I just returned from hearing Ethan Zuckerman speak about his project Global Voices.

Global Voices was founded to close a long-existing gap where wealthier countries are dispraportionatly covered in the global media compared to their less-wealthy counterparts.

Global Voices is a place to find the work of bloggers from almost every corner of the world. I know from personal experience that finding news about foreign countries in the United States is often difficult if not impossible. I studied Haitian Kreyol while at University, and was e-mailed every time the New York Times published an article about Haiti. I got an e-mail about once every 3 months, unless there was a coup, or a major leader was assasinated. It is hard for me to understand why a country that has almost completely fallen apart, several hundred miles away from Florida, is not important enough for coverage by the New York Times.

Where traditional media has taken the easy road "citizen journalists" have stepped up. Now there are persons in almost every country, no matter how oppressed their freedom of expression, using blogs to publish their unique viewpoints. In Egypt imprisoned bloggers are still using people on the outside to keep the message coming.

I will be checking back regularly with Global Voices to see what is new in the parts of the world that most people in the states choose to ignore.