How Bloggers Can Help During Times of Tragedy

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On April 25, tragedy struck Nepal as a 7.8-magnitude earthquake destroyed residences and buildings (including the UNESCO Word Heritage sites) in Kathmandu and took the lives of around 5,000 civilians (and counting). The earthquake is the most devastating natural calamity that hit Nepal since the Nepal-Bihar earthquake in 1934.

Relief efforts from all over the world are underway but frustration is boiling in some parts of Nepal who have yet to receive the assistance they badly need.

If you wish to help your Nepali brothers and sisters, below are links to online media outlets pointing to trustworthy organizations collecting donation or the victims of the earthquake:

Before sending out your donation, read this post at NPR first to understand how your donation is received and processed by these organizations.

While these are the steps that you can take in order to lend a helping hand to those in need, the question now remain: what I can do to help as a blogger?

If you are an authoritative blogger with a sizable readership and clout to influence your audience, you can use these to make an effort and increase the assistance to the victims of the earthquakes. Here’s what you can do:

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The Guardian Sacks Paul Carr

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Paul Carr used to write the Not Safe For Work column for The Guardian, but no more. The reason is a slashing of the freelance budget, says Carr on Twitter, and then goes on and tells us that he thought about doing the column for free but decided against it. That last part was on his blog though, which is a good thing because the reasoning would take up quite a few tweets… In the same blog post he writes a bit about leaving.

Having said all that, I will miss the outlet the Guardian gave me every week; to boast and swear and talk about things that were on my mind. I’m not sure there’s another UK paper that would give me such freedom – and for that reason I’ll be eternally grateful to my former paymasters. And I’ll miss them, like a sometimes-mental, socialist former girlfriend.

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch isn’t sad about this. “Their loss our gain” he says, as he announces that Carr will be writing a weekly column for TechCrunch to run each Saturday morning. Good call, Carr’s Not Safe For Work Column over at The Guardian was a treat, and I’m thinking it was a huge mistake to cut it loose. But that’s the media industry for you right now. I’m just surprised Nick Denton didn’t snatch him up already.

Twitter Enters the Collins English Dictionary

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Twitter is featured in upcoming 30th anniversary Collins English Dictionary, writes The Telegraph.

The entry under noun will read: “a website where people can post short messages about their current activities” and under verb it will read: “to write short messages on the Twitter website”.

By the way things are going, we’ll most likely see more dictionaries adding Twitter, and other coined expressions as well as descriptive brands from social media soon.