Mar 16, 2005
And now for something, er, differentish.
Steven Levy, in the Newsweek, asks Does the blogosphere have a diversity problem?. Levy concludes:
Huh?! There never should be a reason to link to anyone besides your appreciation for their content. White, Brown, Liberal or whatever [uh, that goes for academic hirings too].
I would like to take the Levy piece apart but we have had plenty of that here lately.
Instead, I will take the suggestion and highlight two bloggers that I have been reading for a while who deserve lots of fame and glory.
From their blogs, you can find an amazing plethora of writers who may happen to be of a gender, race or ethnicity unlike yours.
Oh. Feel free to put your recommendations in the comments.
Is there a way to promote diversity online, given the built-in decentralization of the blog world? Jenkins, whose comment started the discussion, says that any approach is fine—except inaction."You can't wait for it to just happen," he says. Appropriately enough, the best ideas rely on individual choices. MacKinnon is involved in a project called Global Voices, to highlight bloggers from around the world. And at the Harvard conference, Suitt challenged people to each find 10 bloggers who weren't male, white or English-speaking—and link to them."Don't you think," she says,"that out of 8 million blogs, there could be 50 new voices worth hearing?" Definitely. Now let's see if the blogosphere can self-organize itself to find them.
Huh?! There never should be a reason to link to anyone besides your appreciation for their content. White, Brown, Liberal or whatever [uh, that goes for academic hirings too].
I would like to take the Levy piece apart but we have had plenty of that here lately.
Instead, I will take the suggestion and highlight two bloggers that I have been reading for a while who deserve lots of fame and glory.
- Chan'ad Baharini: Chan'ad blogs from Bahrain. And is intimately involved in the stirrings of democracy in that small kingdom. His series on the detained Bahraini blogger is a great example of how blogging can go beyong navel gazing. And, this post on billboards remains my favorite.
- Natasha Tynes: Natasha Tynes is a Jordanian journalist who lives in Qatar. I grew up in Doha. Reading her blog makes me homesick for Doha. And no, I never imagined I would ever say that. Her recent post on bad journalism and the comments it generated deserve your attention [for all kinds of reasons].
From their blogs, you can find an amazing plethora of writers who may happen to be of a gender, race or ethnicity unlike yours.
Oh. Feel free to put your recommendations in the comments.