the magazine.”
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Good films are back in season
“The Toronto Film Festival is universally considered the opening of Academy Awards season, and the weary moviegoer, drained after a summer of exhausted superheroes and franchises, plunges in it with joy. I’ve been attending since 1977, and have watched it grow from a bootstrap operation, with the schedule improvised from day to day, into one of the big four (with Cannes, Venice and Berlin).”
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Salwa Publishers
“Salwa Publishers” is an independent publishing house established in 1996 in Jordan.
It specializes in Arabic picture books for children, for ages ranging from newborns to 13 years old. Salwa Publishers has recently expanded into the digital electronic media by producing applications, ebooks, interactive CDs, DVDs, and audio books.
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Writing Rules From Zadie Smith
“In the winter of 2010, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing published in the New York Times nearly a decade earlier, The Guardian reached out to some of today’s most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her 10 rules. My favorite is Zadie Smith’s list—an exquisite balance of the practical, the philosophical, and the poetic…”
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Human Rights Defenders and Journalists in Iraq: Challenges and Hopes
“As for the Iraqi journalists, the situation is not so different, for this section that has paid a heavy prize since the year 2003, and still suffering until today over unfair rules which do not protect the journalist on one hand, and passing new legislations that limit the freedom of the press, media and the freedom expression on the other hand.
The Gulf Centre for Human Rights Mission made a tour in Iraq in July, 2012, where it visited Bagdad, Basra and Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf, and it met many independent human rights defenders, and those who work for NGOs as well as the journalists, in a field study about the most primary challenges that they face including the violations that take place against them.
The mission concluded that the violations against the human rights and journalists and the harassments against the NGOs are still going on in different methods, but at a less scale than the past years. We will mention them in the report.”
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Feesheh, A Jordanian Online One-Stop-Shop for Arab Musicians
“Feesheh, an online music store based in Jordan, is seeking to make it easier for Arab musicians to pursue their dreams.
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With a wide range of musical instruments, books and gear at competitive prices, Feesheh which means “plug” in Arabic, seeks to be a hub for aspiring musicians across the Middle East, according to its co-founder Nur Alfayez.
The online music warehouse, which went online in February 2012, is one of the companies incubated by Amman-based Oasis500 that seeks to help young Jordanians turn their business ideas into reality.
“There is a huge market for musical instruments and gear not only in Jordan, but also in the Middle East. Musicians face difficulties in finding the instruments they need, but Feesheh.com seeks to music to their doorstep,” she said.” -
Is This Title O.K.?
“I think I would be good at coming up with names for perfumes. Or vacuum cleaners. But when it comes to books, the job feels impossible.”
“Beginning – check. Middle – check. End – check. But, hold on a sec, isn’t there something missing? Something rather vital? In fact, couldn’t it be the key to your book’s selling or not? Ah, yes, the title.
Sometimes I think I am going to have to give up and employ one of those companies that do nothing but invent names for things. Usually it’s perfume. Actually I think I would be good at coming up with names for perfume. Or soap powder. Or vacuum cleaners. But when it comes to books, the job feels impossible. Your mission: summarize your entire work in a nutshell. If I could do that (you want to cry out) I wouldn’t have bothered writing the book in the first place!”
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Ink-stained assassins
Cartoonists have skewered our politicians in the pages of newspapers for generations. Can they survive in a digital age?
“Yet this is the paradox of cartooning: a few dozen people make a very good living from it, but when eventually they hang up their nibs, will they be replaced? Print sales are falling; the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations show the daily newspaper market contracted 7.79 per cent in the past year. Do cartoons work divorced from the topography of the newspaper page? Will they bring enough “eyeballs” to advertisers to justify their existence on the internet?”
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Zadie Smith’s fourth novel extends her long investigation into ‘voice’
“The novel is divided into sections, each told from a different perspective, and in a different literary style. Each is architecturally impressive; the overall effect is of a cacophony of subjectivities – something like what Smith once called, describing Middlemarch, “the narrative equivalent of surround sound”.
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App Tells Freelancers How Much to Charge
“Freelancers, specifically designers currently or fresh out of school, often find it challenging to price themselves and their services to potential clients in an informed way. A new iOS app called MyPrice aims to solve this predicament.
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The new app lets you calculate the amount you can reasonably charge for your professional services while factoring in your educational background, experience, the nature of your project, client and location.” -
A Critic’s Case for Critics Who Are Actually Critical
“Working as a critic, you learn to duck incoming words and shards of shattered cocktail glasses. I’ve developed pretty thick skin. Critics take a beating, especially in popular culture. Jean Sibelius’s observation — “No statue has ever been erected to a critic” — seems to be cited somewhere weekly. As well-known quotations go, this one strikes me as especially banal. It implies something disheartening about our culture.”
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