Kind of an interesting development in the coverage of the horrible disaster in Indonesia. Danish Newspaper Politiken has asked Danes in the area to write to the newspaper with their "live-report" of their experiences. They then put their stories online on this newspaper subpage. You could see it as a form of group-blog, edited by an invisble hand who is not present hirself. Though it defies the usual definition of weblog because the posts are not dated (yet) and the site not identified with the personal viewpoint of one or a few people.

Well, even if not really a weblog, it is a good example of readers, not reporters, producing live content - sharing emotions and experiences, rather than facts and background information. I'd really like to ask some of these writers: what makes them do it? What makes them spend time in a netcafe writing these stories, in the middle of apparent chaos? Why isn't it enough to share their stories with family or friends? Do they want to reach out to as many as possible to tell they're safe? Do they feel a form of "moral obligation" to share their experiences with more people? Do they feel an urge to tell the world, what it was/is really like - also as a way of trying to purge some undoubtably excruciating moments? Do they, at the bottom of their hearts, find just a little bit of personal pleasure in getting a tiny little spot of the spotlight?

If newsreporting continues like this (supplemented by reader-stories), what will happen to our (the non-writing readers) perception of events? Will we see them in a more nuanced way? Will we care more? Will we spending more time reading "news"? Or will we grow so wary of all these stories that we stop reading all together?

BBC also collect readers' stories and so does CNN.com.

Update 29.12: Svenska Dagbladet links to a number of blogs (some Swedish) dealing with the disaster. One of them is a Swedish Backpacker site where people can post that they are safe.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 15:05