WMC staff interview a rice farmer (photo: Kyle James)

In Cambodia, gender roles are largely ruled by tradition. Khmer culture says a woman should speak softly, walk lightly, always be well mannered and stay in her home—not exactly the qualities of a good journalist. That might be why relatively few women have entered the field in the past. But one broadcaster, the Women’s Media Centre (WMC), is defying tradition. The non-profit NGO’s radio and television programs address a wide range of issues, with a special focus on the roles and rights of Cambodian women. onMedia’s Kyle James talked with Khut Sokhoeun, WMC’s radio production supervisor—and a man, about working with women journalists in this male-dominated society and how they add to the public conversation.

WMC was founded in the mid-1990s by five women and then launched its own radio station in 1999. You joined six years later. Why did you come to work here?

I always knew that WMC was a unique place. It is one of the leading independent media organizations in Cambodia and there’s no other organization covering issues important to women like we do. That’s why we enjoy the popularity we do. Most broadcasters in Cambodia cover general issues, but women’s voices and perspectives are often absent. Here, we make sure women are heard and their concerns are aired.

What kind of stories does WMC cover?

It’s evolved over the years. At first, a popular issue was domestic violence, which few people talked about back then. Then it was reproductive health. As the society continued to heal from decades of conflict and war, our coverage changed as well. We started looking at legal issues related to women and now we often cover human rights issues that relate to women, since these are big issues in the country. For example, we look at women who are human rights activists, and land grabbing and land conflicts, where women are often on the front lines. These days there seems to be less interest in domestic violence stories, which is good, since it means the situation, while not perfect, has improved.

Khut Sokhoeun (photo: Kyle James)

Around 60 percent of the people working at WMC are women. Does that change the news coverage?

We look at issues that the bigger broadcasters often just ignore. And we let women speak for themselves. Also, female reporters know these issues, since they live them, so I think the coverage can be better in some cases. We also cover more general-interest issues, which men are interested in as well—we have a lot of men who listen to us and watch our videos. But I think women tend to find interesting angles that their male colleagues might not have thought of. Whether it’s from their own experience or ways of looking at problems and issues, I don’t know. But the coverage is different.

Do enough women work in the media in Cambodia?

No. First of all, being a journalist at all in Cambodia is hard. It’s not well paid and journalists don’t have a lot of respect because of the practices of many in the field. Plus, traditional attitudes often keep women from pursuing this kind of career. The old attitude is that Cambodian women are supposed to feed their children, look after their husbands, take care of the home, and not travel very far from it. Journalists have to be out and about a lot, which causes problems for women who want to be reporters, because these old ideas about women are still fairly common.

Is the situation changing?

Germany’s ambassador to Cambodia pays a visit to the WMC studio (photo: Kyle James)

It’s getting better. Year to year we see the numbers of women in journalism increasing. In general, the role of Cambodian women is changing. In the past, daughters were taught that they didn’t need to learn much in school because they just needed to look after their future husbands, who would provide for them. But recently, more women are getting better educations, their jobs are better and their salaries are rising. They don’t want to get married so early and they’d rather compete with men than take care of them. So society is changing, slowly.

Is it strange for you, as a man, to have women superiors at work given Cambodia’s traditional society?

The WMC by-laws say the executive director has to be a woman, as do the managers of the different media divisions. But I’ve managed to do well here, and I’ve never had a problem having a female boss. Maybe some men might, but I don’t. My own wife works, she’s a finance officer at an NGO. So, maybe we’re a less traditional couple. But really, things have gotten better for Cambodia women and work, even in the media, and that’s a good thing.

The interview was edited for content and clarity. 

Hostwriter is the brainchild of German journalists Tabea Grzeszyk, Tamara Anthony, Sandra Zistl. The pitch is simple: find a story, find a colleague, find a couch.

The aim of hostwriter is to create a network of professional journalists around the world who can help each other, share information and contacts, collaborate to produce stories together, or even let a colleague stay in their home.

