Important milestones

  1. In December 2007, the site was awarded an Award of Excellence in New Communications from the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) based in Boston.
  2. In December 2009, this site won a Manthan South Asia Award for e-news. Groundviews was the only Sri Lankan initiative featured in the e-news category and also the first Sri Lankan initiative to win an award in this category. The site was also shortlisted in the e-news category in 2008.
  3. Publication of Winning the War, Winning the Peace, an article by Dayan Jayatilleke, Sri Lanka’s hawkish Representative to the United Nations in Geneva in July 2008. Dayan subsequently became one of the best read and most commented on authors onGroundviews. His sustained wide-ranging and deep engagement with content and commentary here was the ONLY example, in any media local or international, of a highly placed official of the Rajapakse regime engaging in debates on issues related to human rights, war crimes, genocide, governance and humanitarian aid.
  4. In March 2009, the widow of Lasantha Wickremetunge (the most senior journalist to be assassinated in Sri Lanka in January 2008) wrote in desperation to Groundviews to publish a letter to the Inspector General of Police on the death of her husband. Groundviews was told that no newspaper in Sri Lanka was willing to carry this letter in full.
  5. Groundviews was the only voice to critique a reference from Wikipedia used by the Sunday Times, a leading newspaper, to buttress a case for the alleged pro-LTTE bias of Canadian Liberal MP Bob Rae, deported from Sri Lanka after first being issued a visa to enter. It was recommended for the syllabus of a leading journalism school in Sri Lanka as a case study in the study of online sourcing.
  6. In one of the most under-reporting yet compelling humanitarian news in post-war Sri Lanka, Groundviews was the first and ONLY media site to report on the flooding in IDP camps in August 2009. We also published the first images, taken secretively from a mobile phone, of the devastation on account of the flooding in the IDP camps – images the government of Sri Lanka does not want the world to see. This groundbreaking content was republished in the New York Times and the BBC, as well as other renown local and international media sites.
  7. The creation of Banyan News Reporters, a device to encourage a number of authors to use well written satire to interrogate issues related to corruption, war crimes, impunity, censorship, civilian displacement, abductions, torture, extra-judicial killings, human rights violations, “national security” and humanitarian aid. It is the ONLY example of satire used in the pursuit of peacebuilding in Sri Lanka, and now has a cult following with some article republished in mainstream media.

About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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