One Way Or Another

Ayer tuve oportunidad de cubrir la cumbre del G-20 en Washington. Sí, esa especie de triunfo para el presidente español, que consiguió colarse entre los más poderosos y según Sarkozy puede que lo haya hecho para quedarse.

Comparecencia J.L. Rodríguez Zapatero en Washington, D.C. CFPereda

La cumbre en la que los mandatarios pasaron más tiempo comiendo que reunidos. La cumbre en la que la resolución de acuerdo entre todos los países llegó antes de lo esperado. Parece que les sobró tiempo.

Era también la primera cumbre o evento internacional que he cubierto nunca, así que mientras los mandatarios hacían que trabajaban, me divertí adivinando de dónde era cada periodista. Los asiáticos, como siempre que hacen turismo, hicieron fotos hasta de las imágenes que salían en la tele. Cuando me quise dar cuenta, el reportero sentado a mi lado en el centro de prensa era holandés y, como España y la República Checa, también venía de prestado. “¿Tú tampoco sabes lo que hacemos aquí, no?” me dijo.

Centro de prensa internacional para la cumbre G-20. CFPereda

Me sorprendió la exagerada presencia de periodistas españoles. Todos interesados porque es la primera vez que España está entre los más grandes. Todos escépticos porque puede que sea la última vez, porque el acuerdo llegó demasiado pronto, porque la única resolución fue que van a hacer lo que tenían que haber hecho ya.

Conclusión: parece que tendremos que seguir esperando a ver si estas cumbres sirven para algo más que hacerse la foto de turno y sentarse a comer juntos. Puede que por eso el New York Times no le haya dedicado a la cumbre ni un titular en la portada de hoy. Tremendo.

Para los que ya estáis acostumbrados a leer en Internet, ya os suena el término “tag” o etiqueta: palabras asociadas con una noticia o un post, para facilitar su búsqueda. Algo así como los términos que pondríamos en negrita para resaltar lo más importante del texto.

Y para los que os interesa el periodismo y la influencia de la Red, también sabréis que cada vez son más los medios impresos que hacen referencia en el papel a sus ediciones digitales: anuncian contenido multimedia como videos o galerías de fotos que los lectores sólo pueden encontrar en la Web.

Pues bien, la convención Demócrata en Estados Unidos, como lo será la semana que viene la Republicana, es un gran ejemplo de cómo Internet invade poco a poco los medios impresos. Además de suplementos especiales todos los días, como en el caso del Washington Post, sus páginas incluyen elementos originales de la Web.

Lo siquiente es la imagen de un “tag cloud” o nube de etiquetas, utilizado para mostrar los términos más utilizados por Hillary Clinton en su discurso de anoche. La foto ha aparecido, y a un tamaño importante, en la edición en papel de esta mañana.

Las palabras que más veces pronunció Hillary Clinton en su discurso. Cuanto más grande el tamaño de la palabra, más veces la dijo. Pincha en la imagen para ver la comparación original en Washingtonpost.com

Aquí los medios impresos ya han aprendido la lección de “renovarse o morir”. Es decir, el que antes sepa incorporar lo mejor de la Web en el papel, sobrevivirá a la crisis.

Acabo de descubrir la página Daily Life, en la que puedes buscar información relacionada con personas que sean noticia. Introduce un nombre y podrás navegar entre fotografías, artículos que mencionan a esa persona, entradas de blog, frases que se han dicho sobre ellos, o que hayan pronunciado recientemente.

Daily Life se autodefine como “organizador de las noticias del mundo”, y lo hace para ti así:

Imagen de la página Daily Life con frases pronunciadas sobre Barack Obama

Quién me lo iba a decir…

Para celebrar que el número se acerca, os invito a ver la página Web que he creado para una de mis clases: Communities Around the District.

Se trata de una recopilación de todos los artículos que hicimos para localizar y describir las comunidades de inmigrantes y sus medios de comunicación en Washington, D.C. y alrededores.

Si estais en Facebook, también podéis pasar por aquí.

Espero que la disfrutéis!

