Iraqis filming Iraq

This small video blog operation equips Iraqis with cameras and other gear to go out and get the kinds of stories that foreign journalists can't. It's a war-born example of new media and citizen journalism on a shoestring, as well as a better window into what, say, the Shatt al-Arab waterway between Iraq and Iran looks like on any given patrol day, or how crowded (and, for a time, relatively safe) Basra's streets were during Ramadan this past November. One of their Iraqi videographers, 22 year-old Ali Shafeya Al-Moussawi, was killed this past December, underlining the ongoing risks for all reporters there, foreign or Iraqi, as the war approaches its fifth year.

The site is run by Brian Conley, a 26-year-old American journalist and film-maker, who worked in Baghdad long enough to train and equip independent Iraqi journalists to produce a short video news clip each week, uploaded to the site every Monday. Since winning a number of video blogging awards after its launch in 2006, Conley's expanded to Mexico with a sister site, Alive in Mexico, covering "everything from street battles in southern Mexico to Mexican culture and history." He runs the site out of the States, escaping from what he described to the BBC as "'live from' journalism."

"Essentially, there's something lost when you send someone from another part of the world, or with a specific audience in mind, to tell another individual's story.

We are striving to build journalism in the voice of locals, so that people in different parts of the world can communicate almost directly to their audience around the world."

The site's been in the red for a few months now, surviving on online donations, so it's no threat to big foreign bureaus yet. But given how much outlets like the New York Times and CNN rely on local stringers in Iraq, it raises questions about training locals to produce their own news versus relying on them to file reports for an American audience. Besides, where else can you watch video about Iraq's gold markets, or Little Baghdad in Damascus?

- Freddy
(with my blog from Egypt, Cairo Post)