Date post: | 07-Dec-2014 |
Category: |
News & Politics |
Upload: | teschwartz |
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Who are we?
• Founded in 2005 by US and EU students to report from and on Central Asia;
• Original principle: one country, one blog; main site as the « hub »;
• Teamed up with Transitions Online in 2006, employed « bridge bloggers » - paid bloggers who head the country sections;
• Hivos and OSI as the initial funders.
Successes
• Steady news flow, increasing visitor numbers, launch of Russian and Kazakh/Kyrgyz/Uzbek/Tajik language versions;
• Blocked in Uzbekistan since summer 2006;• Altogether 50 training sessions, seminars and
conferences held in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, reaching 600+ people;
• Best Blog contest, specific country highlights, mainstream media attention.
• Training sessions
• Traffic
Unique pageviews May 2007 – July 2008
• International audience
• Kazakhstan blogs dominant
• Current technological limits– Multi-install Wordpress hard to maintain;– Few (useful) «Web 2.0» features;– No clear navigation between languages;– How can we highlight the various forms of content we
have?
Current conceptual problems• Are we a blog? A news-site? A webzine?• Who do we publish for? Central Asia or Europe/US?• What’s our editorial mission?• How can we make sure there is real dialogue between the
readerships?• How can we retain our position as the «region’s premier
blogging network»? • Do we want to «spin off» successful local language blogs into
separate and independent projects?
• Finally, where will we be in one year’s time?
• Reinventing neweurasia.net– New one-installation Wordpress blog hub uniting
all different country sections;– More «newsy» look, clear hierarchy of stories;– New theme-based navigation;– Better and cleaner photo, video and podcast
integration;
Reinventing our place online
• New site design heralds change towards more «quality blogging» - originally researched stories along with exclusive photo and video content;
• Hiring of two editors (English, Russian) to guide bloggers;• Better integration with established media by developing
stories out of blog posts, offering monetary and development rewards to bloggers;
• Citizen media as a fast, (more) democratic, cost-effective, yet quality «alternative» to mainstream media;
• More translations mean more flow of information between the different audiences.
• Showcasing the potential of «quality» citizen media by compiling and editing a book of 60-odd best posts
• Further monitoring of the local blogospheres and cooperation with Global Voices
Challenges along the way• Funding realities (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan), short
cycles;• Sustainability – no money no content (neweurasia started as
a volunteer project)?• Relaunch harder than thought (5,000 stories, 10,000+
comments, pictures, etc. – big and technically challenging database migration);
• Generational change at helm of neweurasia: Rejuvenation, new ideas – change is hard!
• Reaching out to Central Asian bloggers;• Is there room to grow?