Lao Voices

What a happy news coming out of Laos. It would be wonderful to see these Lao journalists keeping up their blogs and posting interesting articles for their readers to enjoy.

Reporters enter world of blogging

Some 22 reporters from various media agencies in Vientiane last week learned how to create and post blogs to further publicise their work.

The one-week course from February 25-29 is the first ever to be held in Laos. It was organised by the Lao Journalists’ Association, the Youth Volunteer for Development Association and the Paris-based Journalism School and Training Centre (CFPJ International).

The French Embassy to Laos funded the course, which provided knowledge on how to create blogs and how to upload videos and audio and news articles to the Internet.

Blogging is an online publishing system, created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003.

The Director of the CFPJ International, Mr Michel Leroy, said blogs are fast becoming popular among journalists and their readers in Europe.

This kind of tool enables both reporters and their audiences to interact and share ideas on the topics published on blogs as readers can post comments for journalists.

“Readers can’t interact directly when they read articles on a website or in a newspaper, but blogs allow this exchange. The number of readers who visit blogs in Europe is increasing daily,” said Mr Leroy.

Blogs also involve readers in the investigation process of a news article. If journalists receive wrong information but publish it, readers who are more familiar with the situation can post their comments.

Course participants were impressed by how easy it is to create a blog, as it does not need high a level of computer skill and takes only 10 minutes.

The course was led by two French lecturers, who encouraged participants to focus on the practical aspects as they were separated into two groups to create a team blog.

Each team aimed to launch their own professional blog, covering the news on a daily basis and then publishing their findings on the blog.

Although they were setting up new web-blogs, within three days polls showed that almost 200 readers were visiting each blog.

At the concluding ceremony, participants said the course was very informative and they now had their own web-blog. They had updated their skills and had a better understanding of what reporters and readers were doing in other parts of the world.

Journalists raised concerns about whether the content published on the blogs might be changed by the administrator, but the two lecturers said this should not be an issue for concern unless journalistic ethics were called into question.

However, the lecturers did point out that copyright was a common point of contention in running a blog and that a blog would not last long if the owner did not continue to post news.

By Souksakhone Vaenkeo
March 03, 2008
Vientiane Times - Vientianetimes.org.la