NowPublic's Media Storm: CJ cyclone photo a hit!

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Our hero, Vijayakumar Narayanan!

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Tuesday, as news of Cyclone Gonu developed, the NowPublic editorial team suited up and reached out to the world of citizen journalists living in the affected areas.


Vijayakumar Narayanan (My Dhaba) was one of the first Oman based bloggers to respond to our request for footage of the storm. Vijayakumar was eager to document the situation and the NowPublic team immediately passed on his contact information to the Associated Press. The AP used one of Vijayakumar’s pictures and interviewed him for their wire piece. The story, which mentions NowPublic,was picked up by many major English speaking newspapers worldwide, including The New York Times, Forbes, Yahoo News, ABC, and The Guardian. NowPublic beat the largest news agency in the world to the scene!


Here are some of Vijayakumar’s words, describing the experience:

"It is quite unfortunate here that we are almost cocooned at our houses and unable to go out to make some more shoots. It is knee deep water all around my house and it started leaking and water is seeping through everywhere over the roof :(It seems to be quite interesting to me all these journalistic processes. Never in my remotest dreams I had thought of making photography a career though. Now that it is inspiring, really. Citizen Journalism rocks!"

Congrats Vijayakumar and stay safe and dry!


Here are links to some of the international stories:

• New York Times
  

• ABC News
  

• The Guardian

Another NowPublic contributor from Oman, Brinda Toprani, also shared her amazing photos with us and emailed her experiences. Here is an exerpt from her latest email:

"With God's Grace, the storm looks like it has finally subsided...and my family and I are safe at home...its still raining heavily though..but now the sea is so calm, and there is hardly any wind...that suddenly everythings seems so quiet..."

A perfect example of what participatory news can achieve.