Dispatches from somewhere far away

Five right: The Global, the GOOD, the Tragic, the Awesome, the Possibilities

Ryan Sholin in Santa Cruz (how I miss it so) has a link-worthy list (disclosure: I’m on it). I’m not sure whether to call this a meme, since there’s no actual tagging involved, but I’ll pass it around nonetheless. Here’s my list of five sites doing something right this week:

The world is talking. Are you listening?

It looks like there was a redesign since last I checked. The big tag cloud of countries is gone, replaced by pull-down menus and a cool map in the corner. Mouse over the two-color version and it melts into a satellite view. Neat-o. The core of the site is the same though, and that’s what deserves the attention. There’s still no better place to get first-hand news from the less media-saturated parts of the world.

It's GOOD

I found these folks a few months back, around the time they launched. Giving away subscription revenue to charity is a clever gimmick, and the content itself holds up. What I especially like here is that the online component keeps going between bi-monthly issues, giving me reason not to forget about the mag during those intermittent eight weeks. Check out the blog–they call it Fieldwork–and their videos on YouTube. If I were
clever myself I’d be sending them a pitch for something. Here’s a recent piece, with a China connection to boot:

Media Storm
Wow, these guys are good. Watch this piece, produced for the Council on Foreign Relations:

Your Daily Awesome
As the site’s author puts it: “Chas Bowie’s attempt to curate the most fascinating and beautiful human efforts into one simple website, one day at a time.” Can’t say it any better myself.

And last, a site that could turn into something great. My friend Alex (in Beijing, not Dalian) is renovating the “Upfront” section of That’s Beijing. I hope that includes some reworking of the web presentation, which I find too hard to navigate and straining to read right now. It should come out cool, whatever Alex does with it.

Speaking of possibilities, I should have a big new project to announce in a few weeks, something hopefully worthy of similar lists as this. Stay tuned!

Teaching Online Journalism has a likewise link-worthy list. Following both examples, I’m not tagging anyone, but by all means, add your own list and I’ll link out.

2 Responses to “Five right: The Global, the GOOD, the Tragic, the Awesome, the Possibilities”

  1. Nice observation, thanks.

  2. It’s so hard for me to express my opinion,for i have broken English ……
    So, Happy May Day!

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