First independent commercial Iraqi news service emerges

Iraq will soon have its first independent commercial news service. According to the New York Times “the charitable foundation of the Reuters news agency plans to announce this week that it is turning a grass-roots Iraqi news Web site into that nation's first independent commercial news service.”

The Website Voices of Iraq (Aswat al-Iraq) “will become a full-fledged newswire, managed and staffed by Iraqi journalists in Baghdad and operated independently of Reuters. It will use $800,000 from the United Nations to create a newsroom and post reporters in each Iraqi province. When the service goes live in a few months, it will feed breaking news to both Iraqi and foreign news outlets.”

Source: New York Times