Exactly one year has passed since I made the first post. A lot has changed in Rangeen Chara since then; the best part being the fact that we now are a family of 785 Nepali netizens. That is on an average two new members every day which is remarkable given that the first six months were spent mostly in development! The credit for this success goes to those of you who have loved Rangeen Chara and have spread the word around.
The year behind has helped us a lot in seeing the year ahead. Love and support from members has encouraged us to work hard to bring more features to the community. We are determined to tackle problems; one at a time.
Here are some statistics about the Website for the past year:
Total posts: 36
Comments Posted: 251
Members: 785
Total SMS Messages Sent: 6,167
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Report anniversary, rangeen chara, SMS sent to Nepal, visits, website statistics
Nepal has been increasingly popular in international media for odd news. Take for example the incidence of Nepal Airlines Corporation sacrificing goats to appease Aaakash Bhairab when their aircraft went through a series of technical problems. The news was covered by renowned media like Reuters and BBC among many others. The news has bagged 523 diggs so far in Digg.com; probably the highest any news from Nepal ever has! Another similar odd news from Nepal has recently become popular in international media: Nepal bans pockets to stamp out bribe-taking at airport. That much about the oddity of the news; the remaining part of this post is about how the same news is presented by different media.
BBC UK published the news online (see here) with the title ‘Nepal bans airline staff pockets‘. The ending paragraph of the news goes:
The BBC’s Nepali service says almost all incidents of petty corruption have been directed at Nepalese travellers rather than tourists.
That line does justice to Nepalese tourism by clarifying that foreigners planning to visit Nepal need not worry about the petty corruption.
Now the news is also published in Hindi by BBC India (see here) which evidently is based on the same news source. The only difference: the above paragraph has been left out.
Was the paragraph lost in translation or was it intentionally left out?
Report bbc, Lost in translation, Nepal Airlines, Nepal Airport
Popular Nepali blogs like Mysansar.com have been accusing The Himalayan Times and Annapurna Post of publishing news biased towards India. Being a foreign invested organization, it is likely that the news it covers would be as per foreign interest. It is an important issue that needs to be researched by Nepalese government followed by proper action. This post is about bad business ethics of THT, but a different one than above.
It is common practice for online media to place advertisement on their web-site. That is their only source of revenue. But THT is using inappropriate technique to increase their online revenue from advertisement. It is required that advertisements that are cost-per-click (publishers are paid for every click on ads) be identified clearly as advertisement. On the contrary, THT is intentionally displaying ads as news with the motive of increasing the number of clicks on the ads. See the Google ad below which the THT featured as ‘Related News’.
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Report Google Ads, malpractice, misleading, the himalayan times
