By Betwa Sharma
New York, July 13 (IANS) With the magazine and newspaper industry floundering in the US, the future of journalism and the need to embrace new media tools were critical issues at the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) Convention here.

SAJA is a non-profit organisation that serves as a networking forum for journalists of South Asian origin in the US. The day-long convention celebrating its 15th anniversary featured a job fair, several workshops and panel discussions with leading journalists on the latest media trends.

The grand finale is an awards dinner that rewards journalists of South Asian origin and those reporting on South Asia.

This year, the dialogue at the convention underlined the need to embrace new media tools like Twitter, Facebook, You Tube and blogs. Would China look different if the students at the Tiananmen Square could Twitter, asked Reza Aslan in his keynote speech at the SAJA dinner.

“Tyrants stay in power by isolating their people,” said the internationally acclaimed scholar on religion, noting that online technology could empower citizens against repressive regimes by giving them direct access to the world.

A case in point, he said, was the revolutionary use of the internet by Iranians to leak news of the post-election turmoil in their country when the authorities had expelled foreign journalists and cut off access to traditional media. The problem with new media, as analyzed at the convention, remains the inability to assess the veracity of such reports.

Another heated panel discussion assessed the coverage of the Mumbai attacks that have been criticised for compromising security. Many foreign journalists applauded the Indian television stations for their reporting but their Indian counterparts were far more critical of their own handling of the attacks.

CNN-IBN correspondent Indira Kannan described the “intensely competitive media environment” back home. “I don’t know if that consciously played a part,” she said. “You want to be out with the news first.”

At the dinner, awards were given out in 10 categories in business, politics, culture and conflict. The Daniel Pearl Award, instituted in memory of the journalist murdered in Karachi, was won by Frontline/World producer David Montero for his documentary, “Pakistan: State of Emergency” that investigates how Swat valley became a terrorist hub.

Montero was joined by Kris Hundley of the St. Petersburg Times who won for a special report, “Testing Grounds: Our medicine at what cost”, which explores India’s growing drug testing industry and its adverse impact on patients undergoing clinical trials.

(Betwa Sharma can be contacted at betwasharma@gmail.com)