The African Independent

 

A web journalism project

powered by the Online Journalism Project

The  following request for grant has been submitted to a charitable foundation and we have no indication that the grant would be awarded for sure. Therefore any charitable donations are very welcome. To make a tax deductible donation to TAI Project click here.

You may also send a check for your charitable, tax deductible donation at the following address: Action against Impunity, PO Box 7157 New Haven, CT 06519

THE PURPOSE:

The African Independent (TAI) is a web journalism project with the purpose of connecting audiences to their African roots, cultures, and disappearing values.

THE IDEA

The web journalism project has been incubating since 2003 that The African Independent (http://www.africanindependent.com) was created. Experience with the online newspaper quickly showed how difficult it is to efficiently work and make a living out of independent journalism without surrendering one’s independence.

Despite single articles recording up to 20,000 daily hits, the independent journalist must also become a good sales person promoting the website on the advertising market. Success of the task is not obvious as it might easily lead to journalistic work being hindered by advertising firms’ interests.

The African Independent anticipates to becoming the link, the bridge that African descent people need.

A Connecticut-based web journalism project, TAI brings to its public a fair picture of experiences, issues, solutions, unbiased news and food-for-thought articles and graphics about African descent people’s communities in the world. TAI is organized to be an online newspaper focused on delivering news, debates, opinions and advices about matters that are relevant to the daily life of African descent people’s communities, which are demonstrated to being fast growing readership markets.

TAI will bring the particular advantage of crossing language barriers, by building upon low wage country opportunities with cheap translation services for the entire web site content.

Publication languages are anticipated to be English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili and Arab.

Starting with current, bilingual English-French language publication, TAI will add other languages incrementally depending on available financial capabilities. Translators would be hired and employed in their own countries in Brazil, Africa, and Latin America.

THE POINT

Civilization is a type of society, often a complex society where the people have a way of doing and viewing, have individuals who can be called thinkers, have individuals who rule over most of the people, have writing, have religion, have Art, have money and various specificities that make such a society different from others.

Society is the term to describe humans being together in terms of collective, of sum of their social networks and power networks. To achieve fairness and therefore the possibility to live together, a society is very concerned with citizenship, duties, rights, ethics, space limits and time limits.

The way a society breaks down and fails is very often the same. A warning sign for such a break down is inflation in fraud, theft, violence, war, and sometimes even genocide if people stop identifying with the society and thus identify with what they think of as a “race” of people.

Absence of civilization or stubborness in sticking with a failing society is sometimes the best way to individual and collective deperdition. Otherwise, civilizational resources are the best remedy to societal break downs.

Market-driven societies, often fueled by idiologies that preach iconoclasm towards existing societal and cultural values, will always tend to deviate from the principles of fairness and solidarity necessary to avoid break downs, thus substituting a jungle to a normal society.

Universal access to a civilization is often a simple declaration of good intent. For, as time goes dominant groups within such a universal society would always emerge based on claims that they are the true civilized or “race” because of their perceived ancestral or mythical origins.

Therefore, market-driven societies and universal societies are sometimes the negation of society. Living in a market-driven or universal society when one is victimized with words like “alien” or “them” is often a personal and communal tragedy. African descent people often live such a tragedy in the Americas, in Europe, in Asia and in many parts of the world.

Including African studies as college courses or celebrating Kwanza are definitely good first steps; but the whole task of making African descent people think and behave the African civilization way is still to be met.

Communication is a powerful means to passing on the civilizational resources the victims of societal break downs need to cope with various issues, including fraud, theft, violence and vermin.

Journalism can take the position as solver, as opposed to the simple observer it is taught to be, in situations where people need a bridge to saving resources. The African Independent is committed to establishing and maintaining the bridge that would give the African descent people access to African civilization.

 

THE INTERNET AND THE COOMUNICATION MARKET TRENDS

Print newspaper market is shrinking in the U.S. Mainstream television and radio markets are stagnating. In 1997, the Internet represented only 0.8% of the time consumers spent with media. By 2007, it would have a 5.6% share.

