Central Asia needs more bloggers: write for neweurasia!
Cross-regional and Blogosphere, CyberChaikhana7 Comments
Central Asia is confronted by monster challenges and simmering crises, but it also has rambunctious and lively societies brimming with potential. Since our start in 2005, neweurasia‘s bloggers have been bearing witness to the region’s struggles with intelligence, insight, and healthy doses of sarcasm.
We are looking for bright young minds (or even old cynical ones) to write commentary and analysis, report breaking news, make webcasts, and post photo-essays. We offer financial compensation on a pay-per-post basis, as well as on a formula basis for special coverage (“blogging assignments”).
We especially need people who can think out of the box and rejuvenate the state of citizen journalism in the region. Let’s face it: Central Asia doesn’t need any more bloggers talking about how much this or that government sucks.*
Instead, the region needs bloggers who are willing to talk about everyday life things like sports, cuisine, shopping and fashion, the nuances that make living in Central Asia so special, and even the strange things your neighbors do at odd hours in the early morning. :-o
We need people who live and breathe Central Asia and blogging.
If you are interested in working with us, please contact:
Christopher Schwartz
English Managing Editor
schwartz [at] neweurasia [dot] net
Yelena Jetpyspayeva
Russian Managing Editor
yelena [at] neweurasia [dot] net
*(Click on the image above to read more about the state of journalism in Central Asia from The Registan‘s founder, Nathan Hamm.)
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“(or even old cynical ones)”
AHA! Well that’s on my CV as a key profile characteristic yes.
:)lol
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Schwartz Reply:
August 8th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
@Turgai Sangar, hahaha. Well, if you can be cynical *and* idealistic, then you would be a perfect Central Asian blogger!
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Turgai Sangar Reply:
August 13th, 2009 at 9:22 am
“cynical *and* idealistic”
That’s what they call polyvalence, I guess. :)
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Great post! I agree, it would be nice to get more Central Asian bloggers who are not journalists, per se. Can you try to recruit them from the Barcamps there?
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Schwartz Reply:
August 8th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
@SaigonNezumi(Kevin), that’s something we’ve been doing and will try to do more of in the future. But do you have anything in particular in mind?
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Dear Neweurasia:
While I respect your views, I want to say to you that I don’t agree with this statement on your post:
“Let’s face it: Central Asia doesn’t need any more bloggers talking about how much this or that government sucks.* Instead, the region needs bloggers who are willing to talk about everyday life things like sports, cuisine, shopping and fashion, the nuances that make living in Central Asia so special, and even the strange things your neighbors do at odd hours in the early morning. :-o”
Yes, we need more bloggers in this region, but mostly who can suggest views on better ways of addressing major difficulties and issue its people are facing and suffering from. You see, there just too many problems in this region with the way people are governed and subsequently, they have to suffer extremely all year round that we cannot avoid talking about them. We need more people to analyze and offer constructive criticisms in the hopes of causing some positive changes in our societies.
People are just too pre-occupied trying to earn a living for themselves and their families there that as we Tajiks say, “everyday life joys don’t fit into our minds and soul yet.” We can’t talk much about sports, cuisine, shopping and fashionable life when most of these people are close to starving or dying of oppresion, decease, extremism or another snow or mud slide in poor villages.
So, saying that Central Asia doesn’t need any more bloggers talking about governments’ faults, how they suck and should do better is totally wrong. I am sorry if this view has caused disturbance in you, but I hope you will understand my position.
With best regards.
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Turgai Sangar Reply:
August 13th, 2009 at 9:18 am
“Yes, we need more bloggers in this region, but mostly who can suggest views on better ways of addressing major difficulties and issue its people are facing and suffering from.”
There’s a third way: blogging on how the major problems are seen and coped with at the ‘grassroots level’ (by/among ‘the people’). Human interest reports without becoming trivial as it often happens (not specifically here but in general).
I agree with Patriot TJ that is you go into things like shopping and fashion, you end up talking about an articifial lifestyle of certain farty urban elite groups that is lightyears away from the reality of 90% of the population. Unless you include that aspect of social constrast in your article of course.
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