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THE GUARDIAN WANTS TO MAKE BEST USE OF THE ARMENIAN STORIES
April 23, 2015 12:23
EXCLUSIVE
The Guardian pays special attention to the centenary of the Armenian
Genocide. Recently, The Guardian's Middle East Editor Ian Black paid
a visit to Yerevan and wrote a series of articles. Besides, the
newspaper suggested its readers that they shared their stories on
genocide. Mediamax decided to learn the details of this initiative
from Maeve Shearlaw from The Guardian's World Networks as she leads
in the project.
- How the idea of collecting the Armenian Genocide stories arose?
- The idea came from a similar project ran by the Guardian to mark
the centenary of World War One. After the Observer journalist Toby
Helm shared the story of his grandfather's war time experiences,
based on his diary entries and letters that he had recently found,
we asked our readers to do the same resulting in over 800 stories
from across Europe which we used in our coverage.
- How many stories have you received so far? Do you receive the
stories mainly from Diaspora Armenians, or also from Armenia?
- Over 500. We've been overwhelmed at the responses we've had, from
first-hand experiences of persecution to how the massacre has shaped
people's family trajectories 100 years on. In the words of one reader:
"there is almost no Armenian family in the world without a story
about 1915". Numerous people have got in touch to thank the Guardian
for paying attention to the issue, we even received an invitation to
a wedding in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
- Do you plan to verify the stories in any way? If yes, what will be
the mechanisms?
- Verification integral to all of the Guardian's user generated
projects. We asked everyone uploading submissions to share email
addresses and have followed up to clarify details. A lot of the
stories we've used are based on transcripts recorded by the ancestors
of survivors, some of whom are still alive.
We have also made an effort to map the testimonies to the widely
accepted historical version of events - but recognise that these
are disputed. That being said it is difficult to fully verify all
of the details in people testimonies as many of the people who have
since passed away and the stories have been passed from generation
to generation, so we must, and will, be transparent about that.
- How you will be "utilizing" the stories? I guess you can't publish
all the stories, do you have any plan for those that will not appear
in The Guardian?
- It's important to me that we use as much of content as we can. I
am in the process of writing a elegiac piece based on the responses
which we'll publish on the site to mark the anniversary, we'll also
be pulling a collection of the other stories into an interactive
template, a format we've previously used on everything personal
accounts ofracial profiling in the US after Michael Brown was shot
by police Ferguson to the experiences of the LGBT community around
the world. These pieces will run alongside other coverage of the
centenary which can be found here.
- Do you think that the collected material could become a book or
some multimedia project?
- As I said it's important to us that we use as much as the content
as we can, but there are no immediate plans for a book and whilst
the interactive is a multimedia project of sorts i'm sure more can
be done - we are open to ideas.
Ara Tadevosyan talked to Maeve Shearlaw
http://www.mediamax.am/en/news/media/13965#sthash.gjkZDqUt.dpuf
April 23, 2015 12:23
EXCLUSIVE
The Guardian pays special attention to the centenary of the Armenian
Genocide. Recently, The Guardian's Middle East Editor Ian Black paid
a visit to Yerevan and wrote a series of articles. Besides, the
newspaper suggested its readers that they shared their stories on
genocide. Mediamax decided to learn the details of this initiative
from Maeve Shearlaw from The Guardian's World Networks as she leads
in the project.
- How the idea of collecting the Armenian Genocide stories arose?
- The idea came from a similar project ran by the Guardian to mark
the centenary of World War One. After the Observer journalist Toby
Helm shared the story of his grandfather's war time experiences,
based on his diary entries and letters that he had recently found,
we asked our readers to do the same resulting in over 800 stories
from across Europe which we used in our coverage.
- How many stories have you received so far? Do you receive the
stories mainly from Diaspora Armenians, or also from Armenia?
- Over 500. We've been overwhelmed at the responses we've had, from
first-hand experiences of persecution to how the massacre has shaped
people's family trajectories 100 years on. In the words of one reader:
"there is almost no Armenian family in the world without a story
about 1915". Numerous people have got in touch to thank the Guardian
for paying attention to the issue, we even received an invitation to
a wedding in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
- Do you plan to verify the stories in any way? If yes, what will be
the mechanisms?
- Verification integral to all of the Guardian's user generated
projects. We asked everyone uploading submissions to share email
addresses and have followed up to clarify details. A lot of the
stories we've used are based on transcripts recorded by the ancestors
of survivors, some of whom are still alive.
We have also made an effort to map the testimonies to the widely
accepted historical version of events - but recognise that these
are disputed. That being said it is difficult to fully verify all
of the details in people testimonies as many of the people who have
since passed away and the stories have been passed from generation
to generation, so we must, and will, be transparent about that.
- How you will be "utilizing" the stories? I guess you can't publish
all the stories, do you have any plan for those that will not appear
in The Guardian?
- It's important to me that we use as much of content as we can. I
am in the process of writing a elegiac piece based on the responses
which we'll publish on the site to mark the anniversary, we'll also
be pulling a collection of the other stories into an interactive
template, a format we've previously used on everything personal
accounts ofracial profiling in the US after Michael Brown was shot
by police Ferguson to the experiences of the LGBT community around
the world. These pieces will run alongside other coverage of the
centenary which can be found here.
- Do you think that the collected material could become a book or
some multimedia project?
- As I said it's important to us that we use as much as the content
as we can, but there are no immediate plans for a book and whilst
the interactive is a multimedia project of sorts i'm sure more can
be done - we are open to ideas.
Ara Tadevosyan talked to Maeve Shearlaw
http://www.mediamax.am/en/news/media/13965#sthash.gjkZDqUt.dpuf