In the News: Global Voices

The Boston Globe features the Berkman Center's citizen media project, Global Voices, in "Collecting voices from everywhere: Harvard project looks at cultures through eyes of citizen bloggers."  A few excerpts are in this post, or take in the full article here.

"Launched 18 months ago, Global Voices attracts 900,000 unique visitors a month, according to Zuckerman. It has gained support from the MacArthur Foundation and more than $400,000 from Reuters Group PLC .The site grew out of brainstorming sessions with established international bloggers at Harvard two years ago, said Zuckerman . It started with a basic blogroll linking hundreds of postings, but then Zuckerman and cofounder Rebecca MacKinnon , a former CNN journalist, recruited editors and translators who were respected bloggers within their communities to summarize and choose postings and offer context for readers who weren't familiar with the cultural intricacies of countries like Paraguay or Zimbabwe."

"Zuckerman said he tries to find what he calls ``bridge bloggers" or writers who try to explain their local situation to a global audience rather than people who blog about their dinner or latest shopping trip."

"We're not the alternative to having good foreign news coverage," he said. "Bloggers aren't able to do what really talented professional journalists can. Bloggers for the most part have jobs. They're not able to spend days staking out a story. But we provide more perspective, more depth and more color than you're likely to get in a conventional newspaper."