"We Media"

We are at the beginning of a Golden Age of journalism — but it is not journalism as we have known it. Media futurists have predicted that by 2021, "citizens will produce 50 percent of the news peer-to-peer." However, mainstream news media have yet to meaningfully adopt or experiment with these new forms. Historically, journalists have been charged with informing the democracy. But their future will depend not on only how well they inform but how well they encourage and enable conversations with citizens. That is the challenge.This report details the important considerations when exploring a collaborative effort between audience and traditional media organizations.

Media organizations will need to rethink some of their basic ideas about journalism, organization and the role of audience if they hope to remain indispensable resources to their readers and viewers.This chapter explores effective ways of integrating participatory journalism into existing media operations.
Connections = Value
Our research suggests a simple proposition for media in the network economy: Connections equal value. There are three types of connections that media should consider:1. Continuous connections: Magazines and newspapers need Internet counterparts that are providing continuous updates to their audience. This doesn't mean a web site filled with shovelware content. It needs to be a 24x7x365, living, breathing, responsive extension of your brand. Increase the frequency of connections with daily email newsletters, weblogs, RSS feeds and forums. 2. Network connections, online and off: Use your content (print and online) as a platform to guide and direct readers to additional news, information and experiences on the Web and in other media. Ultimately, this will make your content more valuable because it's connected to similar information. As well, your customers' media diet is becoming more varied and vast. Don't leave your product in a cul-de-sac. 3. Intercast connections: A successful news Web site is a platform that supports social interaction around the story. Print media must begin to engage and grow online community in order to build affinity and loyalty to their brand experience. Community members have a stake in your brand when they engage the journalistic process — by providing valuable commentary, displaying their mastery of a subject, offering grassroots reporting and acting as filters for their fellow readers.News organizations have policies, practices and traditions that discourage connections. Despite this, the audience is still managing to become part of the news equation by creating links and commentary that center on news events. The emergent behavior of participatory journalism suggests that audiences want to create intimate connections with news organizations, reporters and the stories they produce. The challenge in newsrooms will be to persuade writers, editors and advertisers to stop thinking in terms of a broadcast model (one-to-many) and to start "thinking network" (one-to-one).At the strategic level, a corporation must decide: Is the value of your audience going to be its size or the quality of its participation? Most likely, both factors will come into play. That leads directly to the next set of questions: What is it worth to acquire participants? What are you willing to do to keep them for the long term?

During the peace demonstrations in February, Rein took to the streets of San Francisco and Oakland, camcorder in hand, and shot footage of the marchers and speakers, including Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), singer Harry Belafonte and antiwar activist Ron Kovic. She posted the video on her Weblog, complete with color commentary, providing much deeper (if more subjective) coverage of the events than a viewer would get by watching the local news.
"At one point, the press started covering the protests as an annoyance, a traffic jam problem," Rein says. "Videotaping the early marches helped spread the word that there were a lot of people who had reservations about our intentions in Iraq." In recent months, Rein has covered three different conferences. At South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, she videotaped the keynote presentation by Lawrence Lessig. At the Internet Law Conference at Stanford, she interviewed one of the key speakers. Rein also taped highlights of a digital rights conference in Berkeley. She has posted countless hours of video on her Weblog, along with her analysis of events.

The Indus River Valley

The culture that developed in the Indus River Valley around 3500-2500 BC, referred to by some as the Harappan Culture (named for Harappa, one of the ruined cities of the ancient civilization), was cut off from others on all sides by its geography.
The Chinese cultures were to the north and northeast, past the giant Himalayas. Crossing the Thar Desert and thick jungles to the east, one would have come to the early people of the Ganges River Valley. The Indus people were isolated from the Mesopotamians and other near-east cultures to the west / northwest by the Hindu Kush and vast deserts. Finally, the people of the Indus Valley were hemmed in to the south by the Arabian Sea / Indian Ocean. Nevertheless, the Indus River civilization flourished and grew to control more land (on the order of 500,000 square miles) than either the ancient Egyptians or the Mesopotamians.
Even though it developed independentally from the other river valley civilizations, the success of the Indus Valley Civilization was due in large part to the Indus River itself. Fed by monsoonal summer rains and winter runoff from the mountains, the Indus River, especially when seen from space, is an obvious oasis in an otherwise bleak looking region.
To the Indus Valley people, the river provided fertile grounds to crops of rice, wheat, various fruits and vegetables, and cotton. In addition, the Indus provided grazing lands for herd animals and, of course, a steady supply of fresh water. Ironically, the Indus and the geography of the region provide for speculation about the mysterious end of the Indus Valley civilization. Some theorize that earthquakes and abnormally large and frequent floods caused the end for the Indus people. One theory even suggests that the Indus River itself changed course, thereby forcing the people to leave

