Global Voices Previews Reporters Without Borders BlogGuide

Julien Pain of Reporters Without Borders visited the Berkman Center in July. Of great interest to us was a guide for bloggers being prepared by Reporters Without Borders that was intended to show bloggers how to bypass censorship and preserve their anonymity.

Well, the guide is ready -- Berkman fellows Rebecca MacKinnon and Ethan Zuckerman got a sneak peak and have blogged their responses and gratitude on Global Voices (and they've also posted a link to the BlogGuide, check it out!):

Lately there has been a proliferation of blogging guides published in English, but almost all of them are aimed at Americans and Western Europeans. Or they’re meant for companies and organizations who want to use blogging for smarter P.R., “knowledge management,” or internal communication purposes, or for people who want to turn their blogs into little commercial media enterprises. Then there are the articles about how you can improve your social and romantic life through blogging… or how to use your blog to make yourself notorious, get on TV and become famous…

The Reporters Without Borders Handbook for Bloggers and Cyberdissidents is not for any of those purposes. It is the first truly useful book I’ve seen aimed at the kinds of bloggers featured here at Global Voices every day: People who have views and information that they want to share with the world beyond their own national borders. They are often people whose perspectives are not well represented in their own country’s media, and certainly not well reported by the international media. Sometimes they are political dissidents, but usually not. Mainly, they are just ordinary citizens with a passion to communicate with the world - and no easier way to do so than by writing, podcasting, and posting pictures on their own blogs.

The Handbook for Bloggers is for people who want to be serious participants in the emergent online global conversation: How to set up a quality, credible blog. How to get it noticed.

To get Rebecca and Ethan's full response, click here to visit Global Voices. To download a copy of the guide, click here.