In the first months of 2011, the growing political unrest throughout the Middle East became the headlines here in the United States. The revolution in Egypt captivated many Americans while the atrocities in Libya horrified even more. As an aspiring journalist in the first few years of a college education, I tediously gathered resources from across the internet to better understand these events—among others—and to pass information along to my peers. Much of my newfound knowledge was posted to my personal blog, In the Field. For years I have always enjoyed informing portions of my highly sought-after demographic that almost completely ignores mainstream news outlets thanks to the old-journalism practices of political partisanship, capitalistic goals, and a long history of outright lies delivered to the consumers of media.
March 22 didn't change a thing. On that sleepless Tuesday night, I saw some of the first Twitter posts coming from the Syrian front of the Arab Spring:
“Urgent: Security forces are storming #Omari mosque now in #Daraa #Syria” (@Mohammad_Syria)
Research ensued for hours as I discovered that finding a number of legitimate sources to confirm these reports from protesters wasn't too difficult; finding legitimate sources defending Syrian government forces was futile; finding English news articles about the events at al-Omari was near impossible. Perhaps the most difficult aspect for me was to accept—as truth—the videos, pictures and stories that depicted heartless violence against unarmed men. Over the course of six hours I compiled all of the information I had into 400 of the most objective words I could muster. Shortly after I posted my rendition of Daraa, stories began to surface on the internet from the BBC, Associated Press, Al Jazeera, and the LA Times—all of which verified the 400 words posted to In the Field.
Then the news slowly returned to it's regularly scheduled instigation of civil war between the “left” and “right.”
Over the course of the past semester, this test of my skills as a writer seemed much more challenging and productive than college assignments of critiquing F. Scott Fitzgerald stories, producing a summary of Herbert Spencer's synthetic philosophy, or just struggling to stay awake during psychology lectures. The challenge of writing about Daraa, Syria was immediate due to language barriers, lack of confirmed reports from mainstream news outlets, and my sheer inexperience in the field. The productivity took some time to show results, but eventually did in the form of in-depth discussions with local people who were first informed of Syrian dissent from In the Field blogs—people with curiosity about the world but contempt for the media.
Further premature and mistake riddled attempts at becoming a working journalist have quickly taken a backseat to pesky things like yard work and a day job, but the fascination with mass media along with a naive curiosity of current events continues to drive the desire to get the hell out of school. After losing sight of the forest for the trees, I was beyond elated to see an article by Bob Davis in the June 19th edition of The Anniston Star. Davis, editor for The Star, announced “an effort we hope will harness this desire to share community news in the digital age. We are introducing a Community Bloggers project.”
I think this summer just got a little more interesting.
-MDS
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