With the government and Tamil Tigers militants again waging full-blown battles in the country’s north, and the rest of the country beset with fear of unprovoked attacks, Sri Lankans are turning increasingly to non-traditional news and information outlets. The mainstream media is increasingly handicapped by the tense security situation.

One of the first with the news of a Sri Lankan air raid on the hideout of Tamil Tiger leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was JNW, a text message-based news alert service launched in April 2006. Chamath Ariyadasa said he set up JNW as an experiment to find out whether an SMS news service would be viable. “It has caught on reasonably well and now a lot of people feel that it is easy, hassle free, and timely,” he added. The SMS service is available on two mobile networks in Sri Lanka, and recently, it commenced news dissemination on two others on a trial basis. “The challenge (always) is to encapsulate a breaking story in 160 characters,” said Ariyadasa.

When JNW was launched, there were informal, information sharing networks over mobile phones, especially among journalists. After every incident in the intensifying war between the government and Tamil rebels the phones lines are congested with everyone relying on getting the latest by phone. Credibility has been a commitment with JNW, asserted Ariyadasa. “SMS’s can travel really fast and wide. We have to be extra cautious on sourcing,” he said about the network’s news-gathering ethics. According to the JNW website, every story is verified by three sources and sourced when transmitted.

Lankaenews has carved a niche among the upstart websites due to its quick news gathering and dissemination in Sinhala (Sri Lanka’s main language together with Tamil). “I think the fact that we operate in Sinhala opened up a huge untapped audience, the Sinhala-speaking internet users who don’t have a high proficiency in English,” Lankaenews founder, Sadaruwan Seenadira said.

The websites and blogs encourage reader participation which is used as a barometer of their popularity. JNW has a special section on its site where it includes SMS reactions from clients and others. Lankaenews is also planning an open forum and chat rooms. “The next step for us is to allow our readers to discuss the stories and news right there on the site,” Lankaenews’ Seenadira said.

“It (internet) is something like a social leveller. Anybody who has access can get the news anytime, anywhere and all you need is a mobile phone or an internet connection,” explained JNW’s Ariyadasa. Interestingly the week that the network was launched, the tenuous cease-fire between the military and rebels seemed about to break with a Tamil Tiger assassination attack on the army commander, Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, inside the barricaded Army Headquarters in Colombo, on Apr. 25, 2006.

Despite their popularity, none of the new media organisations have been able to show profits, even JNW, which has been functioning as a commercial venture since its launch. Ariyadasa does not hesitate to admit that the going has been tough financially in the last two years. Lankaenews’ Seenadira said: “We get a lot of hits but still if we were to run it on the advertising revenue, we might have to close everything, it is still not that much.” — IPS