History of Swine Flu in Pakistan

First case of Swine flu in Pakistan was detected in August, 2009 and till date the confirmed cases is constantly increasing. Even few doctors have been infected with it. The Swine flu infected patients in Karachi has reached 32 and now a case has also been detected in Lahore. The Government has not shown any serious response to the pandemic. Unless proper steps are taken, the flu is expected to spread and cause havoc in Pakistan.
Please feel free to let us know if you have any further information about Swine flu cases and or if you have any experience of the hospitals and how they are treating it, we will add the information to update it.
8 more swine flu cases reported in city
KARACHI: The total number of patients affected with swine flu in Karachi has increased to 52 after eight more cases were confirmed on Wednesday. The health department spokesman said the new cases were reported at the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) where after necessary tests, it was confirmed that they were affected with swine flu, a new strain of the H1N1 virus. The total number of confirmed cases until Tuesday was 44, two of which were reported at the Services Hospital, while the remaining at AKUH, he added. He also said according to confirmed reports, so far three patients have died of this virus in the city. staff report

Reducing Poverty Through Rural Development in Sindh.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (21 November 2002) - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing a US$50 million project loan to reduce poverty through rural development in southern Sindh, Pakistan.

The Sindh Rural Development Project will tackle poverty in canal-irrigated areas of Badin, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar and Thatta districts.

The project aims to improve the social and economic standing of the poorest groups, focusing on tenants and agricultural laborers, marginal owners-cum-tenants and small village-based artisans, particularly women.This will be achieved through

Improved governance and legal support

Enhanced social processes at the community level

A boost to rural livelihoods ?

Upgraded rural infrastructure and settlement improvement 

Project management support

A majority of rural households in the four target districts do not own agricultural or homestead land.
The deeply entrenched poverty of tenants and agricultural laborers is perpetuated by the sharecropping tenancy system.

The project will be implemented at district level, promoting a partnership between government, nongovernment organizations, and community-based organizations.

Better governance and legal support will also pave the way for more favorable sharing arrangements for tenant farmers. Expected beneficiaries include 96,000 households in 3,200 village groups.

The project loan, drawn from the concessional Asian Development Fund, has a term of 32 years, including a grace period of eight years, with interest charged at 1% during the grace period and 1.5% per year subsequently.

The Government will finance about US$11.25 million equivalent. Beneficiaries will contribute about US$1.25 million for civil works.

The Local Government Department of the Government of Sindh is the project's executing agency.

Barani Area Development Project - Phase II, 2000

The status of women in Pakistan remains of grave concern. While the primary objective of the

Barani Area Development Project

is poverty reduction, its secondary objective is to improve the status of women and to enhance their contribution to, and benefit from, the project. Significant gender disparity exists in the project area, with women having significantly less access than men to basic social services such as education and health. Overall, women's literacy in the project area is estimated at 8.5 percent but in some areas drops below one percent. Women are often malnourished as a result of their heavy workload in the subsistence sector, poor nutrition and frequent pregnancies, and have limited access to resources of any kind. The institutional framework is ill-equipped to deliver services to women.

To address these acute gender inequalities, the project developed a strategic framework of gender mainstreaming, that is fully reflected in the project's components, budget, implementation arrangements and benefit monitoring and evaluation programs. It is also detailed in the Loan Agreement and theproject administration memorandum (PAM) used by project implementation staff.

Design features built into the project include formation of separate women's organizations led by women; and placement of female credit officers to ensure that at least 30 per cent of borrowers are women. Skill and micro-enterprise training will be provided to women, together with support for their subsequent economic endeavours. This will be accompanied by social training and strengthening measures in village health, education, organization and networking; and rural infrastructure such as improved water supply and roads, to ease their household labour burden and improve their access to outside resources. Specific percentages have been agreed to ensure women's share in all these activities.

To further ensure the effective implementation of these measures, the project will place gender specialists in the project's management and implementation units and sub-units, to monitor and evaluate the process and interventions, and ensure further employment of women under the project. Efforts will also be made to ensure the balanced gender composition of project staff at the central level throughout project implementation. Following the high turnover of women staff in an earlier project, given the lack of social protection available to women living alone, the project will construct hostel and office accommodation for women, and provide double cabin vehicles which will be more acceptable for mixed-gender field visits

SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF PAKISTAN

SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF PAKISTAN

According to most definitions, a social problem is a harmful social condition, according to the beliefs and values of some influential or dominant group in the society. A harmful social condition becomes a social problem when a social need persists over some time and is not provided for because there are a number of competing needs while the proposed budget is not sufficient to cater for all of them. Thus social problems involve social issues. Sociological approaches to social problems usually involve research to determine the causes of social problems and the effectiveness of policies or programs in attempting to solve them.

