Daily Post Blog

Author Virginia Woolf famously wrote that a woman needs money and a room of her own if she wants to be a writer. At the time she wrote it, women’s rights and economic opportunities were severely limited. Very few women owned any property at all.

Most ni-Vanuatu, especially the young, face similar difficulties finding advancement in the world. They fail, not for want of ideas, initiative or ambition, but because they lack the resources they need to succeed.

It’s not enough simply to make resources available. We need to understand the relationship between material assistance and how it affects the formation of ideas, the development of initiative and the sustenance of healthy ambitions.

We need to share our ideas about Vanuatu’s development, and frankly, our newspapers aren’t big enough to hold even a fraction of the insight, experience and advice that’s available to us.

On this site, you’re going to see some new developments in the public exchange of ideas and opinions in Vanuatu. The Daily Post is investing in a bit of community building. In its continuing commitment to fostering public awareness, access to information and dialogue, we’ve decided to create a new space on the Internet devoted to commentary, criticism and analysis.

The idea itself isn’t particularly new. In recent years, websites the world over have begun to invest in what’s commonly known as ‘citizen media’ – that is, content created by the people, for the people.
It’s an innately democratic idea whose time has come for Vanuatu. As more and more of the nation’s population get access to the Internet, it only makes sense to leverage this newfound wealth in ways that allow Vanuatu to pick itself up by its bootstraps, to allow individuals to take a more active role in the development of public opinion and policy.

In order to make the space more conducive to the exchange of ideas, we’re going to need to change a few of the old rules. We’re not turning our backs on kastom; on the contrary, we’re trying to find a way to help it fit as seamlessly as possible with so-called new media.

A wise chief allows everyone to speak before making his decisions known. While this new website will appear under the Daily Post masthead, it’s not going to be subject to the same editorial control that’s applied to the newsprint publication. The views expressed on the site will be those of the contributors, and those views won’t be heavily censored. With exception of blatant falsehood or unsupported defamation, the items posted to the site will be allowed to live or die by their own merits.

In small communities such as Vanuatu’s, it’s sometimes difficult to share what we know without putting ourselves or our families members in jeopardy, or at least, making things uncomfortable for them. To this end, some of the content will be presented anonymously or signed with pseudonyms.

We recognise and respect the importance of context to Vanuatu society and we realise that there isn’t a strong tradition of anonymous speech here. But the policy of allowing people to sign their comments as they wish on the Daily Post Letters page has done a lot to assist people to speak freely. We think this freedom will be equally necessary in a publicly-driven current events website.

We want the arguments made there to be weighed on their own merits. It will be up to you, therefore, to carefully parse the information shared on this site. We hope to see lots of lively disputation, challenged assumptions and fact-checking. In fact, we’re hoping that everyone reads the site with a healthy dose of skepticism. Put plainly, we don’t want to do the thinking for you.

In keeping with Web tradition, the site will offer mostly ‘quick hits’ of information – a link or two supplemented by a few paragraphs of reaction to the content. We will occasionally feature longer, more detailed posts as well.

Think of this site as an amalgamation of Mi Harem Se, the Letters and Editorial pages of the Daily Post. Mix in a few links and a bit of multimedia goodness and you’ve more or less got the picture.

To begin with, a few experienced (and opinionated) people will be chosen to provide content for the site. In the fullness of time, though, we’d like to see a situation similar to that of one of citizen media’s great success stories, the Huffington Post. On any given day, you’ll see essays from people from all walks of life: academics, celebrities, professional journalists and policy wonks line up side by side, offering opinion and analysis on countless topics affecting the world today.

If all goes well, everyone in Vanuatu will have a page a virtual room of their own in which to write constructively, intelligently and with the insights only they possess, and to share them with the rest of the country, even the world.

If you’re interested in contributing to this endeavour from the outset, we encourage you to contact the Editor and let us know.