According to the 2004 Veronis Suhler Stevenson's annual communication report,

in 2003 “time spent with advertising-supported media accounted for 56.4 percent, or 2,064 hours, of the total, while consumer-supported media accounted for the remaining 43.6 percent, or 1,598 hours. Consumer-supported media gained nearly 7.5 share points between 1998 and 2003. Driven by time spent with the Internet, home videos, and videogames and increased media multitasking, the average consumer's time spent with media will expand at a compound annual rate of 2.1 percent in the forecast period to 4,059 hours in 2008, more than 11 hours per day or 78 hours per week. Average time spent with consumer-supported media will continue to gain share from time spent with ad-supported media in the forecast period. By 2008, consumer-supported media will account for 45.9 percent of the total time spent with media, while ad-supported media will represent 54.1 percent of the total.”

Therefore, with more confidence that they would make a positive impact, citizen-driven journalism has with Internet and the other consumer-supported media an opportunity to break stories the mainstream, ad-supported media would not want to cover. For, democracy and the well-being of citizens are better served when all information is freely made available.

THE MISSION

TAI mission is showing a fair picture of experiences, issues, solutions, unbiased news, and food-for-thought articles and graphics about African descent people’s communities in the world.

THE COMPETITION

The first three competitor types listed below are indirect and the fourth one is direct competition to TAI. These competitors have developed and used the following business models:

1-     United Nations’ IRINnews.org model: Daily online streaming news from Africa and Asia originated after the Rwanda massacres, with a mission responding to the concern that “When crisis or disaster hits a country, communications are often one of the first casualties”. Therefore, IRIN news is focused on crises and disasters.

2-     News agencies such as Reuters, AFP, AP, and the like cover Africa and the Americas using networks of correspondents who hunt for salable news mainly for the Western audience. Salable news generally falls in the IRIN model’s category because of Western market’s (assumed) demand for overseas crisis and disaster reporting. Primary data collected shows that they encounter critics for underreporting African and South American experiences, achievements, issues, solutions, and opinions.

3-     Mainstream media such as BBC, CNN, RFI, and others are no different from news agencies in that they seek news salable on Western markets. They face the same critics of underreporting African and South American experiences, achievements, issues and solutions, and opinions because they prefer instead reporting sensational disasters and crises, often with only blames by way of commentaries.

4-     Black online and print newspapers covering the U.S. and global online markets [AllAfrica.com, USAfrica.com, Amsterdam News, The New York Beacon, Challenge group, General Media Strategies papers (Daily Journal, African-American Observer), City News, Twin Visions Weekly, The Inner City, Umoja News, The Network Journal] get their international news input from IRIN, news agencies, and mainstream media mentioned above, as well as from their local reporters and the Black Press of America aka NNPA (National Newspaper Publishers Association).

 

TAI’S BUSINESS MODEL AND MANAGEMENT OF NEWS

In the Internet world, the task of journalism is not anymore assumed only by the communication professional who graduated from journalism school. More and more ordinary citizens are investigating, reporting, analyzing and writing or broadcasting stories only professional journalists used to deliver.

Internet has made it easier for non initiate citizens to gather facts, to investigate, to lead interviews and to report news like ever before. Ordinary citizens thus have the opportunity to participate in public affairs, which is the natural manifestation of democracy.

The African Independent’s Business Model is Producer - Decoder – Diffuser.

1-     Producer - Media inputs (articles and graphics) are produced by journalists, cameramen, columnists, thinkers and readers operating in the field in Africa, North America, South America, Europe and the Caribbean. Inputs are produced in local languages and report events that reflect local cultures, opinions, achievements, experiences, issues and solutions. African civilization as reflected by proverbs, rituals, traditions, established wisdom and experiences, is the moral basis of the way of doing and viewing that would support the best commentaries.

2-     Decoder – Decoding is all tasks of translating, special copy-writing including making items cross-culturally understandable, editing, monitoring implementation of standards, and supervising work of local and overseas Correspondents.

3-     Diffuser – Diffusing includes output online publishing. Over time, TAI may pursue newspaper printing, promotion, and distribution objectives should our audiences show strong interest in being served on the print format.

 

THE INTERACTIVE WEBSITE

To fulfill its mission, a powerful tool for TAI will be a web site that is interactive with various web log features.

TAI’s interactive web site will display items with a combination of text, images and links to other web sites, blogs, web pages, and other media related to African descent people’s affairs. Readers will be able to leave comments on topics aroused by posted aticles in an interactive format.

TAI will be a social media network with blogs that are primarily textual, although some will be open to photoblog for photographs, sketchblog for sketches, vlog for videos, MP3blog for music, podcasting for audio, and sousveillance.

TAI will strategically take advantage of current media market trends that show blogs have gained increasing notice and coverage these last six years for their role in breaking, shaping, and spinning news stories. Since 2004, the role of blogs has become increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services and political candidates are using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming.

THE END RESULT

The African Independent’s audiences would ultimately be guided by unpolluted morals, ethics, time-honored traditions and wisdom that would bring well being in their lives as well as peace in their society.

THE LASTING AND VISIBLE CHANGE EXPECTED

TAI audiences would change their African descent people’s communities from as many compost sites of violence, of anger and of various emotional affections to environments of peace and well being.

 

THE PARTNERS INVOLVED

The African Independent’s web journalism project is at its start-up phase. No other partner is currently involved, except generous strategic advices and guidance we received from the New Haven, Connecticut-based Online Journalism Project, a non profit organization presided by veteran journalist Paul Bass.

As the project goes, we will solicit contributions and funding from any non-profit partners operating in the fields of independent journalism and civil and political rights, as well as donations from the general public.

THE MEASURES OF SUCCESS

When the whole content of TAI’s web site shows a view of world events through the angle of more and more insightful African traditions and values, and TAI audience is expanding, then success would have been achieved.

THE QUALIFICATIONS

Ndzana Seme is a veteran journalist, current editor of The African Independent and author of The Republican Peril – Dialectic for Democratizing Sovereignty, a book criticizing the model of republics.

Seme has demonstrated excellence in the field of organizational management with an MS in Finance from the University of New Haven, CT, an MBA in Management with an ABC in Marketing Intelligence from the University of Connecticut, and a Maîtrise in Business Economics from the University of Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Seme has a long experience managing businesses, including 10-year experience holding various managerial positions in the banking industry, 3-year experience managing a privately owned, print newspaper, and 6-year experience managing a web journalism project.

THE ORGANIZATIONAL AND FINANCIAL CAPACITY

Visibility of TAI will most of all be on the World Wide Web, trough its powerful website, and ultimately on all the media and the public at large.

Using his 18-year experience as an independent, citizen-driven journalist and 6-year experience as a web site administrator, Ndzana Seme will hold the central and coordinating position as the TAI’s website editor.

The web editor is in charge of supervising all tasks of Producer, Decoder and Diffuser, and of coordinating the project. The editor will be assisted by volunteering journalists, technicians and active citizens in the U.S. and abroad in fulfilling TAI mission.

Ndzana Seme will donate the following down payment to the investment, which will become TAI’s property:

-         Cash                                                                           $4,000.00

TAI’s financial needs and Grant Request for the next 12 months are:

- TAI website’s professional construction:                                 $5,000.00

- TAI website’s Marketing Costs ($233/month):                       $2,800.00

- Site Content Maintenance Costs ($1000/month):                    $12,000.00

- Office supplies expenses ($250/month):                                  $3,000.00

- Light equipment (cameras, tape recorders, software…)           $5,200.00

- Travel expenses:                                                                     $9,000.00

Total Grant Request:                                                                        $37,000.00

Total TAI Project Cost                                                             $41,000.00

 

THE SUSTAINABILITY

TAI web journalism project will be sustained by:

1-     Grants from foundations;

2-     General ongoing sponsorship grants from institutions and non-profit partners operating in the fields of independent journalism and civil and political rights; and

3-     Donations from the general public