Inspired by couch surfing

Tabea Grzeszyk is a freelance broadcast journalist based in Berlin and contributes stories to German public radio and television. One of the inspirations for developing hostwriter was her experience of “couch surfing” during a research trip through Turkey, Lebanon and Syria. She recalls that living with a young family in Damascus, in a neighborhood that was also home to Iraqi refugees, gave her a much more immersive experience of Syria by getting closer to people.

“I understood a lot more than if I would have stayed in a hotel,” says Grzeszyk.

Tabea Grzeszy says hostwriter fills a gap: “I’m a freelance journalist and I want to use it!”

By adapting the couch surfing idea to a professional journalistic context, Grzeszyk sees that there is an opportunity for visiting journalists to do stories “with people, instead of about people”.

The founders also see that hostwriter could serve as valuable social network for journalists. For example, to quickly identify journalists in countries to be interview partners, fixers, producers, photographers or translators – especially during breaking news events.

And while news journalism is by its nature competitive, Grzeszyk hopes hostwriter could be a way to help colleagues either from different countries or from different media or editorial sections to work together – for example sharing interview partners, traveling together or even producing a story together.

By journalists for journalists

The hostwriter network will be free to join. And, rather like applying for many journalist associations, new members will be obliged to offer evidence that they are professional journalists.

On the platform journalists can create their own profile with their country, town and area of expertise. And like Facebook or LinkedIn, they can list preferences for what they are prepared to offer – from simply helping colleagues with information and contacts to hosting a journalist to being open to doing joint research.

Grzeszyk says the hostwriter platform provides the infrastructure for members to search for and contact journalists in the network. Data security she says will be taken very seriously. Contact details of hostwriter members will not published.

So far German journalism organizations such as DJV and netzwerk recherche as well as Reporters without Borders have lent their support to the project.

Grzeszyk says hostwriter plans to work closely with more journalism associations, clubs and unions around the world.

A shared responsibility

If you’ve ever read Tom Rachman’s brilliant journalism inspired novel, The Imperfectionists, and chuckled (and cringed!) at how the egocentric war correspondent Rich Snyder literally parachutes into the life of Cairo stringer Winston Cheung and helps himself to poor man’s apartment and computer, then that’s definitely not in the spirit of hostwriter.

Members of hostwriter will have to observe a code of ethics to use the platform. Grzeszyk says there’s a shared responsibility in being a member. Violations of the code can be reported to hostwriter.

Of course a network is only as good as its members. It will be interesting to see how hostwriter evolves and if it will attract journalists who are interested in not only using the platform to search for assistance, but are willing to reciprocate and offer assistance themselves.

Already hostwriter have signed up journalist Ambassadors in several countries and cities to help spread the word.

“It’s a grassroots idea,” says Grzeszyk. “Every colleague knows a colleagues, who knows a colleague, who knows a colleague and this is how we want to work.”

The public beta of hostwriter is due to be launched in Berlin during the re:publica14 conference in May.

Author: Guy Degen

English speakers in big Asian cities can buy English-language newspapers but many still want more detailed information about what’s happening in their own neighborhoods. That was an unfilled niche that American journalist Byron Perry saw in his adopted city, Bangkok. In 2011, he launched Coconuts out of his apartment to provide local news in English. Now he’s got sites in five Asian cities and big plans for the future.

Perry, all of 30 years old, now manages five Coconuts sites in Asia: Bangkok, Manila, Singapore, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. The California native, who has worked everywhere from Hollywood to provincial Cambodia, seems to have found a winning formula. His city sites feature stories on everything from local traffic and crime to restaurant reviews and local gangsters. onMedia’s Kyle James spoke with Perry about why he started Coconuts, how he pays for it and what he thinks of hyperlocal coverage.

Why did you start Coconuts Bangkok?

Byron Perry

I didn’t think there was any good online resource to know what was happening in town, like outlets I had liked to read in San Francisco or Los Angeles. I love local news and hearing about things that are happening in my vicinity, whether its crime or changing public transportation fares or something more fluffy like a party or a new restaurant opening. The English-language press in Bangkok has national and international coverage. They do have a lot of stories about Bangkok but a lot of other things as well. So one thing that we do is rewrite stories from the Post and the Nation and other media outlets in the cities. Part of what we do is to find the local stories there and the interesting angles, source them and present them in one place.

Which site gets the most visitors now?

Manila does, and the fact that the Philippines is English speaking is the main reason for that. The potential for readership is just much bigger. The second biggest site is Bangkok and the third is Singapore. Overall, we’ve seen great growth. We surpassed one million unique visitors across all the sites in November last year and we’ve surpassed one million pretty much every month since. We’re in between one and two million now and looking to grow to several million unique visitors per month.

Your tone is pretty informal. Is that because your readers are younger?

I’m very much inspired by sites like Gawker in the US, which is totally snarky (irreverent). We have a saying, “we want to be snarky but compasionate.” So I want to be snarky when the situation calls for it but I also don’t want to be disrespectful about something serious. As far as our readers ago, 22 percent are between 18 and 24 and 38 percent are between 25 and 34. So they skew younger.

How do you staff the sites and generate content?

We have one or a couple of editors for every site and they each have freelancers who write for them. We also have a user-generated content function where anyone can create a post. That was actually very much part of the original idea and I wanted Coconuts to be very user generated. But it hasn’t taken off in the way I might have hoped. A lot of media that I have looked up to in the US is moving away from user-generated content because I think it’s just hard to find quality stuff. I think that’s because there are two kinds of people who write in with content: one, people who are promoting their gym, restaurant or whatever; and two, the crazy people! Still, we approve some content that’s promotional. It just goes to a separate area called the Community Section.

How are your financing the sites now?

After I started the Bangkok site, I was able to gain some traction and go to Silicon Valley to get funding with the aim of launching in the other cities where we now are. These days, we’re monetizing the sites through advertising and sponsored content. We do have banner ads, but we want to focus more on sponsored content, which is what a lot of websites and media outlets in the US are doing. That’s where we work with advertisers to come up with content that they sponsor. It can run the gamut from being very advertorial to a commissioned piece of journalism that doesn’t have much to do with the advertiser. We had one that was sponsored by Vespa about the fact that in Bangkok’s Chinatown, tons of people still use old Vespas. With sponsored content, one thing that’s really important to me coming from a journalistic background is that it’s made very clear that it’s sponsored. I do worry about editorial independence, and it’s something that a lot of media outlets are trying to figure out right now, how to maintain editorial independence while producing sponsored content. For me, it’s different than editorial content, and our editorial content isn’t for sale and isn’t sponsored.

You operate in different Asian countries where there are different levels of press freedom. How do you deal with that?

We understand that there are varying levels of media control in some of the countries where we operate and we know the things that we can and cannot do. We have to abide by the rules because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to operate in those places.

Coconuts TV is pretty impressive. The videos are very well produced, interesting and cover a wide range of topics. Are your reporters all versed in multimedia or do you have outside people who do the video work?

Coconuts TV is a huge focus of mine this year and is a new initiative I’m trying to build up. We have a multimedia director, a videographer and filmmaker, who went to Columbia Journalism School in New York. He produces a lot of videos and we use freelancers as well. I think that the future of TV is YouTube. Younger viewers are not tuning into traditional TV, they’re watching short videos on YouTube. So we’re focusing on that.

What are the biggest challenges the sites have faced up to now?

We haven’t had any really big problems and I’m thankful for that. For me, the managerial aspect is the toughest part. As we’re growing, there are so many different things to manage and do. There’s the sales of the sponsored content; there’s marketing outreach on Facebook; there are the technical aspects of making an app. Managing everything together is the hardest part.

What’s in the pipeline for Coconuts?

We want to continue launching in new cities – we’re considering Jakarta, Bali, Yangon and the big cities in India, like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. We would love to launch in all of those places. That’s not going to happen right away but that’s the goal. We’re also going to focus on building up Coconuts TV.

How do you see the future of hyperlocal sites in general?

