In February 2013, I interviewed Imalka de Silva, the first Lankan woman to visit Antarctica. She accomplished this feat in March 2010 when she joined an international team who spent two weeks on an expedition to the frozen continent.
I have just interviewed an experienced Lankan mountaineering duo, Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Johann Peries, who plan to be the first Sri Lankans to reach the summit of Mt. Everest in the forthcoming Spring mountaineering season.
Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Johann Peries: Aiming it real high…
They have both individually and as a team successfully completed some of the world’s most challenging treks in Asia, Africa and Latin America – not to mention all key peaks in Sri Lanka.
Mount Everest is located in the Mahalangur mountain range in Nepal and Tibet, and its peak is 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) above sea level. It has so far been reached by over 4,000 people from many countries.
Professionally, Jayanthi is a women’s rights and gender expert while Johann is a hair and make-up designer and performing artist. They are dedicating this climb to their families, to the causes they advocate (conservation, gender equality and healthy living), and to every child, woman and man of Sri Lanka.
They plan to be part of a larger team led by International Mountain Guides (IMG), a globally renowned mountaineering company which has led several successful Mt. Everest expeditions over the past 30 years.
Read my full interview in The Sunday Observer (Sri Lanka), 28 Feb 2016:
Nalaka Gunawardene speaks at D R Wijewardene memorial event on 26 February 2016 – Photo by Sam de Silva
This week, I was asked by Sri Lanka’s oldest newspaper publishing house — Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited, or Lake House — to chair a panel discussion on ‘Survival and Evolution of Newspapers in the Digital Age’.
The event marked the 130th birth anniversary of Lake House founder and Sri Lanka’s first press baron, D R Wijewardene (1886 – 1950). It was held at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute in Colombo.
My panel comprised: communications scholar and former telecom regulator Prof Rohan Samarajiva; senior journalist Hana Ibrahim; Sri Lanka Press Institute’s CEO Kumar Lopez, and political scientist Sumith Chaaminda of Verite Research.
We had a lively discussion exploring the challenges faced by print publishers everywhere, and what solutions are relevant, viable and affordable for a majority of small scale publishers without deep pockets.
Here is an excerpt from my opening remarks (full text to be published soon as an op-ed article):
In the absence of independently audited circulation figures, we cannot be certain how well – or poorly – our newspapers are selling today. But indications are not promising. I have been involved in a state of the media study for the past year (due to be released in May 2016), and there is evidence that market survival is a big struggle for many smaller publishers.
More and more Lankan newspapers are being kept alive not to make any profit, but for influence peddling and political purposes. And in at least one case, the co-operatively owned Ravaya, reader donations were actively solicited recently to keep the paper alive.
Worldwide, print journalism’s established business models are crumbling, with decades-old publications closing down or going entirely online (The Independent newspaper in the UK is the latest to do the latter). Advertisers usually follow where the eyeballs are moving.
So what would D R Wijewardene do if he confronted today’s realities of gradually declining print advertising share and readers migrating to online media consumption? How might he respond by going back to his founding goals of political action and social change through the 3 Ps – the Press, Parliament and Platform – as important instruments of political action?
My guess is that he would invest in radio and/or television, with a strong digital integration. He might even find a viable income stream from digital and online publishing without locking up public interest content behind pay-walls.
We can only speculate, of course. Perhaps the more pertinent question to ask is: where are the budding D R Wijewardenes of the 21st Century? What are their start-ups and how are their dreams unfolding? Are they trying to balance reasonable profits with public interest journalism?
In my view, the biggest decider of success or failure – today, as it was a century ago – is not the medium, but the message. To put it more bluntly, it’s credibility, stupid!
Prof Rohan Samarajiva speaks at D R Wijewardene memorial event, 26 Feb 2016
Social media bashing is a popular sport among media critics and others in Sri Lanka. Sadly, some have no clear idea what social media is (and isn’t), thus conflating this category of web content with others like news websitea and gossip websites.
In this week’s Ravaya column (appearing in issue of 21 February 2016), I try to explain this basic categorization along with a brief history of the web and web 2.0. I also reiterate the basic user precautions for social media users where the motto us: user beware!
The report draws on a survey of 1,743 randomly selected men and women, interviewed in Sinhala or Tamil language during June-July 2015. They were asked about mobile phone use and web access. The survey was conducted by Social Indicator, CPA’s survey research unit.
As the launch media release noted, “From the use of Facebook to smartphones, from news on TV to news via SMS, from how information read digitally is spread to others who are offline, the report offers insights into how content is produced, disseminated and discussed in Sri Lanka’s most densely populated province and home to the country’s administrative and business hubs.”
In this week’s Ravaya column (appearing in issue of 7 February 2016), I reflect on the value of independence of thought and critical thinking. It coincides with the 68th anniversary of Sri Lanka’s political independence from Britain observed on Feb 4.
I argue that for much of Sri Lanka’s recorded history, we had open frontiers that welcomed traders, scholars, pilgrims, artistes, missionaries and others from the East and West. This was the ‘ehi-passika‘ (meaning ‘come and see’) formula in Buddhism, which made our kings and courtiers open-minded.
Such engagement had their pros and cons, but on the whole, the island nation was richer for the free flow of genes, ideas and technologies. It was only during the last five centuries – out of 25 in recorded history – that the balance was lost due to European colonisation.
Indeed, the island’s fauna, flora and people would be radically different today if such influences and cross-fertilisation didn’t happen. Excepting our aboriginal veddahs, all other races are immigrants from elsewhere. All our religious faiths are also ‘imported’. Sri Lanka today is a result of endless assimilating and remixing.
Yet, today, many Lankans are highly apprehensive of the outside world.
They constantly warn of elaborate international plots to ‘undermine and destabilise’ Sri Lanka. The usual suspects include cocktail of acronyms – among them the CIA, MI5, RAW, the IMF (and its twin, the World Bank), certain UN agencies and an assortment of supposedly ‘evil’ multinational corporations.
Worryingly, an alarmingly high number of Lankans take these imaginary scenarios for real. High levels of literacy and schooling make little difference. Our media often peddle — and amplify – these for cheap thrills or higher ratings.
We will not be a free nation until and unless we can develop independent and critical thinking.
Open Minds! (formerly: Moving Images blog) 