SAJAforum

NEW PROJECT: The New York Times Launches "India Ink"

 

Do you know why many people know about yoga in the US and the West? India Ink, the new New York Times India blog has the answer. Vivekananda was the one who single-handedly helped westerners understand the value of yoga and practice it.  

NYT launched India Ink in early September to “provide more in-depth, on-the-ground coverage of the world’s biggest democracy — and of a people who know that no matter how far they roam, their hearts will always be Indian.” At the time of this writing @nytindia had 6,250 Twitter followers.

India Ink has 21 writers in its stable, covering everything from politics, business to street food, to the news on $35 tablet computer released by Indian government, and more.

I quietly hope that NYT will launch a Hindi version of the India Ink someday. What do you think?

If you have ideas on what India Ink should be writing about, email them at IndiaInk@nytimes.com
or tweet at @nytindia.

You can read the full memo about the Ink below or at this link:

NEW PROJECT: Gupta brothers launch KahaniMovement.com

 Am a big fan of StoryCorps.org, the big oral-history project that's run by journalist David Isay. One of the best aspects of it is that it encourages a cross-generational conversation especially relevant to immigrants - helping connect families across time and place. Just last week, I was thinking that I should get my young twins to interview their grandparents when they visit from India and submit the audio to StoryCorps. So imagine my surprise when I heard today about KahaniMovement.com, a similar project aimed just at Indian-Americans (and other South Asians, I presume). Its motto: "Some stories are never told... because no one asks." The project's founders are two brothers, CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Mozilla's Suneel Gupta.

From: Leena Rao, leenakrao[at]gmail.com

The Kahani Movement, an open-source, user-generated film project and social network co-founded by brothers Dr. Sanjay Gupta (CNN) and Suneel Gupta (Mozilla), will be launching on April 21st during opening night of the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.

Kahani, which means "story" in Hindi, aims to capture and share stories from the first-generation of Indians that immigrated to the United States. Kahani accomplishes this by motivating second-generation Indian Americans to post video, photos, and writings about their parents' stories to kahanimovement.com. The audience is future generations of Indian Americans that may never have the benefit of a real conversation with their grandparents. If you have any further questions, please contact either me via email or Suneel Gupta at suneel.gupta[at]gmail.com.

April 20, 2009



The Kahani Movement Wants Your Story, Launches at the Seventh Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles



David Isay formed StoryCorps, a cross-country oral history project, to document and capture the stories of everyday American life through conversation and dialogue. The Kahani Movement, which officially launches on April 21st during opening night of the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, ties the concept of StoryCorps to the technology of Web 2.0 by inspiring Indian Americans to tell stories of their early days in the U.S. from the comfort of their own kitchen tables and then share this content on a newly developed social network (kahanimovement.com).

TECH: List of major South Asian Twitter voices

PLEASE SUPPORT SAJA: Help us meet our new $15,000 challenge grant:
http://saja.org/articles/saja-group-receives-prestigious-challenge-grant    

[ FOLLOW SAJA ON TWITTER: http://twitter.com/sajahq ]

It happened with blogs (see SAJAforum collection of South Asian blogs)  and Facebook (see all the South Asian FB users and groups, as well as the Scrabulous story and SAJA's own groups, including SAJA, SAJA Students, SAJA Profs), so it's only natural that the Twitter phenomenon would have major South Asian and South Asian diaspora voices and users (as you may know the 2008 Mumbai attacks are widely credited with helping put Twitter into the public consciousness among journalists and others - see coverage in this case study by Gaurav Mishra and this piece in the LA Times). So, in honor of SAJA crossing 300 followers on its SAJAhq account, we are going to try to create a list of major South Asian Twitter voices. First, here's what the @SAJAhq feed looks like:

[If you are new to Twitter, here's a resource page and webcast I did a few weeks ago, "Twitter for Journalists: Everything You Wanted to Know About Twitter, But Were Afraid to Ask."]

What follows is a very subjective list of some of the most influential Twitter voices who happen to be South Asian. Over the last few days, I captured some screengrabs of major Twitterers I knew about or those suggested by others. In order to apply some metrics to the collection, I am trying to include only feeds that have at least 500 followers AND 500 updates - AND something interesting to say. Of course, these numbers will swing up and down in the days and weeks ahead (some, in part, by just being on this list).

Leading us off, true to Twitter's tech roots are Padmasree Warrior, CTO of one of the most important tech companies in the world; Om Malik, co-founder of SAJA and already one of the most influential tech bloggers in the world, thanks to his GigaOm blog and Anil Dash, who's a leading tech evangelist at pioneering blogging company, Six Apart (makers of Typepad, Movable Type). The rest of the group is an eclectic mix of folks who have various interests, including a dentist in Karachi. Click on the image to get to each of the Twitter feeds.

