NowPublic Blog

This could get big:

CNN, citing a report by Xinhua, reports that Wei Wenhua (I think the Chinese name is 魏文华, but I’m not completely sure) was beaten to death by China city inspectors after trying to make photos of (or perhaps film) a protest with his mobile phone last Monday. The citizens he was trying to record protested “over the dumping of waste near their homes.” Wenhua was the manager of a construction company and, according to the reports, also a blogger.

Source: blogoscoped.com

NowPublic

Tags: China | Xinhua | according | BEATEN | Blogger | Chinese | Citizens | construction | Crime | dumping | INSPECTORS | manager | MOBILE PHONE | photos | protest | waste

I recently revisited the Alexa data on companies and sites
that I used to watch when I first started NP.
It’s interesting to see how the original ‘citizen journalist’ sites like
Slashdot have actually suffered a decline in the wake of the 2.0 revolution.

Of course this decline is more than offset by the successes of newer entrants like Newsvine, Digg, Flickr, Youtube and (I’m relieved to say) NowPublic. But what is interesting is that in spite of having real first-mover advantage none of these innovators have grown over the last 2 years.

NOTE: Alexa is notoriously unreliable as a metric but as they say, in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.

NowPublic

Tags: citizen_journalism | Digg | Flickr | Money & Stuff | newsvine | NowPublic | YouTube