On 22 March, Alal O Dulal was officially 1 year old. Our first post was a quick blog post by deyalpotrika on Bangladesh’s entry into the Asia cup final.
Since then, we published another 397 posts in one year. We started off with 6 part-time bloggers, some of whom used to blog at the now-retired Unheard Voice blog. We have since hosted writings by another 20-odd bloggers. We have pioneered in translating from Bengali crucial voices such as Faruk Wasif, Zia Hassan, and others who only write in Bengali. We also express our solidarity with other progressive blogs, including the forthcoming feminist blog Thot Kata.
We believe writing in English or Bangla comes with specific audience choices, and we are committed to working as a bridge between Bangla and English blogging. We are against the culture of “kopa-kupi” that has made some blog debates acidic and dysfunctional, and we are committed to pushing for a more civil tone in online blogging. We have a zero-tolerance policy for any form of hate speech on our blog– be it racism, communalism, sexism, or anything else.
We went from 2,531 page views in April 2012 to 31,897 page views in February 2013. Our all time most viewed blog post thus far is Giltimia’s essay on Shaon and our society. Most importantly, we had 1,600+ comments left on our site. Our most commented blog post is Shon Papri’s thoughts on protests outside New York’s Time Square Marriot, easily one of the best pieces of original reporting on AoD. The recent Shahbag movement has been a high point for AoD. generating the maximum amount of articles in English (and translation) and several of our posts have been reprinted in BdNews24 and elsewhere.
It has been a pleasure and a privilege to have you as an audience because writers are nothing without their readers. We have benefited from listening to your thoughts, and we would like to hear from you on how we can serve you better.
Source: ALAL OULAL