Pakistan is a third world country, and like any other country its inhabitants have needs which need to be fulfilled.

And the three basic are: food, shelter, and education. When these needs are not fulfilled they become social problems. Pakistan, being a poor country is facing many problems which includes governance, corruption, shortage of resources. .

1. Land reforms

2. Bad governance

3. Corruption

4. Illiteracy /Education

5. Health

6. Poverty

7. Agriculture

Education

61.2% of Pakistan illiterate

50.0% male illiteracy

75.6% female illiteracy

Limits opportunities of women

Women don't enter workforce

Poorly educated about family planning

No control of population

Perhaps the greatest loss comes in the area of education. Whether or not this is a direct result of Pakistan's economic problems, it is undoubtedly connected. With so many resources directed towards the aforementioned debt payment, educational improvements are given and inordinately low priority. In addition, Musharraf's military dictatorship has understandably not placed great emphasis on education in Pakistan. This is evident upon examination of Pakistan's overall literacy rate of 37.8% (50% for men and 24.4% for women). Literacy being defined as those over 15 who can read and write.

In terms of population, low literacy rates are often observed with high population growth. A poorly educated population is unlikely to participate in family planning or any other form of population control. Secondarily, a poorly educated populace makes Pakistan a poor choice for the foreign investors that it so desperately needs. Furthermore, the extremely low literacy rate among Pakistani women (24.4%) lends itself to a society where most women never enter the labor force, creating less incentives for them to limit the size of their families. This is best illustrated by the fact that only 38 million of Pakistan's 141 million people make up the entire labor force.

Poverty

Uneducated population unattractive to foreign　 business

Difficult to recruit foreign businesses

Only 38 million of 142 million make up work force

7% unemployment, but 34% of people in poverty

No foreign investment

Pakistan remains poor

Deeply linked to the massive debt　and poorly educated people, is the large portion of Pakistan's population that lives in poverty. With an average of 2,000 dollars of GDP per person (adjusted for purchasing power parity), the average citizen is forced to live off very limited resources. This is reflected in the fact that 34% of the population lives below the poverty line, despite a mere 7% unemployment.　 Pakistan's lack of fiscal resources is yet another barrier against foreign investment.　 Without foreign investment, Pakistan lacks the resources to bring about positive economic development.　 Without positive economic development, Pakistan is unable to attract foreign investors