Please help us round out the list by adding your recommendations for Twitter feeds to follow in the comments below. Tell us why he/she  is worth following (or even if it's you). Would love to have more desi voices from other countries represented.

 

WEB: Tech training for journalists

In my non-SAJA life, I spend a lot of time training journalists on how to use technology more effectively. Two recent free webcasts I did for Columbia Journalism School might interest some of you.

• Twitter for Journalists - or, everything you wanted to know about Twitter, but were afraid to ask
• LinkedIn for Journalists - or everything you wanted to know about LinkedIn, but were afraid to ask

Feedback welcome.

LANGUAGE: Indian toponyms in Wordsmith.org's A Word A Day

I've been using Wordsmith.org's A Word A Day feature - and daily newsletter - to learn new words and new ideas for more than 10 years now. - with 664,000 subscribers. The New York Times called it "the most welcomed, most enduring piece of daily mass e-mail in cyberspace."

From the about us:

Wordsmith is a worldwide online community of some half-million readers who share a love for words, wordplay, language, and literature. They hail from Australia to Zimbabwe and almost all other places in between. Wordsmith was founded in 1994 by Anu Garg, while a graduate student in computer science.

You can subscribe here. Garg's e-mail: anu[at]wordsmith.org.

This week's theme: toponyms (I had to look it up - the word means a place derived from a place or region) from India. Today's word: jodhpurs.

PRONUNCIATION:
(JOD-puhrz)
MEANING:
noun: Riding breeches loose above the knees but close-fitting from the knees to the ankles.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Jodhpur, a city in northwestern India, earlier a princely state.

USAGE:
"One thing is certain. Once he packs up his souperman cape and jockey jodhpurs, stories about [Campbell Soup CEO] David Johnson will be traded for years to come."
Linda Grant; Stirring it up at Campbell; Fortune (New York); May 13, 1996.

The other words so far this week: golconda and doolally.
UPDATE, 12/21/2008: The final two words for the week: calico and tamarind.

Looks like SAJA needs to add these words to its collection of English words of South Asian origin (anaconda, shampoo, the suffix -ware among them) at
http://www.saja.org/resources/stylebook#southasianwords.

[In fact, the whole SAJA Stylebook for Covering South Asia & the South Asian Diaspora could use an update and new entries. If you'd like to volunteer, let us know - saja[at]columbia.edu]

Post your comments below.

MEDIA: New Figures on Indian Newspaper Circulations

[Update: Although we've used the word 'circulation' we should've said 'readership.' Please scroll down to the comments section for a rather illuminating discussion of the terms, involving Subir Ghosh, a member of Newswatch.in]

Newswatch.in, a media watchdog organization, has just released new statistics on newspaper circulations in India. The results make a fascinating read and are a wake-up call to anyone who, like me, has a lot more contact with the English media in India than with vernacular newspapers.

The Times of India is the country’s largest circulation English daily (13 million) and yet there are newspapers in five vernacular languages whose readership figures demolish that of the Times. Furthermore, the English dailies’ circulations have tended to contract slightly since last year while over the same period the Hindi dailies have made gains on the order of 1 to 3 million additional readers.

In Hindi, the top paper, Dainik Jagran, has a circulation of 56 million and the second place paper, Dainik Bhaskar, is read by 34 million people.  Indeed, all five of the Hindi papers listed by newswatch.in have higher circulations than any English paper.

In Bengali, Ananda Bazar Patrika has a circulation of 15 million (while the local English-language paper, the Kolkata-based Telegraph, has a circulation of only 3 million).

Additionally, papers in Marathi, Tamil and Telegu have a higher circulation than the Times and if we lower the standard of comparison to the second-highest circulation English daily, Hindustan Times, which has 6 million readers, then there are more widely read papers in Gujarati, Kannada and Malayalam. 

MEDIA BIZ: Rafat Ali wants you to be an journalist entrepreneur

"This is probably the best time in history to be a journalist. I know there's a lot of fear in the industry with all the layoffs and it's hard to look beyond 2009, but the reality is that the craft of journalism and the need for it is the highest than any time in history..."

Those words and the 10-minute video are from SAJAer Rafat Ali, one of the sharpest minds in the world of online journalism. He is the founder of PaidContent.org and ContentNext. He was at Columbia Journalism School today, sharing his thoughts on the state of the media and his mission of evangelizing about the need for more journalists to become entrepreneurs. He also talked about how he went from an independent blogger to an authoritative voice on all things digital and in the process sold his company to The Guardian for $30 million (he says he cannot confirm nor deny that number)

Here's an interview (and video) by WSJ's Kara Swisher when the Guardian deal was first announced.

From ContentNext: Founded in 2002, "the company's news sites chroniclethe economic evolution of digital content that is shaping the futureof the media, information and entertainment industries. Our belief isthat in the near future, all media will be digital media, and we are helping define sustainable business models and innovation within this sector."

See other videos of Ali here.

