mediaharsha

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Broadband internet kept at its core should be seen for what it is: an important tool, not a miraculous solution for all the ills in society -  SHAILESH PANDEY ,  HARSHA MAN MAHARJAN & YOGESH RAJ Aug 28, 2015- The draft National Information and Communication Technology (NICT) Policy 2015, floated for public discussion by Nepal Telecommunication Authority (NTA) on August 4, repeats the flawed visions about the miraculous power of ICTs. We call for the policy to be more evidence-based. The NICT Policy aims to supersede the related IT Policy 2010, which envisages the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) under the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (MoSTE) as the lead agency. Accordingly, DoIT has floated a draft implementation plan ‘National IT Roadmap.’ The NCIT Policy, prepared by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC), proposes to restructure both the ministries as well as the NTA. The contention over jurisdictio...

 - Post Report, Kathmandu Aug 18, 2015-  Kantipur Media Group (KMG) on Tuesday night launched a new futuristic digital news platform, Ekantipur that hopes to revolutionise reading experience for its subscribers. The new platform hosts Ekantipur app--an upgraded version of the KMG application, seven websites of The Kathmandu Post, the Kantipur daily, Nepal, Nari, Saptahik, Radio Kantipur and Kantipur Television, and a mobile SMS news subscription service. The platform was developed following two years of back-end research spearheaded by Kantipur Digital Corp (KDC), KMG’s digital wing. The Kathmandu Post’s digital edition is available at kathmandupost.ekantipur.com. The new website will give readers a richer experience through multi-media and other exclusive contents. As well as providing contents from all the outlets of KMG, the Ekantipur app will enable users to view epapers in high resolution. This is the third digital upgrade for The Kathmandu Post and its sister...

I have realized links of some of news and article available online break later due to different reasons. Here I will post entire news, article and give full credit to the original source. My intention is to get all materials on Nepali media in one place.

Introduction This research brief summarizes the findings of a review of policies related to Universal Connectivity (UC) in Nepal. Here UC means connectivity of the internet using different devices such as mobile, computer, and other internet-based technologies (IBTs). The brief shows that Nepal’s UC-related policies envisage both general and specific roles for the technologies related to IBTs in realizing the country as a well-connected, knowledge-based society. The policy phraseology has enabled both the state and the private sector to mobilize huge resources to create new institutions, burgeoning market spaces, and influential discourses in the last two decades. The review undertaken, however, suggests interventions are needed and there are opportunities for much more grounded policies to ensure that existing inequalities are not reproduced in both providing access and the use of digital technologies. This brief introduces, in the first section, the UC policy landscap...

Harsha Man Maharjan INTRODUCTION This chapter demonstrates the limitations in existing schemes of periodization in Nepali journalism historiography that are based mainly on political-constitutional changes. These schemes take regime changes (Poudyal 2027 v.s.; Devkota 2033 v.s.; Nepal 2055 v.s.; Dahal 2070 v.s.; Pokharel 1994; Regmi and Kharel 2002) and new constitutional provisions (Acharya 2070 v.s.; Onta 2001, 2002) as triggers which set significant alternations in organization and practices of journalism in Nepal. While some of the organizational changes in media were shaped by these external factors, existing literature lacks concrete evidence relating these factors to the changes in everyday journalistic practices. The essay examines genealogies of the specific orientation of the journalists and of their characterization of the powerful across the sharp regime changes of the 1990s. It shows that professional journalism that conventional historiography sees as the effect of...

     By Harsha Man Maharjan Day by day the number of online news portals is increasing because it is easy to start. Having two three computers or laptops and two three journalists are enough to start up.  Any eligible person who dreams to have media can start it in a shoe string. Many online news portals are sprouting without proper planning on their economic sustainability. But Setopati, a digital patrika which was started on 1 April 2012 sought suggestions from its readers or visitors for its appropriate business model and came up with a mixed model of subscription and advertisement. This initiated a debate for and against Setopati’s plan. So, this is the right time to discuss about the appropriate business models for Nepali online news portals in light of models being practiced in the world.   Media products are different from ordinary products as often they don’t get used up even if people consumed it. Media economic scholar Gillian Doyle uses wo...

By Harsha Man Maharjan Note: This is the draft of my article I sent to  Republica  on 2 October 2013 but remained unpublished till today. So I have decided to upload it on my blog. Though online news portals are mushrooming in Nepal, their content and operation show they are in fledgling state and are fraught with problems. Yes, the demands of these portals are increasing day by day as these new media have advantages over traditional media-they are highly interactive or participatory and instant. Among all, online media made possible multimedia technology marrying text, audio and video. None the less many of Nepali online portals could not shoulder the burden of providing instant and interesting news. Either they lift news/features from online or other sources with or without proper courtesy or update other’s news which is a kind of tinkering. It is difficult to present the exact picture of online news portal in Nepal as no authority has the informatio...

During the recent program organized by the Press Coucil on 22 september 2013, Kishor Shrestha, from the Council  informed that there is not only investigative journalism, but also cut-paste journalism in Nepal. He was referring to hubahu journalism in print media, but this kind of journalism is popular in online news portals too. The way online media are practicing this is different from what tv and radio are doing. Usually FM radio and television stations are reading selected portion of the news from newspapers. But some online news portals are lifting matters from websites from print media. For example in the issue of Nepal magazine on 22 September, Sitaram Baral has wrote a long cover story on the conflict inside the family of Gyanendra Shah. This reporting was uploaded on ekantipur next day and other news portals like http://muldharnews.com , http://topnepalnews.com , http://realkhabar.com , etc started to upload this article citing the source, Nepal magazine. None of t...

