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Showing posts from December, 2009

Road ahead for Alternative Book Fair

HARSHA MAN MAHARJAN Here is my aricle on alternative book fair published today in Republica The book exhibition of not-for-profit publishers, Alternative Book Fair, ended on Dec 14. Himal Association organized the fair from Dec 10 at Sabhagriha, Kathmandu. Fourteen NGOs participated in the fair. However, they were dissatisfied with the flow of visitors. What went wrong? The organizer and the organizations that participated in it have been forced to think about it. Martin Chautari, the organization I am associated with, also participated in this fair. The ideas I am presenting in this article is the result of my interaction with friends and my observation of five days at the fair. Martin Chautari has been participating in this fair since the first edition, which was organized in 2005.DEFINITION: INTERPRETATIONA friend of mine entered Sabhagriha when he saw a banner of Alternative Book Fair at the front gates. He had assumed that Sajha Prakashan had once again organized a book fair like ...

Alternative Media and Alternative Economic Sources

By Harsha Man Maharjan 2009 is ending very soon. And I am getting mails from Alternative media: Open Democracy, The Center for Media and Democracy, FAIR etc for donation. This is no news. It happens every December. Donation is an alternative economic source of mass media. Usually advertisement is main economic source of media. In his article What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream Noam Chomsky says that mainstream media sells its audiences to advertisers. Michael Albert has written an article titled What Makes Alternative Media Alternative? Here he has focused on alternatives finance apart from others characteristics. Open Democracy, The Center for Media and Democracy, and FAIR are alternative media so they are using alternative source of economy. FAIR watches media biases and censorship. Center for Media and Democracy counters PR and Propaganda in media. In Nepal we can’t say which media is alternative and which is mainstream. For example what is different between so-called community r...

Journalism education in doldrums

By Harsha Man Maharjan Friends here is the original version of my article published in The kathmandu Post yesterday (5 December 2009) “We have not any school or college for journalism. There is a great lack of books on Journalism in our language though we have published many articles on this subject in different newspapers and magazines”. This is what journalist Shyam Prasad Sharma said about Journalism Education in Nepal. He was speaking in a program organized by International Federation of Journalist in 1962 at Budapest. Journalism Education began in the US in 1890s. One of the countries in Asian region to begin this education is China. JE started in China in 1920s with the help of US scholars. In India it began in late 1930s. After about four decades of this, JE started in Nepal. It was Ratna Rajya Campus which began JE in 1976. It was under Tribhuwan University (TU). This university was established in 1959. So after 17 years of TU’s establishment, RR Campus offered JE course in Ne...