Regional free expression group launches blog

Got this email from Roby Alampay, executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance or SEAPA. The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility is a founding member of SEAPA.

SEAPA joins dozens of journalists and media organizations around the region to put up a blog. Congrats, SEAPA and welcome to the blogosphere!


July 12, 2006

Dear all.

SEAPA has finally made a move to port its online presence from a traditional website to a totally new blog. Please check out www.seapa.wordpress.com.

We've been wanting to do this ever since we hosted the Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace in Manila last April. We now appreciate not only the potential convenience and efficiency of blogging, but more important, the capability this brings to elicit participation and build a stronger network–a more active community–with whom we can work for press freedom in Southeast Asia.

Our aim here is not only transfer our Alerts dispatches to a new format, but equally important, to actively engage people in discussions about free expression in our region. Beyond Alerts, we will try our best to actively link to posts pertaining to free expression issues affecting us all. A point in the right direction will always be appreciated.

SEAPA remains an advocacy group for Southeast Asia in particular, but a big reason we're also making this move is so that we can also reactivate our official conference blog last April--and continue our conversation about free expression in Asian cyberspace. With PCIJ's help, we intend to bring back that link as a live and active section where our discussions on free expression on the Internet can continue. (We have a lot of questions, for starters, about this
whole "Internet neutrality" thing.)

Meantime, if you check out our blog, you'll see that as of late, we've been monitoring Singapore a lot, where the blogging community seems to be seizing upon a defining moment in defense of one of their own, and of Singaporeans in general.

Will welcome your comments, questions, advice (both for editorial content AND technical matters) for this beginner's blog. You are all inspirations in this move and development, and we will most certainly value your help in bringing our blog up to standard, keeping it relevant, and actually useful.

Check it out: www.seapa.wordpress.com.

Warm regards,
Roby