Source:  http://www.journalism.org/commentary_backgrounder/newsweek_numbers June 3, 2013 By Katerina Matsa On Tuesday, May 28, Variety reported that  IAC , Barry Diller's media and internet company, is considering selling Newsweek. It would be the magazine's second sale within a three-year period that included a merger with The Daily Beast and the decision to cease publishing a print edition. Editor-in-chief Tina Brown confirmed this in a  memo  on Wednesday, May 29. "Newsweek is a powerful brand," she wrote, "but its demands have taken attention away from The Daily Beast." The news magazine genre in general has faced a difficult time transitioning to the digital space. But for Newsweek, the past few years have been especially tumultuous. Between 2007 and the end of 2009, when the magazine was still owned by the Washington Post Co., Newswee k reduced its total staff by 33%, according to Pew Research analysis of the magazines' staff boxes. Its reve...

From now on I will be posting interesting articles on media by others also in this blog.

By Harsha Man Maharjan According to an amendment in  Motion Picture (Production, Exhibition and Distribution) Rules, 2057 (2000 A.D.) in 2010,  Nepal Film Censor Board has to rate movies in four categories Universal (U), Parental Guide (PG), Special (S) and Adult (A), but the board is still scissoring scenes and showing paternalistic attitude to film makers. This is evident from the list of ratings this board gave to movies both Nepali and foreign during few months (15 june-6 September 2012). This is the first time that the Ministry of Information and Communication has made public such kind of information. This is good for public and the board. I think it makes decisions of the board transparent. And this is good symptom for future. But it has helped us to judge the rating system. The list contains ratings of 45 movies and informs about the cuts in movies. These ratings show that the board has shown concern on ‘vulgarity’. Two examples are interesting. The boa...

By Harsha Man Maharjan  Do Nepali media need social media guidelines ? This became a topic in an interaction program organized by Martin Chautari on 13 September 2012 about ‘How are Nepali Journalists Using Social Media ?’ According to Tilak Pathak journalist and member of Centre for Media Research-Nepal and pundit of this program, “Nepali media have started to feel a need of these guidelines but none has created one”.  This problem arises when a journalist who is employed in media break news from his/her blog or facebook or twitter. Pathak informed that there is no incident where a journalist has been taken action for breaking news in social media. It seems to me that it is right time that Nepali media prepare their social media guideline. This would make easy for journalists.

By Harsha Man Maharjan These days I am in London under a project between Martin Chautari and SOAS. This visit gave me an opportunity to think about the post conflict situation of Nepali media. This short article is my understanding of the situation: Post conflict is a transitional phase where both old and new forces tried to exert their influences and it is the period where a society involves in debates, discussions on various issues. Many people believe that Nepal is going through this phase. Academicians are writing on different aspects of the post conflict situation from security to tourism. But very few articles and papers have discussed about Nepali media in Post Conflict situation. Only article, I encountered was from the discipline of Public Administration. In 2008 a faculty from Public Administration Campus, Kathmandu had written this paper with the title, Media Situation in Post Conflict Nepal: An analysis. But this paper’s concern is narrow. It deals the post conflict situa...

By Harsha Man Maharjan London, 18 February One of my colleagues at Martin Chautari sent me an email yesterday to confirm about the assassination of library.nu. This is a sad news for me. I have benefited a lot from this site for more than a year. For me, it was a big library where I could find almost all books.During research and teaching, I used many books from this website This is not an obituary.I believe that the library.nu or gigapedia will never die and no one can kill it. That means it will definitely reincarnate in other forms. I hope that day will come soon. Here are some of comments on facebook: Imperial S Storm · Top Commenter Library.nu is closed on registration. I have no control over this. Main reason is Library.nu ranked 7th in the world for usage of its type. Now they have legal maters to deal with. They are trimming back there usage by closing registration. However this has not only happening to Library.nu. Its happening all over the web. SOPA and collages are trying ...

for freedom of speech and information January 18th is going to be amazing. Sites are striking in all different ways, but they are united by this: do the biggest thing you possibly can, and drive contacts to Congress. Put this on your site or automate it by putting this JS into your header, which will start the blackout at 8AM EST and end at 8PM EST.

By Harsha Man Maharjan The very newspapers which always criticized the government for back-breaking price-hike in fuel and other goods increased its price cent percentage. On 13 December 2011, three Nepali dailies Kantipur , Annapurna Post and Nagarik declared through the publisher’s note that they had increased their price from Rs. 5 to Rs. 10. It was unprecedented in the history of news media in Nepal. In 2003, some of them were fighting to reduce their price. At that time there was a price war between The Himalayan Times (related to Annapurna Post ) and The Kathmandu Post (related to K antipur ). When The Himalayan Times (THT) started to sell in Rs. 2, The Kathmandu Post made its price Rs. 1.50. All three newspapers argued that they had no other option than to increase the price because there was price-hike in newsprint and prices of everything in increasing in Nepal. Annapurna Post even claimed that newspapers in Nepal were the cheapest in South Asia. All of three n...