–

Waiting for visitor #5,000

To celebrate that this moment is now close, I invite you to see the Web site I created for one of my clases: Communities Around the District.

It’s a compilation of all the stories and research we did to map, feature and identify the immigrant communities and ethnic media in Washington D.C. metro area.

If you are on Facebook, you can also come visit us here.

Hope you like it!

By Cristina Fernandez Pereda

Almost two million new users from around the world sign up for Facebook each week. Since Feb. 11, those who login from a Spanish-speaking country will see the site in their own language. In the next few weeks, French and German speaking users will have the same option.

WHAT FACEBOOK USERS SAID:
Brand Netty, United States
“I like the Spanish version because I’m really interested in Spanish and it helps me learn the language now that I navigate the network among Spanish people.”
Stephanie Guevara, Peru
“Honestly, I think Facebook in Spanish is not that well translated, and it’s not complete either. I tried switching to Spanish, but I prefer the English one.”
Daniel Hernado Pinto Sepulveda, Colombia
“It’s something that we needed, definitely. I think that the fact that Americans had to create a Spanish edition means that Spanish-speakers also have our space for both our culture and our language.”
Johanna Castaño, Colombia
“It’s the opportunity that lots of us needed. Using Facebook in Spanish for the first time means I can better communicate and use this site that opens up the world for us, our friends and contact people we had lost track of.”
Carmen Cecilia Molina, Panama.
“I think it’s effective for Spanish-speaking users, for those who do speak English or not. Because those who don’t can now use Facebook; and those who speak English, but love their first language, can use this wonderful tool, too. However, there’s something in particular that I don’t like and it’s that some of the translations are done literally and the sentences have lost some of their meaning. I would love for them to fix this. I still use Facebook in English for this reason.”
Vanessa Andrade, Venezuela
“I feel that part of the essence of Facebook is that it’s in English and I’m quite sure it will loose part of it now that we have it in Spanish too. Personally, I don’t like having it in Spanish, but we’ll have to wait and see what the public’s reaction is.”

About 60 percent of the social network’s users are outside the United States, according to Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook. The release of a Spanish version encourages new Spanish-speaking users around the world to join.

A week after the first release of a non-English edition of Facebook, new questions arise. What will be the future of the different editions? What uses will Spanish-speaking users find for the social network? How many of the 2.8 million current users in Spain and Latin America are going to switch their language preferences to Spanish?

“I think Facebook is going to try keeping the network as one site without splitting it depending on the languages, which is key to having one integrated network. If people separate according to the different languages, the network’s value will degrade,” said Emily Plant, member of the LINKS Center for Social Network Analysis.

User Sofia Galatas, from Spain, doesn’t like the different language editions. “Everyone who doesn’t have English as first language is going to separate to have Facebook in their own language, and one of the advantages of Facebook is that there are people from everywhere without being divided by languages,” she said through Facebook’s email service.

Carlos Sanchez, who accesses the network from Spain, appreciates having the option to switch to Spanish, but he won’t.

“I’m already used to the English one, but I think it’s a good way of attracting more people to the site. Most of my friends didn’t use it because it was in English and that might change now,” he said in a conversation through the site.

Unlike Sanchez, Miguel Mayol bets that Facebook will continue to be a network of multilingual users that don’t need editions in their own language because they already speak English. “I think a minority will only have contacts and belong to groups that speak their language, but I don’t think there will be monolingual non-English speakers in Facebook. It will remain a social network for people with higher-education experience,” he said.

Facebook developpers decided that the translation of the entire site needed to be led by users. About 1,500 users added the translation application and submitted different translations of words and phrases like “Send a message” or “Profile” and then voted for the best ones. After a few weeks, users had agreed to describe, for example, the term “poke” as “dar un toque.”

Yishan Wong, director of engineering at Facebook, described the company’s concerns about the process on the Facebook Blog on Feb. 13.

“We weren’t quite sure ourselves, at first,” said Wong. “Everyone’s familiar with the possibility of vandalism on Wikipedia, so we wondered if the same might happen on Facebook - that’s why we implemented the voting system - but surely, we thought, our users would want to make sure their own experience on Facebook was a good one.”

As Wong described, Facebook hired professional translators to provide glossaries, style guides and other materials. The team didn’t publish the translations until checking all the submissions. Also, Facebook wanted these translators to do it “professionally, just in case,” Wong posted.

“It’s very interesting that Facebook asked users to participate in the translation of the site. That way they don’t feel as getting a second class version of the site and, hopefully, that will pay off for them to get new Spanish-speaking users,” Plant said.

Jeff Ruff, from Philadelphia and currently living in Madrid, Spain, likes that the translation process was open to anyone who wanted to participate in it. “I think it’s great that we now have Facebook in Spanish. So many people speak Spanish worldwide, and there are also lots of Spanish-speakers in the United States, so I think it’s fair to have it in both languages,” Ruff Said.

One of the questions now is how many Spanish speakers are going to use Facebook. The company’s intention is to internationalize the site that started in the United States as a college network and then expanded. However, only 2 percent of Spanish universities have their own social networks.

“It takes a while to build up the use of a site among a different group. However, we can see that people from other countries are following the same trends as American users: they are catching up with peer groups already on the site,” Plant said.

The use of social networks in different countries depends on how these sites started. Facebook started in the United States as a college network. In Spain and Latin America, users accessed Facebook when they knew of an American friend who was already on the site and also had to wait until the network became public.

“It’s very probable that now Spanish-speaking users who also speak English will start having contacts among demographically different groups. The fact that Facebook was in English probably stopped some Spanish-speakers from using it, but the Spanish edition is now the starting point: the network only needs a good amount of users to explode,” said Isidro Maya, Social Psychology Professor at University of Sevilla, in Spain, and director of REDES, the Hispanic magazine for the analysis of social networks.

Users outside the United States have had different social networks such as MySpace or Friendster, in addition to more local ones, such as Tuenti, in Spanish and with more privacy options than Facebook; Orkut, Google’s social network, which experienced a surprisingly rapid growth in Brazil, and HI5, the most popular networking site in Latin America.

Nico Vera, Facebook’s Privacy Eingeneer, posted on the Facebook Blog on February 11, about the new edition’s release.

“In just a couple of days we have seen a significant growth in the number of users that have joined Facebook from countries in España and America Latina, including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela,” he said.

Paul Montenegro, a user from Costa Rica, explained, in a conversation through the site, how some Spanish-speakers prefer MySpace to Facebook because it’s more “Spanish friendly” and now hopes that they will join him on Facebook: “It’s going to be great for those Latinos that are in the verge of just learning English and or are in another country. I hope family memebers and other friends will join and be part of the more mature adult atmosphere,” he said.

Plant defends that Facebook’s intention is to get the market other networks have gained outside the United States.

“Friendster was very successful among Spanish-speakers, and MySpace too, but Facebook is growing much faster. Being the first to have the application doesn’t mean that you’ll win in the end.”

This story was published by the American Observer on Feb. 20, 2008

By Cristina Fernández Pereda 

El País, one of Spain’s major newspapers, shows after its last redesign how citizen journalism is changing the way news outlets present news both in print and digital format.

ELPAIS.com is an example of how citizen journalism, a community of blogs and crowdsourcing techniques can expand the newspaper’s content through the interaction with readers.

ELPAIS.com editors have worked on
the Web site’s redesign with consultants
Ally Palmer and Terry Watson.
Palmer & Watson were also in charge of
changes in news sites such as Le Monde,
in France; The Scotsman, in Scotland;
and Politiken, in Denmark.

El País published its first edition in 1976 and 31 years later, on Oct. 21, 2007, presented a major renovation that has changed its design, added different ways of gathering the news and modified its content. All the changes were reported by the newspaper’s editors through a blog named “Querer Comprender,” (Willing to Understand).

“We are betting on exclusive information, critical analysis of major topics and in-depth interviews, leaving on the side the routine and news conferences-journalism, and taking an important step towards the interaction of print and digital newsrooms,” Lydia Aguirre, director of ELPAIS.com, posted on the blog the Web site published to describe the changes.

The editors of ELPAIS.com have made significant efforts to provide readers with information updated every minute.

“We are incorporating more exclusive online content, with multimedia elements and the print and digital newsrooms working together 24 hours to provide better content in both formats,” Aguirre said.

The best example of how the digital edition is providing content to the print edition is the citizen journalism section Yo, Periodista (I, Journalist), a space created entirely by readers who send news with videos, pictures and audio. The section “where readers become journalists,” as it states on its front page, was launched on Nov. 20, 2006. In one year, the section became the best Interactive Emergent Project on the Internet, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau in Spain, which cited the paper’s efforts for its originality and vision.

When it started, Yo, Periodista originated 5 percent of the online news site’s users. One year later, 15 percent of the news site’s readers start their visit to ELPAIS.com through the citizen journalism section.

“People not only want to read online, they also want to create and share information. And information through readers’ integration in the creative process is a trend that will not stop,” Javier Moya, coordinator of the participative sections, said.

The content from Yo, Periodista affects both the digital and print editions of the paper. Moya recalls the case of the Virginia Tech shootings, when a Spanish student sent updates from the campus and provided first-hand information of what was happening there.

When a citizen journalist sent pictures from the chaos resulting from
eight days of strikes in the metro of Paris, El País had the chance to
continue their coverage by adding different angles.

In a more recent case, a reader sent pictures from the chaos in the Paris metro caused by eight days of strikes. El País had already reported about the strikes, “but the testimony of this reader gave us an opportunity to cover the workers’ negotiations with the government, something we wouldn’t have published without the pictures,” said Fernando Navarro, reporter for the digital edition.

“The content created by readers complements the news with a reader’s views on the event. It is good because this allows us to get to information the newspaper cannot reach any other way,” Moya said.

ELPAIS.com also launched a “Community” five months ago, allowing readers to publish blogs within the news site. So far, readers have created 6,000 blogs and some of their content also jumps to the different news sections.

“Sometimes we detect a post that could easily become a news story. We contact the blogger and suggest the possibility of using it in Yo, Periodista. If the story is more significant, it can even have a link from the main story written by one of El País’ reporters,” Moya said.

ELPAIS.com has developed the crowdsourcing strategy through the online news site: a link asks readers if they have been affected by a particular situation, from blackouts to train delays to a strike. The readers become sources providing the information the agencies cannot get: testimonies, images, videos and audio describing what the situation is like on the streets.

“This gives us data and suggests different angles to cover a story. It creates a feedback between the print edition, the online edition and the readers complementing the final product we give: information,” Moya said.

This information can come from all over the world. Appealing to its international audience (25 percent of the readers are outside of Spain), ELPAIS.com has created a Global online edition. “It’s a project for Spanish speakers outside of Spain who want to know what’s happening in the world: They all have their newspaper at the Global edition of El País,” Navarro said.

The editors of ELPAIS.com are conscious of their reader’s involvement with the newspaper. Last September, El País released the transcript of the interview between Spain’s former president, Jose Maria Aznar (1996-2004) and U.S. President George W. Bush on Feb. 22, 2003, in which the Bush admitted he would be in Iraq even if he didn’t have the United Nations’ support.

The story was widely reported and even prompted coverage in international newspapers, such as The Washington Post and USATODAY.com, when reporters asked the White House Press Secretary Dana Perinoabout the conversation. On Oct. 10, ELPAIS.com then announced a chat between Ernesto Ekaizer, the reporter who released the transcript, and readers.

“Ekaizer talked to readers in English and Spanish. In less than one hour, we had 600 questions from readers,” Aguirre said.

ELPAIS.com has introduced changes that engage the readers through multimedia content, improving the Video section and adding a television service, ELPAISTV with three channels.

“The impact has been immediate and significant, with a 20 percent increase of videos downloaded by our readers,” Aguirre said.

All the changes, such as participation tools, the blogs community and applications to customize the front page that allow readers to change the header style or the font size, type and color, appeal to an audience of both traditional readers and young people familiar with the digital technology.

“We are facing these challenges to offer a better product and engage younger readers who are starting to get involved in our society; we have to count on them for the next 10 or 15 years,” Javier Moreno, Director of El País, said according to EFE news agency.

His adjunct director, Juan Cruz, posted on the blog how Moreno has conceived the changes.

“The change is not over once it’s done. The change has just started.”

This story was published on the American Observer Dec. 4, 2007.

By Cristina Fernández Pereda 

Ask anyone in the streets of Paris what they are first: French or European? It is more likely that they consider themselves French. But if the person you run into happens to be an Erasmus student, it is more likely he or she will tell you they are first European, then French.

The European Union is now expanding but the evolution of a European identity has just started. Cafebabel.com has become a forum where Europeans can share, reflect and analyze current affairs across borders, with different views, in different languages. The site encourages readers to think as Europeans, and use Café Babel as a means to build European identity and public opinion.

The online magazine Cafe Babel.
Photo provided by Cafebabel.com

Italian Adriano Farano spent one year in Strasbourg as an Erasmus student. Erasmus, the European university exchange program, took him to study political science in the city where the European Parliament congregates. The Erasmus experience is believed to be building the first eurogeneration: the first group of young people from the old continent who consider themselves European.

Friends from different European countries, their views on current affairs, conversations in different languages and a common interest in journalism inspired Farano to found Café Babel. He is now editor-in-chief and executive manager of this online magazine that has become the first pan-European media.

“A café is where people meet. Babel is what separated them,” said Farano. With his friends from the Erasmus experience, he decided to take the conversations from cafes across Europe to a forum online.

The Cafe Babel community across Europe,
with local offices from Lisbon, Portugal;
to Istanbul, Turkey; to Stockholm, Sweden.
Photo provided by Cafebabel.com

In contrast to the Bible version of Babel, where languages divide people, Café Babel is “a cafe where you can speak, read and write in the language you want, but you are understood. We are, at Café Babel, all together in a cozy cafe, speaking all our different languages, but we can understand each other, we communicate and we debate,” said Monika Oelz, project manager and communication chief at Café Babel.

The project, now seven years old, involves more than 1,000 citizen journalists and translators from different countries, 22 local offices in 14 European countries, and 400,000 people visiting the site every month.

“We play the card of originality by addressing a specific audience (the eurogeneration) with a specific content that is general (society, culture, politics), but analyzed with a European perspective. We try to gather stories from all around Europe and also find transnational tendencies in the fields of art, immigration, education, etc.,” Farano said.

Last week, Café Babel’s creator joined American University’s International Communication students during his visit to the school. He was invited to the United States by the International Visitor Exchange Program, which brings youth from all over the world to the U.S. During a three-week trip, he is meeting with leaders from Google, Facebook and Wikipedia.

Image from the interview with
Café Babel’s creator, Adriano Farano.
Photo provided by Adriano Farano.

“What I learned from International Communication Prof. Shalini Venturelli in her speech is that national mass media were needed by the U.S. in order to build a sense of community,” Farano said. “The problem is that we don’t have, as was the Anglo-Saxon for the U.S., a dominant culture. That is why a pan-European media needs to respect the different cultures and languages of the Old Continent.”

One of the magazine’s goals is to break down the barriers created by national media to create that sense of European identity. Café Babel is published in six different languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Catalan), and makes it possible for journalists and bloggers in the community to have their posts translated, so the readers can chose the language. No other online community includes this feature.

Café Babel is another example of participatory media, as writers and journalists contribute to the site. Translators then edit the articles in different languages for each of the different editions of the online magazine. Editors encourage contributors to share different opinions to show current affairs from a transnational perspective. The only requirement is quality.

When you go to Café Babel, you find articles about the immigration to Europe; how Muslim women “cover their hair, but not their mouth“;” the Eurodyssey: scholarships to work in Europe for Erasmus students; and the European Reform Treaty to be signed next December in Lisbon. The readers’ favorite: Tower of Babel where Europeans laugh comparing idioms and expressions in different languages.

This story was published on the American Observer Nov. 6, 2007.