News at the front

Good on Reuters for supporting the creation of an Iraqi wire service.

The charitable foundation of the Reuters news agency plans to announce this week that it is turning a grass-roots Iraqi news Web site into that nation’s first independent commercial news service.

For the last several months, the Web site, Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq), has relied on a team of 30 stringers and the help of three of Iraq’s independent newspapers, as well as feeds from the Reuters Arabic-language service, to publish hundreds of stories a month on politics, culture and even the taboo topic of AIDS in Iraq.

Now the site, www.aswataliraq.info, will become a full-fledged newswire, managed and staffed by Iraqi journalists in Baghdad and operated independently of Reuters. It will use $800,000 from the United Nations to create a newsroom and post reporters in each Iraqi province. When the service goes live in a few months, it will feed breaking news to both Iraqi and foreign news outlets.

Yes, I can anticipate the cracks in the comments: Reuters and the U.N., what a team… we’ll never see the word “terrorist” there. But I say give it a chance to prove its journalistic value.

News at the front

News at the front

: Good on Reuters for supporting the creation of an Iraqi wire service.

The charitable foundation of the Reuters news agency plans to announce this week that it is turning a grass-roots Iraqi news Web site into that nation’s first independent commercial news service.

For the last several months, the Web site, Aswat al-Iraq (Voices of Iraq), has relied on a team of 30 stringers and the help of three of Iraq’s independent newspapers, as well as feeds from the Reuters Arabic-language service, to publish hundreds of stories a month on politics, culture and even the taboo topic of AIDS in Iraq.

Now the site, www.aswataliraq.info, will become a full-fledged newswire, managed and staffed by Iraqi journalists in Baghdad and operated independently of Reuters. It will use $800,000 from the United Nations to create a newsroom and post reporters in each Iraqi province. When the service goes live in a few months, it will feed breaking news to both Iraqi and foreign news outlets.

Yes, I can anticipate the cracks in the comments: Reuters and the U.N., what a team… we’ll never see the word “terrorist” there. But I say give it a chance to prove its journalistic value.