Politicinomy.com
HOW many English newspaper readers in Bangladesh have instant access to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and so on, and magazines like Time, Newsweek, The Economist and so on? Obviously, not too many. But how can we help? Well, how about a Website, politicinomy.com, to do just that -- at least partially.
The mission statement of politicinomy.com says that the objective is "one that aims primarily to serve the political, economic and all other related interests of Bangladesh in various formats."
Many columnists and readers of international events often complain about the slow access to the internet and the frequent interruptions due to power outage.
The idea finally caught up with us. We decided to develop a website on which to post links to various articles published in the western print media (including professional journal articles to help specific researcher) on various issues on request from anyone, and on our board members' own choosing.
The name politicinomy was chosen to reflect our writing interest. It is a composite word that broadly encompasses various aspects of political and economic life of the citizens of a country -- Bangladesh for us. The website is primarily intended to propagate news, views and commentaries strictly adhering to objective journalism -- professional and scholastic in all its manifestations -- and aims to serve the political, economic and all related aspects of Bangladesh in various formats. The website may not be dubbed as a web blog.
Any new developments in any area of science, engineering, medicine, economics, and so on, that are relevant to Bangladesh will be considered for posting on the website and updated on a weekly basis to allow enough time for interested readers to benefit.
One important feature included on the web page is the "panel of experts," which will help the government and the private sector in their search for people of various expertise and scholarly attributes living outside Bangladesh. Until the list is incorporated, we may be contacted through the website -- all services are purely voluntary with no strings attached.
Once Abdullah Dewan's article is published in the DS, a downloaded version is transmitted to over 2,000 recipients via email across all continents. Some of these recipients forward the article to their contacts via group-email. Many of the comments and feedbacks from readers are truly important for policy making and policy executions. We plan to post readers' comments selectively on the website for concerned authorities.
The website will now allow us to selectively list Internet links to news headlines and "titles and links" to published articles of editorial board members and columnists of the DS and other dailies, which will take the non-resident Bangladeshi readers directly to the online version of the newspapers.
This format will also help the readers in Bangladesh the same way when they click the international news headlines and op-ed titles on the web page of the leading newspapers and magazines. As we all know, despite intense interest, many of us often do not have the time to browse and filter an exploding multitude of information.
One may now see why politicinomy.com isn't intended to be a web blog, or competition for any print media in Bangladesh. It is, in fact, a free promoter of newspapers and a mover of newspaper reading traffic to various news headlines and commentaries. If it seems like a publicity organ of the Daily Star or any other newspaper -- it isn't. The whole purpose is dissemination of information to benefit Bangladeshi communities of diverse interests.
The website is not a web blog. To "blog" is to post one's own ideas, opinions, internet links, and other elements on one's web site. We aren't at all averse to blog journalism. In fact, we read articles regularly posted by many accomplished bloggers. Our problem is lack of the time needed for blogging.
This blog form of instant and global self-publishing has contributed enormously to educating and enlightening readers over the last decade. Because of blog's popularity and accelerated growth (an estimated 115 million exist now) numerous newspapers and magazines are going bankrupt in the US and elsewhere, and many others are down on their knees.
We strongly believe that the contents of politicinomy.com will benefit anyone who chooses to access, it regardless of their professional affiliations. We also wish to make it evolve in a manner to complement digital Bangladesh with information contents that is not easily accessible to distant subscribers.
Dr. Abdullah Dewan is Professor of Economics at Eastern Michigan University. Dr. Farrukh Mohsen is Environmental and Water Resources Engineer in New Jersey. Arif Mahmud and Kawser Jamal are ICT specialists in Michigan and Arkansas respectively.
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