Headline, May10, 2014

''' STUDENT JOURNALISM AS 

FOREIGN CORRESPOND​ENTS '''

The Heroes of the Journalistic workforce at  ! Sam Daily Times !......   are a unique talent exchanges. Doing Pakistan, and the world proud!

I always suspected that Rabo and Dee sleep with their Laptops on snooze. When asked, once, about progress on  ''International Content''    Rabo, had this to say,     '' Candidly, we go after the cool student journalists. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely!''

And then Telecom  Student Ehsan Khalil, is one huge journalistic storm. This urgent in the making 4G+ guy, is some dynamo. Block his cell phone, or his access,  -during work hours, and the lad will figure out other means to serve !WOW!.

All just so gifted, just so precious! I now address the base line, and the honour of journalism for them and the International students the world over.

There many reasons as to why, Rabo, Dee, Ali, Hussain, Saima, Zeba , Sorat,  have such a great following : 

In order to keep order within them, most societies choose to eulogise those who do good and ostracise those who commit evil. The distinction sends out a specific message and helps mould  the nature of society:

Distinguishing between right and wrong. When this vanishes it leaves behind chaos and disorder. It also creates deep confusion within people living together, making it impossible to judge what is right and what is wrong. 

'''' I see this judgement vanishing globally''''.

The Students of the world have to, and must understand, that,  '' simply existing as students in the world, years after year, is just not good enough. You need to take !WOW! -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless forward and the means to achieve that:

Has to be found by changing the reality  and not just the image. 

MANY -many feared that social media would undermine professional reporting. Defensive journalists derided it.

''I would trust citizen/student journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery,'' quipped Morley Safer a CBS correspondent. As it turns out:

Photographs, videos and tweets from ordinary people are improving and expanding news coverage. They also create work for journalists who know how to curate, authenticate and analyse their material.

Far from shunning  ''shaky footage'' , audience think users videos more intimate and authentic than broadcasters' slick shots, says Claire Wardle of Storyful, a firm that spots and verifies user-generated content:

''If they don't show it, people will go YouTube to see it.'' Journalists covering big news stories are getting better at scouring social networks for sources. And thrusting news firms have tried to outdo their competitors by building systems that encourage readers to submit material them to directly.

CNN's iReport is among the oldest of these; it now has over  1.3m   contributors, up six fold since its launch in 2008. Aftonbladet, Sweden's most popular newspaper, asks readers to register their location, alerts them when big news breaks nearby-

And offers to publish their their most striking photographs of videos in exchange for a small fee. In April, last year, the Guardian, a British newspaper, launched Guardian Witness   -a minisite backed by EE, a telecom firm:

That helps mobile users share newsworthy videos. Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor, expects more firms to ''create mechanisms  to increase the ease with which people can file to them''.

But witnesses are getting harder to seduce and keener to post directly to social networks. In 2005 nearly all of the  BBC's   user generated content was submitted directly to the organisation; now it has to hunt down half of it from social networks.

That means sifting a lot of dross. Every day  7000  hours of news related videos uploaded to YouTube, an on-line video site owned by Google, much of it created by amateurs. News organisations are hiring even bigger teams to scavenge for the best.   

BBC NEWS has one of the largest social media departments, with around 20 full-time employees.

Most big newspapers have a team of between five and seven people!

But Sam Daily Times,   '' the voice of the voiceless''     -one of the biggest newspaper in the making  - in the world,  has............?!

The honour and serving of the post continues. So, don't miss the next one:

With most respectful dedication to the Leaders of the free world. See Ya all -Your Excellencies-  on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

'''Moving Closer'''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless