Media-Savvy Monks to Launch Weekly Radio Show
As Buddhist monks across the country don saffron robes and leave pagodas in search of donations to fill alms bowls each morning, seven monks based in Dangkao district on the dusty outskirts of Phnom Penh are thinking only of feeding the country’s growing appetite for independent news. By noon, when most monks are sitting down to their final meal of the day, the seven will have drawn up a list of stories on a large sheet of butcher’s paper, two will be out chasing the day’s biggest news and the remainder will be working on scripts and following the day’s events through Facebook and Twitter. And before retiring for the evening, the team, all members of the Independent Monk Network for Social Justice (IMNSJ), will have produced roughly 10 minutes of news and disseminated it through the IMNSJ Facebook page, which has more than 10,000 followers. The project is a pilot for the scheduled February 14 launch of VIM (Voice of Independent Monks) Radio, a once-weekly, hour-long program to feature on 93.5 Mohanokor FM’s Friday afternoon slot, which, according to a 2010 International Republican Institute survey, has the capacity to reach more than 9 million listeners. …
Matt Blomberg
http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/media-savvy-monks-to-launch-weekly-radio-show-51192/
