The third annual Al Jazeera Forum, a day and a half conference in Doha, began today.
Focused on media in the Middle East, it also serves as a keen PR tool for the Al Jazeera network. It brings in Western journalists and thinkers, and shows them that Al Jazeera is not all beheadings and bin Laden (or at all).
The conference floor also showcased a history of political cartoons, loads of trademarked paraphernalia, and the array of its products- Al Jazeera English, Arabic, Sports, Documentary, Talk? (first I’ve heard of this one), and where things are heading.
Al Jazeera New Era | Any time, any where, any how
One direction it’s heading is the ‘new era’, a mix of content on demand in format demanded as well as citizen journalism via popular grassroots media outlets (read: YouTube & Flickr). A good start is what they plan on doing with the conference, testing things out with videos and photos of the forum, an official blog, a proper Mobile website and a pretty slick looking java app (for mobiles) in the works.
Though still fairly devoid of content, the launch of Al Jazeera’s YouTube channel looks promising. Al Jazeera English has yet to offer video on demand, and currently only has available a low quality video stream for free, running through RealPlayer. However, as nice as it will be to have video available on YouTube, the English website needs to offer video independently as well.