![\"Sanjana.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/archives\/Sanjana.jpg\")
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This is my last day with the Mutiny, so I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth and fire off a few posts, Abhi-style.<\/p>\n\n
I promised to blog about Groundviews<\/a>. On Friday, I met with Sanjana Hattotuwa<\/a>, the site’s editor, who was in New York on other business. We talked about the site and the situation in Sri Lanka. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m excited to share that conversation with you here. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do it in a few parts\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwe talked for quite a long time.<\/p>\n\n First, a little background: Groundviews is a citizen journalism site about what’s happening in Sri Lanka. It started in the fall of 2006. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perhaps the best use of citizen journalism I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever seen\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a brilliant way to get around media censorship in that country. As I’ve become increasingly saddened by the progression of the conflict there, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve also been heartened to see the spectrum of people participating in Groundviews. People in the diaspora have even begun to send items in<\/a>. And Vikalpa<\/a>, another citizen journalism site in Sinhalese and Tamil, has taken off as well.<\/p>\n\n The site has content you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get anywhere else, and also links to its own YouTube channel<\/a>. Voices on the ground might just vanish if not for this site (and others like it). And Groundviews supports a range of views and voices. When the topic is Sri Lanka, people too often yell from one extreme at the other, but the site is becoming a place for real debate. This is all too important when, as Sanjana says, things in Sri Lanka are the worst they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been in his memory. (More on this later.)<\/p>\n\n Sanjana originally thought of citizen journalism as a way to bear witness to what is happening in Sri Lanka. He gets items directly from sources he knows, and also passed through a network of people he trusts. One recent standout: an audio testimonial from a Jaffna resident, sharing his views on what’s going on there.<\/p>\n\n