JEDDAH, 19 January 2007 — People of the Western Region, known as Hijazi, can now learn about their culture and society through a new website called Hijazyat.com, which is part of a chain of regional sites.
The site is essentially an interactive Arabic-language portal about all things Hijazi, including news articles, forums and historical information. The site, which also offers online radio broadcasts, was created from a Jordanian website Ammannet.net.
“Ammannet.net is the first Arabic social radio which also broadcasts live on the FM radio,” said Amman-based Zainab Al-Bulbul, supervisor of Ammannet.net, in a phone conversation with Arab News. “The project started in 2000. The idea to have nine online radios in the Gulf Cooperation Council states and Yemen came as an extension to our Ammannet project in order to generalize our idea of online social radio in other countries.”
Three of the proposed nine online radio stations are in Saudi Arabia: Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah. Officials of Ammannet.net chose general supervisor for each online radio of the nine. Jeddah General Supervisor Nadia Sheikh, who is also the regional director of Intellect Media Public Relations Company, said she placed ads in newspapers offering positions at Hijazyat. “More than 50 girls applied to work for the website while only three or four boys were interested in working with us,” she said.
Being a regional director for the PR company, Nadia had previous approval from the Ministry of Culture and Information to establish a website. This made it easier for her to start the website and activate it.
Nadia and two others of the Hijazyat team were offered a training course in Amman to learn the basics of online radios. The training was intensive. There, they learned basic journalistic skills.
Staff of Ammannet carried the responsibility of the journalistic training while Tamam Tech Company, which is an affiliate company of Ammannet, dealt with the technical training.
Supervisors of the websites and online radios went through another training program last November. During that period, each of them agreed on the designs and layouts of the website.
“We have a tentative design for every website and each supervisor can agree with or change. Nadia was one of the supervisors who chose the designs herself in a way that suited the idea of Hijazyat,” Zainab Al-Bulbul said.
When those girls came back to Jeddah, they started training other applicants who wished to work for Hijazyat.com.
Hana Al-Khamri, who is a reporter at Al-Madinah newspaper and was trained by Iman Al-Kaf, was one of the three trained in Amman. “I suggested to Iman that she trains us, the girls working for Hijazyat,” said Al-Khamri.
She said that Al-Kaf made her and her teammates undergo four days of intensive training. “I learned how to write a piece for the radio, how to record my voice and then how to edit it,” she said.
Zahra Jabir, 21, helps in uploading news materials to the website. “I also recorded my voice four times while reading the news,” she said.
The online radio broadcasts may become independent by March. “The period might be extended because some of the websites are not yet ready for that step,” said Zainab Al-Bulbul.
Hijazyat.com has now eight members in its team in addition to the freelancers. “After Hijazyat becomes independent, I have many plans to achieve including having video reportages attached with the news to make the website more vivid and active,” she said.