Welcome to Istanbul

I flew into Istanbul, Turkey a few hours ago. Coasted above the Mediterranean along the coastline from the European side as the city grew to our left. And grew. And grew. (PS - Istanbul is huge. LA huge.) The rolling hills of the city are carpeted with buildings and punctuated every now and then by minarets. That was the most striking feature of the skyline for me. These little spikes jutting up higher than their surroundings. (It's exactly the sort of skyline the Swiss just voted to avoid.)

Pictures to come, I promise.

What am I doing in Turkey? I was invited to come speak at a conference by Internews, an organization that describes itself as "an international media development organization whose mission is to empower local media worldwide to give people the news and information they need, the ability to connect, and the means to make their voices heard." So you can see where the connection to Current is.

I'm speaking (tomorrow) about recent developments in journalism, both good and bad. How, in the US, the business of journalism is in crisis but within that crisis is great opportunity. Using new technologies that open media up to a wider range of voices we could actually save/improve/fix/better journalism. It's actually why Current was founded and it's what I spend a lot of my time thinking about.

I'm going to focus on my favorite examples of new directions in journalism. Here's a few of them:
- ProPublica's Reporting Network which asks you to help them report their stories
- Demotix, a photography citizen journalism site
- Spot.us which works to "crowd-fund" journalistic work

If you have any favorite sites you think I should include, let me know. Otherwise, I'll let you all know how the speech goes over. And, hopefully, I'll be able to introduce you to some folks from around Asia and Europe who are here for the conference (the list of countries represented boggles the mind: Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, etc, etc).

Also - what about Turkey? Any burning questions you'd want asked of the Turks? I'll ask 'em!

Stay tuned!

Recently on the Current News Blog:
- 1 in 4 US children on food stamps - Real Recovery
- While you were feasting: Swiss minarets, bin Laden blunders, Iran nuclear enrichment
- Hasn't this just been a whole year of Black Friday? - Real Recovery
- The recession visualized - Real Recovery
- California's education crisis - Join the group on Current