Citizen Journalists Reporting from India's Isolated Regions with Project by Knight Fellow
Shubhranshu Choudhary
As a Knight International Journalism fellow, I am working on a project that uses mobile technology to enable citizens in India’s most isolated regions to produce and deliver news. I am sending along a video from a Citizen Journalism Training Workshop we organized in February 2010 in Kunkuri Chhattisgarh. We trained 33 tribal citizens on basics of journalism and on how to report using mobile phones. Elisa Tinsley, Director, Knight International journalism Program in ICFJ and Bill Thies of Microsoft Research Lab in India also took part in the training.
In Chhattisgarh there are no tribal journalists or journalists who understand the tribal languages in the state. A survey showed that mainstream newspapers in the state gave only 2% of their space to news related to stories on tribal communities.
After three days of training, supported in part by UNICEF, these new citizen journalists have started reporting about important events and happenings in their villages. They are recording two- minute audio reports on their mobile phones. Once their stories get vetted, anyone from the community can simply call a number and get the latest.
A story about our new network ran in prime time on one of the top TV stations in India, so the mainstream press is beginning to notice.
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June 25th, 2010 at 11:06 pm
They say get the first monkey off your back and I guess you have done that. Prime time coverage will spread the news and many will be part of it
June 30th, 2010 at 9:41 am
ICFJ board member Peter Osnos wrote about Choudhary’s project in his column in the Atlantic, where he said that mobile technology is exciting because it has leapfrogged other forms of communication and because it allows information to travel both to and from citizens.
Look here: http://bit.ly/brvo6B