I think there is a need and desire for reporting on what’s happening in one’s area. Some hyperlocal websites have had trouble, like Patch, the AOL project, which totally failed. It was similar to Coconuts in that they wanted to launch in a lot of different places and they did. But I think their problem was the sites weren’t very cool and interesting. People just weren’t reading them. But I do think there is a demand and even if AOL didn’t do a great job, we hope to do a better one. I don’t think hyperlocal sites are the next revolution of media or journalism but I do think people are always going to want to know what’s happening in their city. It’s like the metro section of a newspaper and that’s what we’re trying to do in an online and social media-friendly way.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The Huffington Post, founded as a news agregator and blog platform in the US in 2005, gave it a try and entered the market. Launched in June 2013, its Maghreb edition has quickly gained a reputation among users, not only for doing things differently compared to other Huffington Post editions, but for also being different to other online media in North Africa. Covering mainly Tunisia at the moment, the young team is planning to expand its coverage to Algeria and Morocco soon.

What is probably most striking when you look at the website is the “most read” section. Rather than lifestyle, food and fashion in other HuffPost editions, in the Maghreb version you’ll find politics, politics, and more politics. “We’re different from other Huffington Posts because the context is different,” explains editor-in-chief Houeida Anouar. “Every edition is free to take from the HuffPost DNA what it likes and to adapt it to its needs.”

Hence, the Tunisian team decided to put its focus on politics.

Don’t forget the context

In a country where politics is at the center of debate, Tunisians enjoy the newly gained freedom of open discussion in the media. But it’s easy to overdose on the daily quarrels among parties and politicians, rumors and hysteria, while the country is stuck in a deepening political and economic crisis.

In this complex situation, Anouar says, “We are factual and analytical, but we also try to give a lot of attention to context.” While journalists and activists are glued to their screens, the average user is not and easily looses track. “It is very important to explain and give background. When things become complicated and events unfold rapidly, we tend to step back a bit,” she says.

This can mean for example to summarize the most important events of the political crisis in a slideshow, with videos, photos and short explanatory texts that link back to longer articles for those looking for additional information.

“People can take the train when it is already running,” as Houeida Anouar puts it. Live blogging ongoing events is another option to show how things develop over time. This helps not only Tunisians but also foreigners who are interested in the country but who often have difficulties to keep track of what is going on as many Tunisian media only publish very brief articles with little background, which make it difficult to see the big picture.

One of the big challenges for journalists in Tunisia is verifying information. While social media played an important role in accelerating the uprising and spreading information quickly, the flipside is that rumors can also go “viral” rapidly, and are spread both by social and traditional media. “We have a lot of noise compared to signal. Sometimes it takes you days to verify an information,” says Anouar.

Not to publish information that is buzzing on other websites can be a costly business decision, but Anouar insists that it is a necessary one and often a better choice to have less clicks but hard facts. “We don’t play with this. It is easy to share rumors, but we have respect for the readers.”

Use social media responsibly and consciously

But being critical and not following every buzz does not mean ignoring what is happening on the net – especially on social media, which has developed into one of the most important means of information for many young citizens in the Maghreb. Where there is no clear separation of social media and journalism anymore, the challenge is to identify those who are reliable. “There are very attentive people out there who might know things before you and before it is picked up by the media,” says Anouar. Having a close look at these people is essential, she adds.

In a lot of articles on the website, you will also find tweets or content from Facebook embedded. It is often deputies of the Constituent Assembly, experts and citizens having heated discussions. Anouar argues, “The political conversation not only happens in parliament anymore. We witness an extension of politics into social media, so why should this narrative not be represented in the article?”

Don’t be overly serious

When the Huffington Post launched the Maghreb edition, they promised to inform readers, but also to make them smile. “We keep doing the traditional stuff, but we also try to have fun,” says Anouar. When the head of the Tunisian Human Rights League spoke at the opening of the National Dialogue, an initiative to lead the country out of the crisis, his Freudian slip of speaking of the National Donkey rather than the National Dialogue (himar instead of hiwar in Arabic) became a big hit. A topic for the politics section? “Giving a moment of comic relief is important – we could have just skipped it, and if we were a purely political journal we would have, but we are not,” Anouar explains. When people started writing “Ennahdha get lost” (the main ruling party) on banknotes, this was also taken up as well.

Whereas as the other HuffPost editions feature opinion pieces in the news section, the Maghreb edition limits them to the blog section. As Anouar explains, “Because the media landscape in Tunisia is already saturated with opinion.”

