Donate Your Video Camera, Laptop or Work Tools to Authentic Journalists

December 15, 2009

In this age of fast changing communications technology, many of our readers and supporters, like us, are in the position of having to upgrade at times to a better video camera, laptop or other work tool. Someone will get a new and shiny High Definition (HD) camera and the old mini-DV or DV or flip cam then sits in a closet, unused. Sometimes that happens to old laptops or digital cameras or external hard drives, too.

But at Narco News and its School of Authentic Journalism, we make use of those tools, too. In February 2010, well be training 31 students from 24 countries intensively in how to use these modern-day weapons effectively to produce videos, documentaries, websites and investigative journalism. Many of these students come from lands with battered economies and dont yet have a camera or a laptop.

And so as 2009 comes to a close we invite y ou to please consider donating any of these tools you can to The Fund for Authentic Journalism so that we can grant them to our soon-to-be graduates to take back to their own countries and more effectively do this vital work of breaking the information blockades, faster, better and with greater coherence.

Because The Fund is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, that means that the value of any tools you donate can be deducted on your 2009 taxes in the United States, too. And The Fund will be happy to provide you with a letter that documents the value of your donation.

Specifically, here is what our students need:

Video Cameras

Any Mini-DV or DV camera, or Flip Cam. (HD cameras can also be put to good use.)

Laptops

We are especially seeking Macintosh laptops in working order, especially from the G4, G5, MacBook or MacBook Pro series. (Our video and documentary teams will be editing on Macs.)

We will also be very grateful for PC laptops in working order, which are just as useful for our investigative journalism and online reporting teams.

Digital Cameras

Any digital camera in working order would also be very much appreciated and be put to good use documenting the news stories our graduates report in the months and years to come.

Tripods

Any tripod for video cameras, as long as in working order, will prove vital in this work.

External Hard Drives

Any Macintosh compatible external hard drive of 50 GBs or more, that is no more than four years old, and with a Firewire or USB2 port is needed to store the sheer volume of video that will be shot during The School of Authentic Journalism in February.

Look, above, at our Class of 2010 for The School of Authentic Journalism.

And read about each one of them, at this link:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue62/article3938.html

You know that any camera, laptop or other work tool that is currently not getting good use will be in the right hands if you donate it to them.

If you can donate any of these work tools, these are the authentic journalists that can put them to best use. Think of it as an investment in future news reports, viral videos and documentaries that youll be able to read, see and hear, free of charge, online.

If you wish, you can even specify to which of our scholars you would like to donate the camera or laptop or other tool.

In most regions of this hemisphere, well even send someone to your home to pick up the tools you can donate. (In 2004, when musician Krist Novoselic similarly donated a laptop to the School, our graduate Andrew Stelzer now a professor - who collected it from him at home was cool enough not to ask for an autograph. And that laptop was delivered to a graduate in Colombia, Laura del Castillo also now, a professor who previously had no laptop to work with, and proceeded to write a series of powerful news stories with that tool for Narco News.)

And if you dont have a camera or laptop or any of these tools to donate, please consider making a contribution anyway to The Fund for Authentic Journalism. You can do that right this very second, online, at this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or you can send a check to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
PO Box 241
Natick, MA 01760 USA


For more information contact:
Al Giordana
Narconews
Phone: 111-111-1111
Website: www.narconews.com