Second Pakistan Blog Awards by CIO Faces severe criticism
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CIO Pakistan started blog awards last year. Its is a good sign when some one takes initiative and starts some thing new. However its also difficult to introduce this into an already budding field of new media in Pakistan. Last years (or two years back now since its 2012) Awards were initiated so as it is expected it faced initial growing up pains. It always takes time for such thing to wins the trust of the community. And bloggers are one of the most hard people to win over, most of these are rebels in their own rights people who have started blogging to show the world their opinion so they might not always agree to others. However I believe this issue has grown out of proportion just because of non-response of people from CIO. If some one like @faisalkapadia who is a known blogger and was not one of the person nominated for blog has issues then there was some thing not done according to merit or not clarified. I think this awards is needed and does help growing up bloggers to get some limelight. However the criteria should be crystal clear and judgment should be done based on it. I will stop at this and share what people around local blogosphere have been saying about the awards. First about the previous year awards
Jingoist take on 1st blog awards held in 2010
I feel sorry for all the bloggers to be associated with so much biased/unprofessional blog awards. They were completely biased .. Improfessional .. Generous enough to be award to their beloved friends .. Just like our government does that Jingoist Take on First blog awards
Ayesha’s take on the awards last year
It was advertised very well but wasn’t presented that well.. maybe because it was 1st time? Theres so much to get improved!
However looking at the feedback for awards held this year seems things have not improved, alot. Some rants from around the blogosphere echo sentiments again that criteria and judgment was not clear leaving a lot of people pointing fingers.
Faisal Kapadia asks about Judges and the judgment criteria
Now for the next part of the question : Would someone let us know who the judges were in this category? How did they reach the magnificent decision of awarding this blog site the best in current affairs blogging in Pakistan? The over all judging criteria is listed on Pak blog awards website but I fail to see how the winning blog even qualifies.
That there is no topic or event that can be termed “current affairs” which has not been covered by the PakTeaHouse blog. The same cannot be said for ZAVIEWS AKA NEWS. Even a cursory glance on the topics covered at the PakTeaHouse and ZAVIEWS AKA NEWS makes it abundantly clear that while the PakTeaHouse blog has covered everything from war on terror to memogate and from persecution of minorities to the periodic Veena Malik scandals, ZAVIEWS AKA NEWS falls short on each count
All of these people arguing and taking part in hating PBA don’t understand one fact, there was no such platform for bloggers before. No awards, no appreciation, none of it was brought forward by any of these so called “haters”. No one is putting a gun to their heads to nominate in the blog awards. PBA should grow, better and stronger. But they should answer the question regarding “ZaViews”.
Dr Awab Alvi and Faisal Kapadia discuss it in outofbounds
So awarding people of which every one has his own blog is not the easiest task of all, however I also believe if it had been clearly identified people from the other side would have defended it with same ferocity.
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