Rural News Online


>> New Tactics: gramer khaber - (rural news online) is one of the recent efforts

BFES started piloting to develop a set of rural online news workers from among its Women Knowledge Workers who are: by skillfully handling the Internet facilities produce online Gramer Khabar with a provision of time-to-time updating (at least 3 times frequency in a day.)
Why rural news on line?

The concept/existence of rural news online is a first of its kind in Bangladesh . At the moment, there is no online news service in Bangladesh practicing rural journalism with the provisions of time-to-time updating in the same day (same 24 hours). Our daily newspapers are being published through print media. Only some of the daily newspapers serve their online edition once in 24 hours time. Moreover, those dailies are printed and published mostly from the capital city and focus mainly the national and international news. They cannot cover the rural news with required space and importance. The local/regional newspapers (few in number) are yet to achieve their accuracy of journalism or printing quality and are not focusing the rural development agenda. They are dependent on the national level expertise and/or infrastructure. Rural news are not well covered by giving due importance to the daily happenings in the village society and the positive mind towards their efforts and inventions for the livelihood. Amader Gramer Khaber -rural news online is emerged on this context.
Community Involvement

Rural news online is still a vision with a plan to involve the greater community. But at the moment it targets the organizational (BFES) Group members, potential local youths, dropout girls from college and schools, local pressmen, civil society and other interested persons. A group of unemployed youth (interested in ICT entrepreneurship) has been selected from the area. They were provided some orientation and skills on the simple techniques of reporting, editing, data analysis and producing publications in various forms. The original plan is to develop a set of news workers among the unemployed youth and group members within the rural society.
How it works: existing status

This group of news workers is running news centers in the command area and sends news items to the main hub at project principal office. In the news hub, editing is being done as continuous process (at simple level) for upload by the webmaster/editor. The Central News Hub produces it as online Bulletin- Gramer Khobor-rural news online. Again, the local readers reproduce this online edition into printing form at the local hub/centers for local display and collection. This is the ideal mechanism of an online news service at the rural level where the villagers would take part both as readers and news workers.
Coverage

News online covers multi-dimensional issues ranging from market price to childbirth and death. It includes agricultural information, weather forecast, disaster preparedness, trade & commerce, success stories, failures, accidents, achievements, history, culture, festivals etc.