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The unstoppable Hoder - a life transformed by blogging

Posted: 21/04/05 By: Jemima Kiss

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Any excuse for edamame - had a lovely lunch yesterday with Hossein 'Hoder' Derakhshan. Just preparing for his meeting with the BBC's head of news Richard Sambrook, who clearly knows a damn good blog when he sees one.

Hossein is an Iranian, now living and working in Toronto, and his insightful and campaigning blog is often seen as the leading voice for Iran's vigorous political blogging movement.

Hossein says the blog has changed his life. He's typical of bloggers in that he's not a trained journalist, but was inspired by having a platform to publish his own thoughts and experiences in a specialist area. His biggest passion used to be design and architecture but he now has an all-consuming interest in Iran's political blog scene.

There have been a number of well-publicised arrests of pro-democracy bloggers in Iran but as the movement grows, says Hossein, the authorities will have to listen. Iran's reformist presidential candidate Dr Mostafa Moeen started his own blog last month and this week met with Iranian bloggers and strategists to see what they can learn.

The rising profile of Hossein's blog has pulled in significant advertising on his site, web design work, a steady stream of interview requests and a slot on the Rooz-e Haftom radio show on the BBC World Service. Hossein has been nominated for RSF's Freedom Blog Awards - and even managed to persuade the organisers that Iran had such an active blogging movement it would need its own category.

I guess the only bad thing to say about Hoder's blogs is I get a bit frustrated when I click through to pages in Persian. But one of the most important aspects of his blog is that he is bilingual and now based in Canada, so it spans both the language and culture gaps; something Hossein has described as 'bridge blogging'.

Despite the enormous potential of international publishing, language can still be a barrier on the web. Stories from America and Europe tend to dominate online news because of their leading technology and the English language, but I do try to cover news from the rest of the world when I can. Perhaps online news will only be truly international once a sophisticated translation tool gives everybody access to sites from China, the Middle East, Russia and many more. And there is the Berkman Centre's Global Voice project. But that's for another story...

What next for Hoder? Well, he's using his big blogger status to launch Rear Window Initiative; a non-governmental organisation to promote free speech through the internet and with so many demands on his time, he's looking for volunteers to help run the site and his new project. If you're interested, drop him a line.

More news from dotJournalism:
US web host dumps Iranian news site
Weblogs give voice to Iranian women
Blog protest against censors

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