Tuesday, November 8, 2011

CREATE YOUR OWN CULTURE: MASHALLAH NEWS



Mashallah News is a Beirut (Libanon) based coalition of journalists, designers and bloggers which operates mainly in Middle-East and North-Africa area. Mashallah is a phrase in arabic language meaning a suprisement of a good deed done by someone. In this case, Mashallah News is bringing alternative and underground news and culture for the public, a platform for disoriented news as they say.


Mashallah News was born in 2010 in Beirut. Their aim is to spread a new outlook for Middle-East countries from Turkey to Morocco. Mashallah News publishes news and articles about underground cultures, activities and cultural taboos from Arabic world. One focus is for example visual arts and photograp exhibitions, performing arts and so on. Articles and stories are usually written from social, enviromental, human rights and/or religious point of view. Mashallah News also organize events, workshops and seminars about alternative news writing and for example censorship. They publish all their content in english, arabic and french to cover more readers and to reach out to more wider audience.


My interest for Mashallah News grew while reading the articles and discoring their agenda. How big is this, how they work closely with, what kind of challenges they encounter and what kind of public reaction they get? These are the key questions I'm interested to find out.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds really cool! I took a quick look around the site and it seems quite nice. Do you think they have a chance to win in their category?
    I'll be interested to read about the answers you get to your interview questions :)

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  2. I think it's really interesting - and important - to see that there is this kind of "bubbling under" culture in the Arabic countries as well. It is very thrilling to hear that people are able to speak their mind and spread other stories than those told by the government. Plus it is a good thing they publish their news in three different languages. It might actually be a good way to learn a new language...and it's nice to see what's going on in that part of the world.

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