Sahar was so excited to be at the ONA awards in LA to receive Marcell's win in person! Photo by Jackie from NBC's LA Digital team.
It’s time for another update from the newsroom — the place your stories go before they are published on Global Voices. The biggest highlight of the last few months was our …
Online Journalism Award!
Marcell’s commissioned Bridge series Dispatches from Aleppo won [1] at the Online News Association’s Journalism Awards in the category of Online Commentary. A round of applause for Marcell Shehwaro and Amira Al Hussaini [2] and Lara Al Malakeh [3], who translated Marcell's essays from the original Arabic into English and Georgia Popplewell, [4] who edited the series!
Newsroom Editors exchange virtual hugs
Last month, our 21 newsroom editors broke into six groups for a series of in-depth discussions. Usually we try to have one big meeting every six weeks, but this time we thought it might be productive to experiment with smaller groups. We ended up discussing GV posts getting “multiple author” capability, creative ways to welcome new authors into our community, strategies to keep our sub-communities happy and engaged, our overall social media strategy, and crafting monthly collaborative posts.
Maybe you recently saw the community post What Would Your Grandma Recommend to Fix This? [5] developed into this story on the main site “Carrot Syrup, Potato Compresses and Nutmeg Necklaces: Grandma's Remedies From Around the World [6]. The awesome idea for this collaborative post popped up during our group review chat with MENA editor Amira, Latin America community manager Laura and Iran editor Mahsa. Our news editor Lauren wasn't well, so Mahsa said her grandmother would recommend turmeric tea. One by one all of us followed up with our grandma's remedies. Then Mahsa said, “That would make a great GV post!”
Buh-bye Quick Reads, hello GVers!
You might have noticed some familiar faces on our home page recently! After months of Quick Reads losing steam – we were only publishing a couple a week at the most – we decided to remove discontinue Quick Reads and remove the column from the home page. It has been replaced by badges showing off the real people behind GV – you!
Instead of Quick Reads, we’ve been encouraging editors and authors to write shorter posts about 100-300 words in length with images and excerpts for the main well. If you aren’t sure exactly how to go about writing a short post, take a look at this guide [7] on the Community Blog.
Top stories
Here’s a list of the top 10 most-visited stories on GV since August:
- Egyptian Facebook User Sentenced to Three Years in Prison for Putting Mickey Mouse Ears on Sisi [8] by Amira AlHussaini
- Serbian Police Officer and Smiling Syrian Boy Show Europe How Welcoming Refugees Is Done [9] by Danica Radisic
- Russia's Mustachioed Corruption [10]by Kevin Rothrock
- Social Media Cries Copywrong After American Rapper Lifts Trinidadian Photographer's Work [11]by Janine Mendes-Franco
- Hundreds of Austrians and Germans Turn Out to Welcome Refugees Arriving From Hungary [12]by Lena Nitsche
- Video: How the Green Iguana Came to Outnumber the Human Population of Puerto Rico [13] by Angel Carrion
- Haze Returns to Southeast Asia as Indonesia's Forest Fires Reach Critical Level [14]by Carolina
- Kotatsu or Korsy? Is This Heating Method Japanese or Iranian? [15] by Mahsa Alimardani
- Learn To Speak English With a ‘Pershian’ Accent [16]by Mahsa Alimardani
- A Letter to the Rulers of Russia, From Oleg Kashin [17] by Kevin Rothrock
Latest on our partnerships
We’ve spent more time evaluating and discussing potential partnerships this quarter. As a result, we’ve turned down quite a few content partnerships. Here’s what we added to our list the last three months:
- LaPublica from Bolivia
- Irrawaddy from Myanmar
- Raseef 22 from MENA
- Ripple, a new social network app [18] is featuring GV in their newsfeed
And here are some highlights from our existing partnerships:
- PRI republished [19] 15 GV stories in the last quarter
- The Guardian's New East Network republished [20] Winston Olsen's post “Meet the Men That Have Eluded Tajikistan's Secret Beard Police”.
- Hong Kong Free Press republished Oiwan's post Trolls Go After Artists Who Aren’t ‘Patriotic’ Enough During China’s WWII Parade [21].
You can find out more about our existing partners here [22]and our process of evaluating partners here. [23]
Special coverage
We published four special coverage pages this quarter:
- How to Conduct Open-Source Research on the Russian Internet [24]
- Streams of Refugees Seek Sanctuary in Europe [25]
- Lebanon's ‘You Stink’ Protests [26]
- Iran, as Told by Iranian Journalists and Writers Abroad [27]
Writing tips
For the last year different newsroom editors have been leading our Weekly Writing Tips each month. In August, Caribbean editor Janine Mendes-Franco gave us tips for using words wisely, [28] the elements of style, [29] how to write so that you connect with an audience [30], and the importance of writing responsibly. [31]
In September, South Asia editor Rezwan inaugurated the next change to the tips: moving them from email to the Community Blog [32]. There, he discussed verifying social media data [33], finding online commentary from social media sites [34] and blogs [35], and finding inspiration for writing. [36]
Oiwan has continued the Community Blog transition with tips about getting inspired by images, [37]using Chinese government public opinion analysis [38] in our reporting, and the [37]ethics of quoting social media posts [39]
Slowly but surely, we’ll be moving copies of past Weekly Writing Tips to the Community Blog too, so that we have an easy-to-search archive of them. Stay tuned to the Weekly Writing Tips category [32]!
GV represent!
Photo shared by Nyamishana Prudence.
- French language Editor Lova Rakotomalala was interviewed live on AJ's The Stream [40] about food insecurity in Madagascar.
- Runet Echo Editor Kevin Rothrock spoke on a panel at New York University about Russian propaganda.
- Runet Echo Editor Tanya Lokot spoke about sustainable communications for NGOs at the NGO 3.0 conference in Kyiv and spokeon an IGF-USA panel called “Truth and Trolls: Dealing with Toxic Speech while Protecting Free Speech Online” in Washington, DC.
- South Asia Editor Rezwan spoke at the WIN15 Blogadda blogging conference [41] in Mumbai, India.
- Juan Cole republished [42] Iran Editor Mahsa's post ‘The World Has Changed': Bold Statements From Iranian Newspapers in Reaction to Iran Deal [43]. Mahsa spoke at hack.lu [44] about mobile applications inside of Iran [45] and she was listed in a German publication [46]as one of the five women programming the future of the Internet in INTERNET Wie Frauen die Zukunft programmieren.
- Southeast Asia Editor Mong Palatino attended the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) review in Pataya, Thailand.
- Managing Editor Sahar Habib Ghazi attended the Online News Association Awards in LA, the First Draft Summit at Google HQ in Mountain View and spoke at the CPJ/UNESCO event in Costa Rica on Ending Impunity of Crimes Against Journalists.
Did we miss anything? Let us know so we can give a well-deserved shout-out.
This newsletter was lovingly compiled by Lauren Finch and Sahar Habib Ghazi.