Those of you who’ve visited the Global Voices web site are probably familiar with our core mission, and the ways in which we’ve been trying to fulfill it thus far. The central feature of Global Voices has been our international blog aggregator, which is driven today by a team comprising nine regional editors, six language editors and 60-plus volunteer authors. In the two years and three months since it came online, this edited aggregator has made major strides towards helping foster a more democratic global discourse by amplifying voices from parts of the world which normally occupy the fringes of the mainstream media, if they’re even heard at all.

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What does it really mean to be an independent journalist, reporting on the activities of the titans of industry? Well, it means that you can be exposed to some tremendous risk, financial and otherwise. But a recent California appellate court legal decision puts bloggers and other citizen journalists on slightly firmer ground.

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Congratulations to Steve Yelvington for being named 2007 Online Innovator of the Year by the Newspaper Association of America.

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The modern world powered by technology has drastically altered our traditional understanding of what a community is. However, in a shift from physical to the virtual, the term “community” has retained its validity, contrary to the gloomy predictions of doomsayers terrified by the atomization of individuals and the disaggregation of communities that never happened. Instead, many new communities sprung up to take advantage of the wealth of information that became available thanks to the Internet. And although “bowling alone” has often morphed into “blogging alone,” the latter manages to amplify and stimulate a truly global conversation in unprecedented ways.

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From The World Economic Forum comes the news that YouTube will start paying those who upload videos.

First of all… at the World Economic Forum… a YouTube announcement? Shouldn’t the folks there be talking about, I don’t know, currency trading or real estate speculation or climate change?

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I find the phrase “citizen journalism” is in some cases far too weighty a label for the most interesting examples of the activity. Not every CJ site is about global warming or local democracy in action. . .

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