Category Blogging

Columbia

Probably most of you already know this by now, but I was actually planning to post about it earlier and did not have a chance. It is long overdue, but I guess better late than never.

Earlier this year I was accepted to the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. However, until the last week of July I was not sure that I will be studying here. My uncertainty had nothing to do with my desire to come to Columbia. It’s just that coming up with the needed finances to be here proved to be much, much more troublesome than anybody anticipated. But in the end everything somehow worked out, and shortly after that I put myself on a plane flying across the Atlantic.

I arrived to New York just a few days before school started on August 9. I was hoping to arrive a couple of weeks earlier to settle down and get used to the city before we start but that hope unfortunately evaporated due to the mentioned above problem and visa delays. I have basically hit the ground running, and have been running like crazy since then. The J-School is a lot of work, but for the most part I’m enjoying it. It is hard to believe that two months have already passed, but here we are, overwhelmed by deadlines, assignments and projects.

This is the reason why I have been neglecting the blog lately, but it is certainly not an excuse. As I promised two days ago, I will try my best to keep the blog up while I’m NYC.

That’s all I have to say for now. Before I go, I need to thank some many people. This will sound like a very, very long acceptance speech, so please bear with me…

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I’m Still Here

I’m not dead (and this post is not about Casey Affleck’s movie/hoax). Just been extremely busy. Good busy, for the most part. I usually hate this kind of “why I’m not blogging” blog posts, but I decided to write one to embarrass myself into getting back to the habit of blogging. I promise that I will somehow fit this into my schedule and update the blog regularly. If I don’t, feel free to abuse me in the comments :-)

Protests near Ground Zero

Today marks the ninth anniversary of 9/11. The day witnessed heated demonstrations — against and for the proposed Islamic community center — two blocks away from ground zero. I was there this afternoon with a friend of mine, and took some pictures.

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Mas que un equipo

At the end of their first month at Columbia J-School, students are expected to produce a short audio slideshow to demonstrate the basic skills they acquired in audio and photo reporting. Below is my slideshow. It is about a football (Americans call it “soccer”) player who immigrated from Ecuador ten years ago.

What do you think?

Free Ali Abdulemam

Ali Abdulemam

I was shocked to learn that my friend Ali Abdulemam, a leading Bahraini blogger, was arrested yesterday by the Bahraini authorities for allegedly spreading “false news” on BahrainOnline.org portal, one of the most popular pro-democracy outlets in Bahrain. It is not the first time that Ali has been arrested for content published on his portal. I met Ali a couple of times in Beirut, where both of us attended Arab bloggers meetings. He is, in the words of Sami Ben Gharbia, “a pioneer among Arab activists, using the internet to militate for peaceful reform. He inspired many young Bahrainis and Arabs to use the internet to express themselves and engage in spirited debate.”

Please support Ali in any and every way you can: blog, tweet, and follow the updates here.

Saudi video plea to Obama

A group of Saudis have launched this video plea asking US president Barack Obama to pardon their countryman Humaidan al-Turki, who was convicted in a Colorado court four years ago for several crimes and was sentenced to 28 years in prison. The short video is well produced, and has racked up more than half a million views on YouTube so far. It features several Saudi celebrities, bringing together, probably for the first time, a Sunni cleric and a Shia cleric as well as some other notable Saudis including a columnist, a tv talk show host, and a former footballer. The idea for this video plea grew out of a column by Najeeb al-Zamil, a member of the Shoura Council, who also appears in the video. However, the highlight of the video is the emotional appearance of Ruba, the 12-year-old daughter of Humaidan.

The effort by Al-Muhannad Al-Kadam, Asem Al-Ghamdi, and the young Saudi team behind this work is no doubt commendable. But like Abdulrahman al-Lahem and John Burgess, I wonder about the real impact of the video. The case has been raised by Saudi officials in several exchanges with US counterparts, but to no avail. In December 2006, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers travelled to Riyadh to explain the original convictions to Saudi officials.

The timing to release this video was apparently chosen to coincide with the fourth anniversary of his sentence, but from the American perspective it seems like a bad timing. The controversy over building an Islamic community center near ground zero has resulted in a rise of anti-Muslim sentiments here. As John points out, “At this time, sad to say, Islam and Muslims do not enjoy favorable views by a majority of Americans. There is simply no up-side to the President’s issuing a pardon.”

In any case, and regardless of the outcome of this work, I’m certainly glad to see such grassroots effort gains traction. It is a good example of what regular citizens can do to make a difference, and it is a also a good example for the use of social media to promote a cause. The idea that started with a newspaper column now has a Facebook group with more than 26,000 members. The goal of the video, according to the website, is to deliver the Saudi point of view on this issue. I think this goal has been reached. Can this goal be a catalyst for a presidential pardon in favor of Homaidan Al-Turki, like the campaign hopes? That’s a totally different matter.

Free Entertainment

Students at Columbia J-School don’t have much free time. And when they have some free time they probably don’t have much money to spend on entertainment. Can they have some fun without spending a fortune?

PS. The artists featured in the piece are: Swear and Shake, Liz Tormes, and Lara Ewen.

PPS. This is another piece from my audio reporting class. Not great, but probably better than the first one.