Malum Nalu: avaiki nius agency brings Pacific news to the world

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

avaiki nius agency brings Pacific news to the world

I received an interesting email from 43-year-old New Zealand journalist, Jason Brown (pictured), and we got into an interesting online conversation about blogs and Web 2.

He is editor of ANA, avaiki nius agency, a one-man micro-agency providing analysis service from pacific islands perspectives.

Jason founded avaiki news agency in Rarotonga, Cook Islands in 1999, going online from there in 2004.

Coincidentally, our online conversation came about after the very-well received presentation Emmanuel Narakobi and I did on digital media at the 2008 PNG media conference at the Hideaway Hotel in Port Moresby last week.

Jason’s blog is http://avaiki.blogspot.com/.

e malum, no worries!

Ashamed to admit that this is the first proper look I have had at the PNG blogging scene.

I wholeheartedly support your idea of a blogging conference. Or maybe even call it a web2 forum - I have encountered an extraordinary amount of resistance to the word "blogs" on this side of the Pacific, so I am well impressed to see blogs take off over there.

But to answer your other question: Me make money? From my blog? Ha ha ha!

Not a bloody cent.

Not yet.

I mostly struggle from week to week, trying to find funding to keep myself going. I also do a lot of volunteer web2 work, like for the Pacific Freedom Forum and Pacific Islands Journalism Online, see links below. Are you and fellow bloggers members yet? You'd be most welcome if not, and I'm a manager on both.

For now, I do not think traditional approaches to making money e.g. selling ads work when a new technology is emerging, as web2 approaches like our blogs are across the region. I mean, it's hard enough to get advertisers to come on board a big traditional web1 site like The National or the Post Courier, let alone onto web2 sites like ours!

Where I do see pioneers like us making money is in joining hands with the “mainstream" media, advocating, explaining, and guiding them through the processes for integrating web2 approaches - or even using web2 engines like blogger as their entire CMS, content management system. I guess I have ' wasted ' a lot of time contributing to policy level debate, but I just can't help myself. I think it so important that the Pacific uses web2 approaches to build a much bigger, more cohesive cyber footprint in cyberspace, and the easiest way to do that is using blogs, RSS and so forth. Yehi and I had a good rave in Melbourne and I hope we can encourage him and others to take these ideas further.

One of the things I am doing behind the scenes is slowly rebuilding the Pacific Islands Media Association (NZ) Inc site - ugly as anything! - onto a blog platform. Once it's all copied across, then we will use blogger as the website engine, rather than as a separate blog.

My thoughts for next step: should we web2 this and start a blog to build support towards such a conference or forum? And should it be public, so anyone can contribute and give feedback? It's just a pity that a lot of good, solid behind-the-scenes stuff like this never gets to see the light of day.

I could go on and on about this but enough for now. Thanks for getting back so quickly, look forward to hearing back soon.

manuia,

Jason

. . .

jason brown

editor:

ANA avaiki news agency

http://avaiki.nius.googlepages.com/

project JPK - TVNZ

jabrown@tvnz.co.nz

http://www.jpkupdate.blogspot.com/

contributing editor: