Citizen Journalists Report on Hazardous Ship-breaking Industry and Rock Music on Merinews

merinews.com, the first Indian participatory media platform, continued its commitment of covering issues of national importance. This time, merinews explored two diverse topics, one on the state of rock music in India and the second on the controversy surrounding the ship SS Blue Lady and the hazards of the ship-breaking industry in India.

New Delhi, India (PRWEB) July 4, 2006 -- The Indian rock scenario has been quite upbeat in the last few years. Most institutes and universities in India are also awakening to this rock culture and are inviting rock bands for their cultural festivals.

The rock scenario got an enormous boost last year when some musicians and rock fans launched the Dhanaulti Rock Festival in Uttaranchal. merinews decided to do a special section on this theme and invited various rock bands to share their experiences in Dhanaulti and otherwise. The bands gave tremendous response and some famous bands like Orange Street, Parikrama and Prithvi gave exclusive interviews. merinews also managed to motivate some citizen journalists to take interviews of the bands.

The debate on order of the Supreme Court of India to allow the Blue Lady to enter into the Indian waters has been raging for quite some time now. However, merinews decided to cover the issue from the perspective of people involved in the controversy. merinews contacted various activists to write about the issue who were forthcoming with their views.

These issues were presented from the point of view of the citizen journalist – adhering to the basic concept behind merinews – and gave a platform to social activists, rock bands and spirited writers to express their views and convey their news to the world.

merinews.com wants to fill the space left vacant by the conventional news media and take the Indian Internet community towards participatory journalism, where people write news and analysis right from where they see the action.

Currently, merinews offers a diverse set of categories for citizen journalists from different fields. They can contribute news, features, interviews, pictures, news analysis, book and film reviews, etc. The life of a contribution can be very small in the case of news or very long for other kinds of articles. The reader can comment on all articles, and they are uploaded as soon as they are made. merinews tries to upload all contributions within a day of receiving them from contributors. It also puts all content in user-friendly searchable archive, which is always free for the reader.
Site:http://www.merinews.com
Special Coverage:http://www.merinews.com/newsPortal/JSP/merinews_special.jsp

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