The award-winning Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez, who writes the blog Generation Y, has published a book about how to maintain a blog under conditions as adverse as those that independent journalists face in Cuba.
"WordPress: Un blog para hablar al mundo" (WordPress: A Blog to Speak to the World), , debuted Tuesday, June 21, in Madrid. The book includes such themes as new forms of journalism, and the increasing influence of blogs.
Although Sánchez did not attend the event in Madrid, she pre-recorded a video that was shown. In 2008, the blogger received the Spanish Ortega y Gasset prize for digital journalism and in 2009 she was the recipient of the María Moors Cabot award from Columbia University. Cuban authorities prevented her from traveling outside the country to receive either recognition.
Sánchez explained that the book is a "book is a manual to help people use this tool (blogging) through which I have found freedom," she said, as quoted by PRnoticias.
The blogger, who lives in Havana, Cuba, also mentioned Twitter as another tool that has helped her tell the unofficial version of what happens in Cuba.
"Technology helps us to unmask the situation," she said, as quoted by El Mundo.
According to the news agency EFE, Generation Y is one of the most read blogs in the world, with more than 14 million visits each month.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
