Most of you will have seen the extensive job listings we have posted over the last couple of days. Thanks to the welcome news that our cooperation with TOL will go into its second year, we can now offer quite a few lucrative jobs for people based in the region.

Almost inevitably, this raises several questions about the state of the blogosphere in the region - and also whether our approach, i.e. paying people for blogging, is a good one. The inspiration to write down some of my thoughts came from a post on Beyond the River, a wonderful blog maintained by the two Central Asia aficionados Sue and Ian (H/T: Nathan).

Sue says:

So far, though, I would argue that blogging on Central Asia has had more of a positive impact on the Central Asian aficionados around the world rather than Central Asians themselves.

I think Sue is right in some respects. The blogs that are visible to us “Westerners” are mostly those written in English and a few Russian-speaking ones regulary linked to from Global Voices and other blogs, including neweurasia (take e.g. Edil Baisalov’s or Adam Kesher’s LJs).

Somewhat unsurprisingly, blogging as a social phenomenon seems less rooted in a region with little internet penetration and economic problems for many of its citizens. Add to this the oppressive character of the country’s governments - and it’s clear why relatively few people engage in online disucssions about possibly contentious political and social issues.

But there are already many more LJs and other blogs active in the region than one might think - most of which, unfortunately, don’t really have active and vibrant links to the Central Asia fan club around the world. The only people we have around the world who actually get paid to discover these hidden treasures are Nathan (who covers the region on GV) and neweurasia’s bridge bloggers.

Partly for that reason alone, I think it’s a great opportunity that we can continue our project for another year. For the first time, we’ll have bridge bloggers for all five Central Asian countries, we will help spawn blogs outside our site’s architecture, and extend our coverage into the local languages.

In addition, we’ll have all bridge bloggers spreading the word about blogs in general, convene training events throughout the region (minus Uzbekistan, that is) and award a blogger from the region with the “Best Central Asia Blog” prize - and send him or her to the next Global Voices conference, linking up with bloggers from around the whole wide world.

But there are also drawbacks to our strategy. We are paying people for their work on neweurasia and the “thematic” blogs. And, as Sue has realised, we’re also paying them rather well. While the fact that we pay people shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has looked at the jobs’ requirements, we are aware that by fostering paid-for-blogging in the region, we are misrepresenting our own incentives for blogging.

I couldn’t sum up better than Sue why I personally keep on blogging (albeit never as frequently as others here and elsewhere):

We have access to information that someone interested in Central Asia say, only fifteen years ago, did not. Instead of being lonely individuals who are passionate about the “-stans,” we are now united as a community. We can connect with others who share our interests, people who we may have never met. For example, one of the authors I cited in my last post just happened to comment on it. Finally, and most importantly, we have the ability to express our own views and report on what’s happening in the region politically and culturally. Are we all journalists? Maybe not. But are we playing an important role in the dissemination of information about Central Asia at a time when its role in international politics is growing? Definitely.

We are in a comfortable situation to do this - most of us have other full-time jobs or are full-time students, not having to worry about money day in and day out. Nonetheless, I am positive that blogging will gradually develop further in Central Asia, as is already evident from the growing number of local blogs.

Correspondingly, this year, we will still be able to pay guest contributors for their posts on neweurasia, although our monthly budget for this has got smaller. The problem facing our bridge bloggers will thus mainly be: How can you enthuse people from the region to write for free?

How can we convey the advantages we attribute to blogging? How will it be at a certain point in the future, when funding for our website inevitably dries up? Will we have to close neweurasia down because nobody would write for free anymore? Will our thematic blogs become dormant?

This is one of the great challenges of this year. Stay tuned for what hopefully will be a good year for the Central Asian blogosphere.