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Asia Buzz: Breaking News!
Get it here first
By ERIC ELLIS
May
23, 2000
Web posted at 1:00 p.m. Hong Kong time, 1:00 a.m. EDT
PICTURE THE SCENE: George Speight and his merry band of coup-plotters are making their "to do" list. (Given what followed, we have to assume they were not using a Palm Pilot, but writing this down on a sheet of paper.)
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1) Obtain illegal weapons cache-check. 2) Enlist burly, ethnocentric Fijians-check. 3) Hire speeding van driver--check. 4) Cut TV and radio outlets--check. 5) Cut telephone lines--check. 6) Storm parliament--check. 7) Overthrow elected government--check. 8) Beat up Prime Minister--check. 9) Tear up constitution--check. 10) Appoint cronies to government positions--check.
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But this is the Internet Age, and George forgot one crucial thing--to cut Internet access. "I don't think George Speight uses the Internet," deadpans Yashwant Gaunder, editor of Suva-based Fijilive.com, currently the world's best and earliest source of news on the extraordinary events now underway in the tiny mid-Pacific republic. While Speight was cutting lines to stymie any attempt to put down his putsch, Fijilive.com was transmitting events seconds after they were happening. "We never stopped functioning. I think they forgot we existed," says Yashwant.
Yashwant says his 11-strong team of techies and content providers have averaged about nine hours sleep each since Speight launched his coup last Friday. That's because they've been breaking about 20 scoops a day on the big event. They were the first to broadcast the coup itself and then followed up with little gems that no fireman foreign correspondent could hope to pick up--that world soccer czar Sepp Blatter was stranded in a Fiji hotel; that the Fijian President's daughter was one of Speight's hostages inside Parliament; that a British ex-SAS officer was advising the coup-makers; and that Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry was beaten up.
After following Fijilive.com, it's been illuminating to track traditional press coverage of the coup. What I'm sure were stories flagged as scoops by Old Media print reporters--when they finally got to Fiji--to outlets in Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the U.S., were actually uncredited rip-offs from Fijilive.com. And that will likely continue to happen because none have the access of Fijilive.com, which has an enterprising 24-year-old Fijian woman, the aptly named Tamarisi Digitaki, actually inside the Parliament with Speight. (I say aptly named not just because of the digital reference in her name. Digitaki apparently means "vote" in Fijian.)
Fiji isn't NASDAQ territory. There is just one ISP--the state telecom company, and there are just 4,000 subscribers. Before the coup, Fijilive.com was getting about 5,000 hits a day for its roundup of local business, and a lonely hearts club site. Now Yashwant says they have been averaging about 100,000 hits a day since the coup began, soaring to 175,000 hits during "peak hours" (evening in North America and Europe).
In the series of power plays that is coup-making, Yashwant is wielding more than most, possibly even Speight himself, who has the type of power that Mao Zedong might recognize, the barrel-of-the-gun variety. Yashwant has been inundated by e-mails from anxious tourists, businessmen, investors and expatriate Fijians, indigenous and Indian. He has become Fiji's main voice to the world. "We are being straight down the line. We cannot afford to be one-sided," he says, despite the fact that his company is largely ethnic Indian-owned.
The site's evolution during the last 4 to 5 days has been interesting. The first day was simply 'html' stories plonked on the page. On the second day, Fijilive.com was inactive. Had it been shut down? No, says Yashwant. The Kansas-based server was overloaded because of unprecedented demand. A mirror site, Businessnews.com.fj, instead carried the reports. Fijilive.com was back up the next day but users had to register this time. Was this an attempt to control access? No, says Yashwant, "we were just getting so many hits, we wanted to see where they were from." Most countries in the world, is the answer, thanks to the webmaster's clever posting of the site on news and bulletin boards of popular sites like AsiaNow. While Fijilive.com's five reporters have been out getting scoops, its techies have been busy redesigning the page. Fijilive.com now looks like a relatively sophisticated news portal.
So what's the future for Fijilive.com? What's the future for Fiji itself, is probably the bigger question. The answer to the first is unclear. Yashwant says that the site doesn't make money (sound familiar?) and the company gets by with the occasional web-design contract. The answer to the second probably rests with Fiji's powerful Great Council of Chiefs, a body of more than 50 native chiefs which determines how the culture and the country is interpreted. The Council meets today, and George Speight's fate should be known. Whether he accepts their verdict is unclear, but what is more likely is that Fijilive.com will probably be first with the news, whatever happens.
Eric Ellis is the Southeast Asia and technology editor of web-based finance portal AsiaWise.com
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