Slashdot Mirror
The Monrovian Analog Blogger
An anonymous reader writes "Motherboard.TV reports, 'In Monrovia, Liberia, there’s a guy taking the matter of a lopsided, state-run media and reshaping it into a free-of-charge, independent news-aggregator—all accomplished with dry-erase board and couple markers. (Sorry, internet!) Each morning, at 10:45 AM, Alfred Sirleaf wakes up and heads down to his bulletin board to post the day’s news, culling together a slate of stories his countrymen might otherwise never see. Grateful readers line up in droves, on foot and in cars, to read these updates, in what has been described as the country's — and probably the world's — only analog blog.'"
He'll probably be properly "censored" soon. Can't have the state lose control of the media...
Seriously though... props to him for taking a stand!
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Just another case of "blog" being used to describe something that people have been doing for ages. And now it's suddenly all great and shiny.
wait til gnaa hears about this.
He could take a picture of the board and then duplicate it onto paper. News, on pieces of paper! That way they can take the news with them to read it at home, on the train...they can share it with their family and friends. Avoid the crowds of people standing around all trying to read the same board.
Some people might like to receive the news on pieces of paper at their home for convenience's sake. He could offer a pricing model whereby they commit to a certain number of months- and it could be called a subscription.
Of course, eventually, someone will point out that he could communicate the news faster and cheaper to his subscribers if he did it electronically. He'll probably have to wait until the technology matures, though.
Please help metamoderate.
Each morning, at 10:45 AM, Alfred Sirleaf wakes up
That's the kind of job I want.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So apparently Slashdot is sooo out of touch they have forgotten why the word "Bulletin" precedes the word "Board" for a bazillion years before now? They never heard of a marquee?
Besides, wouldn't every single printed op-ed page in every newsPAPER be an "analog blog?"
I mean really posting news isn't even blogging, because blog is short for weblog, not webnewscaster.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
"organic carpet"? Keep up, man!
It's a Rich Self-replicating Content Distribution Network (rsCDN(tm)). It complements outdoor architectures, beautifies connected ecosystems, and synergizes with the real world. Periodic maintenance ensures minimal use of vertical resources!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Hear that? That's the sound of a joke, going right over your head.
The only joke here is that your post was modded insightful.
You mean printed blogs?
All news has a certain degree of "spin" to it. It's always the readers' job to challenge what they read and thus think for themselves.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I know the tone on slashdot is more on the humorous side, but seriously, stop belittling this.
After the war, Liberia had no functioning utilities for over 14 years - no sewage system, no water, no electricity, no telephone. Nowhere - not even in the capital!
Without painting a stereotype, Liberians aren't exactly known for their entrepreneurship. This man should really be applauded for what he is pulling up despite difficulties.
While he certainly must summarize news stories to fit on his board, he doesn't need to translate. The official language of Liberia (founded by liberated American slaves) is English.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
He uses this thing that he wipes across the board to store it in compressed
format; out here we normally call it an "eraser". I don't know if he has a
drawer to keep them, and I think (like most so-called 'sysadmins') he keeps
using the same one over and over.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Right, analogue is the opposite of digitalis!
More seriously, if you read the fine summary, you'd have the answer to your question. Your lame attempt at irrelevant pedantry betrays a more fundamental refusal to think or investigate what you're talking about. Do you complain that a "hot dog" is simply a canine with elevated temperature, and should not be used to name a kind of sausage? For this kind of discourse, "analog" is shorthand for computer-free and "digital" is shorthand for computer-based.
To be fair, pointing out that it's stupid to call it an analog blog is not a criticism of the Monrovian guy, it's a criticism of the bloggers who saw a noticeboard, and called it an analog blog. And it's a perfectly valid point. It's much like seeing Firefox, and exclaiming that Mozilla has copied IE's innovation of tabbed browsing. The causality is backwards, and displays cringe-worthy ignorance of the history of the subject matter.