Notes on the AJE World
My dissertation is on Al Jazeera English. These are my notes. No affiliation with or endorsement by AJE.
Recent Tweets
@wyoumans
AJE will be available in an estimated 25 million Indian households.
(Poster by Matt Jones on my office wall)
After 7.5 years at Al Jazeera, I’ve decided to move on to explore further opportunities. Having worked at the intersection of media, technology and entrepreneurship, I’m interested in exploiting the structural changes in the media industry…
Perhaps the most common social media misstep news providers commit involves positioning Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook buttons and the like at the end of a news item, so that clickers must perform several swipes on screen or mouse to reach share functions. Al Jazeera’s English news app commits this error. Some might argue that this policy encourages readers to spend more time on a page and actually consume more of the content. But which is preferable: one user spending more time with Al Jazeera content, or, potentially, a digital socialite sharing the same article with her 15,000 connections? Either way, it doesn’t seem likely that a publication would lose an engaged reader just by placing share buttons atop their page.
Justin Martin, writing in CJR.
P. Diddy and Ryan Seacrest are launching new cable channels soon. It’s hard to imagine we don’t have room for one more. If the U. S. can’t be open to channels that show other perspectives of the world, what does that say about us?
Julia Bricklin, writing about AJE on Forbes.com.
@AJEnglish is publicly engaging Americans through events. Showings of programs like Fault Lines are more common in DC, but are usually well-attended and give people a chance to meet staff and learn more about the channel — as well as learn more about the topics at hand.
EARTH-SHAKING FILM. For its first NYC screening, Al Jazeera English presents “Fault Lines:Crisis in the Horn of Africa,” documentary by Al Jazeera correspondent Sebastien Walker and producer Andrea Schmidt that explores the U.S. response to drought and hunger in Somalia, a country ravaged by two decades of conflict with disastrous consequences. Come for the screening of this thought-provoking film and stick around after for what is sure to be a lively post-screening Q&A with Walker and Schmidt. 7 p.m. Free. Santos Party House, 96 Lafayette St. (212) 584-5492. Issue Project Room, 232 3rd St. 718-330-0313.
