Sumayyah Qureshi
A Kashmir based news portal, Kashmirdispatch.com, has been making waves on internet particularly some social networking sites.
The portal became popular during the summer unrest when most of the newspapers in Kashmir were not published in the face of severe curfews and restriction put on movement of people including journalists. On many occasions even when the newspapers were printed, these could not be circulated.
As the web portal was bereft of any trappings of printing and circulation, it was able to report news round the clock, which proved to be a boon for the portal launched on April 20, 2010.
During the summer unrest in the state the portal used social networking site, Facebook to propagate news. “It kept us updated even when the press was banned in Kashmir. I always check for news updates on Kashmir Dispatch,” said netizen Zaid Iqbal.
“The web portal is a concoction of journalism and technology,” says its owner, Tabish Naseer.
Tabish, a journalism graduate with a degree in Peace studies from the University of Bradford, UK, has worked as a journalist in various news organizations in India and abroad.
“The idea behind launching a web portal was to do journalism without bias or agenda. Also because we are the children of conflict, we thought to give back something to our society,” said Naseer.
The web portal is run by people from different educational backgrounds ranging from internet technology to computers and journalism.
Tabish says that he was exploring the prospectus of an afternoon newspaper in Kashmir on the patterns of such newspapers in United Kingdom, which eventually paved way for KashmirDispatch.
Operating from both Delhi and Kashmir, the portal’s target audience is net savvy youth in Kashmir and Kashmiri diaspora throughout the world.
“Unlike other websites we keep ours updated all the time. It is actually meant for a global audience,” said Jalees Andrabi, who works for the portal.
