Global Voices Online

Global Voices is a community of more than 800 bloggers and translators around the world who post reports from blogs and citizen media, emphasizing "voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media."

This 2011 post features short videos from a competition on gender equality in the Ukraine.

This 2010 post features a public protest by a brave professor and blogger in China, offering himself as a slave.

Egyptian bloggers & online activists paved the way for 2011 uprising

With the Mubarak dictatorship in control of all major media in Egypt, brave Egyptian "citizen journalists" risked imprisonment and torture to blog or tweet about human rights abuses. Here's renowned Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas interviewed on BBC in January 2010. Over the years, Abbas was harassed, censored and assaulted by authorities -- and was briefly detained during the uprising early in 2011.

P.S. Sharif Abdel Kouddous covered the 18-day uprising in 2011 for Democracy Now!, and he was the central character in an HBO documentary about the Egyptian revolution. For his work in Egypt, he was awarded (on I.C. campus in April 2012) the Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media.  (Here's a paperback "Tweets from Tahrir.")

Upworthy.com

Upworthy.com promotes social/political issues virally through clever headlines and visuals or video, like this animation on advertising/media impact on girls.

Tavi Gevinson -- fashion blogger, feminist, publisher

This interview was recorded when fashion blogger Tavi was 15, and had founded Rookie. At age 16, she appeared on Colbert Report. By age 17, she was costarring in the Hollywood movie, "Enough Said."

Local Nonprofit Watchdog News Sites

As dailies have shrunk, local online nonprofit news sites have sprouted, such as the well-funded VoiceofSanDiego.org and the professionally-staffed MinnPost.com ("a thoughtful approach to news"). Across the country, local watchdog outlets try to survive, reports Jodi Enda in American Journalism Review.

The WikiLeaks Controversy

In Dec. 2010, blogger Glenn Greenwald (a WikiLeaks supporter) explained independent journalism to CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin. WikiLeaks website is here. This leaked video (with more than 14 million YouTube views) shows the killing of employees of the Reuters news agency and wounding of children by US attack helicopters in Iraq.

Photo above was taken in August 2012 when I visited the Ecuadoran embassy in London (with WikiLeaks' founder having taken refuge inside); I was there days after the British government threatened to invade the embassy.

Winners of First Izzy Award: Glenn Greenwald & Amy Goodman

Soon after accepting their Izzy Awards in Ithaca, NY in March 2009, Greenwald and Goodman spoke about independent media on public TV's Bill Moyers' Journal.