Media and National Development

Information has become an essential tool in a nation's development process, in enhancing good governance and empowering people around the world. The relationship between the media and government and its influence on democracy and national development is inevitably non-separable. In the 21st century, with the emergence of modern nation states, media is an essential aid to development, becoming an important channel for public communication and transparency.In Malaysia, the perception has been that there are stringent political, legal and economic controls imposed on the mainstream media. Whether or not this is a deserving perception, the Malaysian media is expected to play its role in supporting government aims and visions.Prior to Independence, the vernacular papers played a very important role in drumming up support for the Independence movement. When Tunku Abdul Rahman became Prime Minister, mainstream media were utilised to support public policy and later on to promote the formation of Malaysia. The media continued to play its crucial role in supporting government objectives throughout Tunku's time, and even more so after the May 1969 riots, when promoting racial unity became the central theme underlying public policy.This role continued throughout Malaysia's successive Prime Ministers. And while the Malaysian government does not control the media directly, press laws and rules relating to sedition, internal security and official secrets exist to set the boundaries for the media. The press in Malaysia are advised to avoid divisive public controversies that could spark racial sentiments, in the interest of national unity.So far, Malaysia has achieved growth and structural transformation in an ethically diverse society, and the press plays a major role in sustaining stability for the country. Nevertheless, there are concerns raised on media freedom, responsibility, transparency and objectivity.The environment has also changed due to the Internet which has allowed the growth of internet news sites and alternative media channels. The development of new tools of internet communication has also led to a new phenomenon called "blogs", giving rise to citizen journalism. The rules of engagement between government and media have to change to adapt to this "flatter" landscape
Dr. Mahathir Mohamad
The two principles of media and freedom of press:
1. There is nothing absolute in this world. Freedom must always be limited with something and/or the environment that binds it
2. For every tool that we have, there is always more than one ways to use it; be it for good or evil deeds
That is what former Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad said at the opening of his keynote address this morning, dedicating the Perdana Discourse Series titled "Media and National Development", at Perdana Leadership Foundation, Precinct 8, Putrajaya.
Tun Dr. Mahathir also said that when any of the world media talked about the press being controlled, they will never fail to mention Malaysia. Media is very important to disseminate information. Like a knife, it can be used positively and also can be used, negatively.
He said further that information that media brings will help the process of decision making, especially when people are "in the dark" about situation that surrounds them. The people should be wise enough to study and select which information is positive for them and it will be used for progress. However, sometime choose to tell media a completely wrong story. For example, the economy is not doing so well but the media said everything is fantastic.
Information available today can damage the society. For example is pornography. Previous society have no access to free pornographic materials like today, so there were much less sexual related crimes, which also include those against children.
Sex, Violence & Popularity
Tun Dr. Mahathir shared with the audience, when he first started the Multimedia Super Corridor, members of the International Advisory Panel (IAP) warned him against any form of censorship over the internet. He said, it is inline with the principle of ‘the right to know’.
He said reminded that ‘Sex and Violence’ sells and makes money. Those are the themes of so many of Western media which include film, tv and even video games. He said the consumers tolerated the exploitation against women and many actually love it, especially semi or nude shots. Therefore the demand grew.
He said there should be a balance between the desire to make money and contribute something to the process of national development. Its is important that media continue to be economically viable but he reminded that what is popular, does not mean it is good, positive and progressive for the society and process of national development.
"Rarely a newspaper succeeded in being popular and sells (but at the same time), do the right thing for national development", said the former Prime Minister. For example, if they wrongly interpret certain angles about certain issues, it will create racial disharmony and create discomfort in the society. People always do not act rationally in some sensationalized reportings. Common sense is not actually common. "Sometime, people can be irrational", he reminded.
Blogs
On blogging, Tun Dr. Mahathir said the bloggers need to tell the truth. "The new media" will compliment the movement of information as there will be ‘spin doctors’ will ensure print media skewed some angle of certain news, especially that will affect an particular individual or collective individuals.
The intellectual discourse that followed afterwards on the topic "Media and National Development" include the thoughts of Dato’ A Kadir Jasin, former Chief Editor NST and now Malaysian Business editor and blogger, Steven Gan, founder of online newspaper ‘Malaysiakini’, an IT business startegist and renowned ‘Screenshots’ blogger, Jeff Ooi and Dr Kamalan Jeevan from International Medical University.
On the topic of moderation, Dato’ Kadir said practiced no restrains in his blog provided they adhere to simple universally accepted virtues like no profanities and incorrect facts.
Media Conference
At the media conference soon after, Tun Dr. Mahathir explained that he is still not shy to state that the Jews ruled the world by proxy and is in direct control of the western media. This is a fact and he will make no attempt to correct his earlier statements. The example he used was how the President was not supposed to declare a war unless Congress approved it.
On the issue about his earlier accusations that the Prime Minister own a house in Perth, he admitted it was the spur of the moment during the heat of the speech that he said that, based on rumours speculating around.
However, he thanked Raja Petra for correcting him and apologized openly about making the mistake that Khairy Jamaluddin himself made few weeks ago explained that his brother in law, Kamaluddin Abdullah is the one actually owns the property, where else two weeks ago Malaysia Today exposed that the house is registered under Patrick Lim’s wife’s name.
When asked about Proton merger with VW, then and now, Tun Dr. Mahathir explained that when VW went into merger mode with Proton a while ago, Proton was in a better position to bargain because their financial position was very strong and even had a lot of cash. Now the terms are different. His advice was "remove the management!". He could cynically mean the management of another administration, in line with his speech in Johor Bahru on 10 February.
In this media conference, in response to the question about registering Bloggers, he reminded Bloggers that they should tell the truth and have a role to play to ensure that information is disseminated well to the public. "Stick to the truth. Do not embelish or make something up", he uttered.
Tun Dr. Mahathir also said that the Sepang F1 racetrack is the greatest free annual advertisement for Malaysia which is worth at least RM one billion. It is sad for him to see Malaysia lost their annual Formula One series in the years to come, something successful since 1999.
On the issue of the Johor Menteri Besar announcing that they are interested to remove the Free Access Zone feature of Iskandar Development Region (IDR) but it was a Federal Government’s call, Tun Dr. Mahathir said the Government could explained the whole thing much earlier and quashed with all the uneasiness caused to the people, especially sensitivities against Singaporeans and other nationals through Singapore, freely enter into Johor, seamlessly without any inspection what so ever.