“We value opinion, it is important that people can express their point of view. But we wanted to keep the line clear, and even keep them physically separated on the website.”

The blog section is also an option for the editorial team to fight prejudices resulting from the fact have that the HuffPost is based on an American model and written in French, rather than Arabic. The blog therefore features contributions from left wing civil society actors, artists, different politicians as well as conservative politicians and even a Salafist blogger.

Author: Sarah Mersch

You can hear this sentence quite often when it comes to the debate regarding the future of journalism: “We need to offer quality journalism in order to survive”. The problem is that the understanding of quality in journalism is quite vague. The arguments are often based on anecdotes and intuition rather than on research and rational thinking. What can journalism research do about it? We’ve found some answers to this question in the latest research paper by Wolfgang Schweiger and Juliane Urban of the Institute of Media and Communications (Institute of Applied Sciences Illmenau). DW Akademie’s Steffen Leidel talked to Wolfgang Schweiger about the surprising findings and the notion of quality in journalism.

How can you define the notion of quality in journalism from the scientific perspective?

In Germany, we have our own tradition of journalism quality research, whereas our starting point is a normative definition of quality. There’re constitutional and social requirements which journalism has to fulfil in Germany. Through this norm we are able to derive quality dimensions. On the other hand, journalism research in the USA is rather focused on user quality. The question which is being asked is: What do recipients perceive as quality in news? Dimensions like entertainment value, interesting subject matter and attractiveness of the news package play an important role which is not the case in the German research tradition.

Which quality dimensions are important for the normative approach?

On the one hand, diversity and impartiality. It’s important that opinions, actors and topics are covered objectively and from different perspectives. On the other hand, news has to be relevant and give answers to the [five] W-questions. News should also be easy to grasp, appropriate and exact.

We already see two different definitions here…

We can always face a conflict when we speak about news quality. Do we want to produce news which will be interesting from the user perspective, or do we want to offer quality news which corresponds to the social function of journalism?

Does that mean that news which a user is interested in is not the same as the news which performs a certain social function?

It depends on the media and on the market. There is research which show a correlation between normative quality dimensions and success among users. That means that quality news is more successful among the recipients. But there’re also research which show the opposite: The more popular and tabloid news is, the better for the user. There’s no clear answer to the question whether the audience likes quality news or not.

How does your research paper differ from the others?

Most papers have raised the general topic of quality perception in media. Still, they haven’t given an answer to the question whether users can judge the quality of separate pieces. When people in Germany are asked how good the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the magazine Spiegel or the TV program Tagesschau are, they will all say these are quality media. That’s a classical answer which is socially desirable. Empirical social research often faces the problem that people give answers they consider to be desirable. That’s why we decided to find out if users can still judge the quality of separate media pieces independently of the media brand.

How did you proceed?

We have resorted to a classical experiment. One half of the participants was handed out a media report which was really good, another half of the participants received a report which was really bad. Then we compared evaluations of the journalistic quality of these two reports by the group.

With what result?

We had expected that recipients had no idea of what good news means.We have actually found out that recipients’ ability to judge the quality of news is very limited. What surprised us most was that this ability doesn’t depend on the level of education, media competence and age. I was really perplexed. We had expected a strong effect related to the educational and media competence.

So what does that mean?

In my opinion, a normal person, regardless of his or her level of education, in contrast to a qualified journalist, doesn’t have the necessary tools in his head which will help them judge journalistic quality. An average person has nothing to do with it.

What does that mean for the media? Is that good or bad news?

That’s a very important question. At first sight, that might mean that the audience wouldn’t notice reduced expenses in journalism and hence a certain loss in quality. However, such judgement would be an oversimplification. Our data have proved the important role which the image of a media brand plays for gaining confidence of the audience. In the short term, media users might not notice the change of quality. Still, when they finally do notice it, it will have negative consequences for the image of a media brand in the medium and longer term. That could mean a serious drop in circulation. That’s why I’d advise media companies not to fool around their most important equity which is the confidence and trust of their audiences.

Foto: Shira Golding CC