Post your comments below.

WEBCAST: NABJ's "Managing Today's Newsroom" series

From Andrew Humphrey, a Detroit journalist and NABJ (and SAJA) member. He is founder and chair of the NABJ's Digital Journalism Task Force (which you can join here: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/DJTF/).

MANAGING TODAY’S NEWSROOM: DOING MORE WITH LESS
Sponsored by:

                                                  

WHO IS THIS FOR?                     
This series of web seminars (seminars) will prepare you for the complete change of responsibilities that come with becoming an editor or producer and will help you plan for the challenges ahead.  Come away with a better understanding of what your colleague n the newsroom expects of you. The invaluable set of tools in this seminar will prepare you to assume that all-important first supervisory role with greater confidence and success.

REGISTER ONLINE
www.MyNABJ.org                         

REGISTRATION RATES
Members: FREE
Non-Members: $39 per session; $129 for  series

October 15, 2008
                            Managing Today’s Newsroom: Doing More with Less
                        NABJ/NewsU Management Webinar

November 12, 2008
                            Mastering Newsroom Politics: Making Alliances & Wielding  Influence
                      NABJ/NewsU Management Webinar                   

Examine the transformation taking place in newsrooms across the country and the new demands on those in hiring and supervisory roles.

Presenter: Wanda  Lloyd, executive editor, Montgomery Advertiser

NEW SITE: Tina Brown launches "The Daily Beast"

That's Famous Magazine Editor Tina Brown (former editor of The New Yorker, Talk), sitting with cup in hand, in a staff photo that's part of the launch of The Daily Beast, her latest venture (I swear I am not posting it just because of the South Asian gent on the far right... but anyone know who he is? UPDATE: he's Amish Gandhi, director of product there - helps run the website, mobile and other products).

From the site's first day and a Q&A with her:

What is The Daily Beast? It's a speedy, smart edit of the web from the merciless point of view of what interests the editors. The Daily Beast is the omnivorous friend who hears about the best stuff and forwards it to you with a twist. It allows you to lead the conversation, rather than simply follow it.

Does the world really need another news aggregator? The Daily Beast doesn't aggregate. It sifts, sorts, and curates. We're as much about what's not there as what is. And we freshen the stream with a good helping of our own original content from a wonderfully diverse group of contributors … satirist Christopher Buckley, historian Sean Wilentz, former McCain adviser Mark McKinnon, Project Runway’s Laura Bennett, the former editor of Al-Hayat Salameh Nematt, Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg, Nick Ciarelli who founded Think Secret, and many others.

She addresses head-on the question of her leaving The New Yorker in 1998 (among other things, SAJAforum readers are likely to remember the big special fiction issue that she ran in 1997 commemorating the 50th anniversary of India's independence):

Was quitting The New Yorker the biggest mistake of your life? To every thing (turn turn turn) there is a season. If I'd stayed at The New Yorker I'd never have written a best seller. More important, there'd be no such animal as The Daily Beast. I have the best of both worlds. I can edit The Daily Beast and read The New Yorker.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Post your comments below.

 

WEBCAST: The South Asian Blogosphere and How it is Changing the Media

Listen to our BlogTalkRadio webcast in the player above or at this link (some highlights below by Jyoti Gupta).

As part of the second-anniversary celebrations of SAJAforum.org, SAJA's newsy blog, we are hosting an online panel discussion among some of the best-known names in the South Asian blogosphere. They will discuss the state of the blogosphere (South Asian and otherwise) and how it is affecting how news and information about South Asia and the diaspora is gathered and shared.

SPEAKERS:

Sabahat Ashraf ("iFaqeer"); blogger at blog.iFaqeer.com, contributor to several Pakistani/South Asian and Muslim blogs
http://www.iFaqeer.com

Anil Dash, VP and chief evangelist for SixApart (makers of TypePad  and Moveable Type) and one of the earliest (1999!) and most influential bloggers in the world
http://www.anildash.com/anil/

Karthik, blogger, Uberdesi.com
http://www.uberdesi.com

Maria Giovanna, blogger and journalist, Filmiholic.com
http://www.filmiholic.com

Arun Venugopal, editor, SAJAforum.org; correspondent, WNYC Radio
http://www.sajaforum.org

LISTEN LIVE OR TO A RECORDING: 
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/saja/2008/09/26/desiblogs

As always, you are welcome to quote from anything said during the FREE, WORLDWIDE webcasts at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/saja

NOTES FROM this session by Jyoti Gupta <loopdesign@gmail>:

For those interested in floating their own blogs/social networks and/or ideas on the Web, here are tips from members of the South Asian blogosphere who participated on the SAJA webcast on Sept. 26, 2008.

The one advice that emerged from the sharing of perspectives: Chose a subject of your interest. Don’t concern yourself with eyeballs, audiences, or money-making.

Paraphrasing some of the other tips: