-
Jordan Gov’t defends press law amendments amid backlash from journalists
“Journalists protest against the government’s proposed amendments to the Press and Publications Law outside the Jordan Press Association on Thursday”
“Scores of online media publishers, owners and workers demonstrated at the Jordan Press Association (JPA) on Thursday to express their rejection of the draft amendments to the Press and Publications Law approved by the government a day earlier.
Media stakeholders said the amendments were a setback to press freedom in Jordan, but the government said they did not impose any new restrictions and that the decision to shut down registered online media outlets will be solely in the hands of the judiciary.”
... -
Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry
“Like many of the rural members of Mirman Baheer, a women’s literary society based in Kabul, the girl calls whenever she can, typically in secret. She reads her poems aloud to Amail, who transcribes them line by line. To conceal her poetry writing from her family, the girl relies on a pen name, Meena Muska. (Meena means “love” in the Pashto language; muska means “smile.”)”
... -
Additional Restrictions on Internet Freedom |n Jordan
“After government’s green light to block websites under very dubious “ethical” reasons, the Jordanian government approved today the new Publications Law, which gives authorities more power to control and censor the Internet in Jordan, Issa Mahasneh reports.
The Jordanian council of ministers approved today a new law amending the Publications and Press Law of 1998, making the new law, if approved by lawmakers, one of the biggest threats to Internet Freedom in Jordan.
“The draft law was needed to regulate work of electronic sites, make them accountable under the penal code and oblige the ones interested in covering Jordan’s internal and external affairs to register and get license like the print press”, our state-run news agency reported, although news websites were already included in the Press Law and classified as press publications in a 2010 Supreme Court decision, a decision met with fierce opposition from journalist, media organizations and, of course, by Jordan Open Source Association.”
... -
Book Review: Journalism, by Joe Sacco
“While journalists come in many breeds, none is more purely annoying than the hit-and-run foreign correspondent. In his classic essay “How to Be a Foreign Correspondent,” the late Alexander Cockburn described New York Times reporter C.L. Sulzberger “as the summation, the Platonic ideal of what foreign reporting is all about, which is to fire volley after volley of cliché into the densely packed prejudices of his readers. There are no surprises in his work. NATO is always in crisis … . His work is a constant affirmation of received beliefs.”
... -
Comics Journalism Takes on Education Reform
“….Adam Bessie, assistant professor at Diablo Valley College, teamed up with Dan Archer, John S. Knight Fellowship for Professional Journalists at Stanford University in 2010–11—the first ever comic journalist to be admitted to their journalism program—and now a freelance comics journalist for hire. The two examine how the reforms intended to save our “failing schools” have, in some cases, failed our schools and, more broadly, perhaps, how society has failed our schools. Archer and Bessie want readers to think critically about hyped-up GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) reforms and provide ideas about improving schools that most readers haven’t been exposed to. In other words, here’s a starting point for a discussion about our nation’s public schools.
... -
Report: Media as a Key Witness and Political Pawns
Upheaval in the Arab World. Media as a key witness and political pawns. Reporters without Borders Report 2011.
... -
OP-ED COLUMNIST: Showtime at the Apollo
Could 2012 be a race between two powerful victims yearning to be lonely at the top?
... -
Photos: In Southern Turkey, Syrian Refugees Wait Out the War
In Southern Turkey, Syrian Refugees Wait Out the War
In a tent encampment in Turkey, 6,500 Syrians are waiting out, or simply taking a respite from, the war being fought just beyond the nearby border.
Take a look at these photos:
... -
One Year of Hope
“When I was in secondary school in Aleppo, one of the required English texts was an abridged version of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Back then, I sat at an old wooden bench with two girls — who were once my best friends, but now we barely speak — and together we read dusty words about a revolution steeped in blood and sacrifice in a place that seemed so far away in time and space from our isolated lives.
The story of two places, rich and poor, privileged and oppressed, was also the story of our Syria. When we read Dickens, we could not imagine similar scenes unfolding in Syria during our lifetime. In 2011, scenes of protests and funerals, torture and murder, international press conferences and presidential interviews, were recorded not on the pages of a novel but in videos and photographs, in tweets and Facebook statuses, transferred via Skype and YouTube. Over two centuries later we would write the same story: the story of a revolution.”
... -
Aaron Sorkin: The Writer Behind ‘The Newsroom’
Radio interview:
...
“The writer’s new HBO drama is made in the mold of his hit series The West Wing.” -
Adonis: Selected Poems
“Adonis: Selected Poems is thus a landmark: the collection matters not just because of its internal beauty, but because it provides a window on the career of one of Arabic literature’s transformational poets.”
... -
Hunter Thompson: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in ‘72
BY Hunter S. Thompson
July 5, 1973 12:00 AM ET
This story is from the July 5th, 1973 issue of Rolling Stone.“Those who fail to learn from the brutal stompings visited on them in the past are doomed to be brutally stomped in the future.”
– Raoul Duke, Christmas Eve 1972
The following disconnected excerpts from Dr. Thompson’s political book ‘Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail’ were selected more or less at random from the massive text of his book on the 1972 presidential campaign. The author assumes no final responsibility for whatever follows.
... -
College Newspapers Go Digital-First, Innovate To Stay Relevant
This fall, the University of Oregon’s Daily Emerald — a print publication for more than 90 years — will ditch the daily for digital, publish a twice-weekly magazine, and launch a mini-tech start-up called The Garage.
It’s a digital-first strategy similar to one adopted at the University of Georgia, which killed the daily Red & Black last year in favor of a weekly publication. Meanwhile, student newspapers like UCLA’s Daily Bruin aren’t giving up the daily print edition, but are planning to churn out thousands of apps for every aspect of student life to help supplement lost print advertising revenue.
... -
Oped: The Trouble With Online Education
Internet courses are monologues. True learning is a dialogue.
... -
Science’s Long—and Successful—Search for Where Memory Lives
“Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell appeared outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre
...
to write their names and leave imprints of their hands and high heels in the wet concrete. Down on their knees, supported by a velvet-covered pillow for their elbows, they wrote “Gentlemen
Prefer Blondes” in looping script, followed by their signatures and the date, 6-26-53. But how did those watching the
events of that day manage to imprint a memory trace of it, etching the details with neurons and synapses in the soft cement of the brain? Where and how are those memories written, and what is the molecular alphabet that spells out the
rich recollections of color, smell, and sound?” -
INSIDE ART: The War Photographer
INSIDE ART: The War Photographer, Way Back in 1666
For decades now we have relied on news photography to capture the horrors of war. But some 350 years ago there were artists risking their lives, sketching away as soldiers and sailors fell and guns blazed.
An unusual canvas by Willem van de Velde the Elder and Younger, depicting a 1666 British naval defeat, is being offered at Sotheby’s.
... -
Superhero journalists ethical breaches (for fun)
“Journalists have an almost superhuman ability to hold forth on the ethics of our own profession. And yet, despite endless talk about “self-plagiarism” or some such, we have been wilfully blind to the more grievous ethical breaches carried out by revered reporters who cover the so-called “superhero beat”. Perhaps we are unwilling to admit that those who write about truth and justice are the least likely to champion transparency and proper attribution. Here are some examples of the most severe offenders”:
... -
“The Newsroom” on HBO
“Much of McAvoy’s diatribe is bona-fide baloney—false nostalgia for an America that never existed—but it is exciting to watch. And if you enjoyed “The West Wing,” Sorkin’s helpful counterprogramming to the Bush Administration, your ears will prick up. The pilot of “The Newsroom” is full of yelling and self-righteousness, but it’s got energy, just like “The West Wing,” Sorkin’s “Sports Night,” and his hit movie “The Social Network.” The second episode is more obviously stuffed with piety and syrup, although there’s one amusing segment, when McAvoy mocks some right-wing idiots. After that, “The Newsroom” gets so bad so quickly that I found my jaw dropping. The third episode is lousy (and devolves into lectures that are chopped into montages). The fourth episode is the worst. There are six to go.”
... -
Who Influenced Tunisian Author Habib Selmi?
Early stories he remembers are those of Kamel al-Kilani (the Egyptian pioneer of modern children’s literature) but Selmi attributes his love of stories less to his early consumption of the written word and more to oral stories shared “beneath the olive tree known as ‘The Dog.’”
“In the beginning, they would not allow youngesters to approach the place, particularly because the men occasionally told risque stories and discussed topics they considered unsuitable for the minds of young people like us.”
... -
Websites Illuminate Unknown Artists
ArtistsWanted.org is not a charity but a business, one that hopes to make a profit identifying artistic talent and connecting it to an audience.
... -
Aaron Sorkin on The Newsroom , Sorkinism, and Sounding Smart
On June 24, HBO will air the debut of The Newsroom, the first cable series from Aaron Sorkin, the Oscar- and Emmy-winning creator of The West Wing and writer of The Social Network. The show is not just a return to television but a series about television — in particular, television news and its squandered powers.
... -
The Kenyon Review
The International Journal of Culture and the Arts. Read good literary selections, learn more about writing workshops and more…
...
Read more -
Literature and Revolution in Contemporary Cairo
An Excerpt from Youssef Rakha’s “In Extremis: Literature and Revolution in Contemporary Cairo
“The point of this story is to illustrate faith in the mystery of God’s omnipotence. But in a way it also says a lot about politics, language, and context: the relation of the observant to the enlightened, the cynical to the visionary, and appearance to substance.”
... -
The Sound of a Sentence
OPINIONATOR | DRAFT: The Sound of a Sentence Language can be an adventure if we remember that words can make a kind of melody.
... -
MOVIE REVIEW: A Chronicle of Cairo Protests
“Tahrir: Liberation Square” plunges into the crowds of demonstrators in Cairo in January 2011 during the days leading up to the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
...