Blah Blah from The TeaBreak Team.

Each month we choose a blog which is unique and special in its own self. But one attribute that make these blogs similar is the fact that all these blogs are promoting serious citizen journalism and blogging. This month’s blogger of the month possess the qualities of a good a blogger and promoting a noble cause of accentuating the positivity in our society and exhibiting the true picture of Pakistan. Yes we are going through a grave time but we have a realistic and positive view point about it. Pro-Pakistan and its team is very Pro Pakistani something that our electronic media lacks.

Let see how this month’s featured  blogger answer our questions:

Name: M. Junaid Khan

Blog Name: Pro Pakistan

Claim to Fame: Promoting the soft Pakistani image across the blogosphere

·      Tell us something about yourself, your team and how you people came up with the idea of Pro Pakistan?

              I am a person who loves to read about history and current affairs. With the passage of time, I started feeling that our media is not rightly projecting our (Pakistani) point of view. It was with this zeal that I discovered blogging so I started with a personal blog site. In few months I was sure about one thing that I cannot make a real difference being in isolation and hence we need some Pro Pakistani’s to join us in our endeavor. I still remember the day when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated and I and Mansoor Ehsan got stuck in a friend’s home. It was during those 24 hours that I got the chance to convince Mansoor Ehsan (co-founder and technical guru) to start a site for all Pro-Pakistan bloggers. Therefore, all those people who are Pro-Pakistani’s are our team members by default. Sana Salim, Owais Ehsan, Quratullain, Asima Awan, Balvinder Singh, Aamir Kiyani and Hamza Khan all are the ones who have joined us in our mission to present the Pro-Pakistani’s side of the story and events to the world. We are based in different countries of the world but still united by one common thing and that is our mother land Pakistan. Since our team is the most important asset of Pro-Pakistan so that is why the answer to the first question is a bit detailed one.

·      Now as the title of your blog implies, Pro Pakistan should be promoting the soft image of the country, how successful are you in achieving that up till now?

 As I said earlier, the purpose of Pro-Pakistan is to promote the true picture of Pakistan. The true picture is not that soft sometimes but then the world should know what we think about such things. No one can negate the challenges that our motherland is facing these days and hence we should accept them and try to find the causes for it and discuss them and after that share them with our readers. We might not have the best solution or view of the things but then we all learn from each other and the purpose of Pro Pakistan is provide an avenue for everyone to discuss and share their opinions. And in the above stated objective, we have been very successful till date. It is evident from the increasing number of visitors, bloggers and coverage of Pro-Pakistan on cyber and print media.

·         There is a lot of talk going on lately regarding blogging ethics and how bloggers should be controlled for writing provoking material. Do you believe in such type of controlling body?

There is a very fine line between ethical and unethical blogging. I think it should be observed voluntarily by all blogs and a body should be created which should come out with some guidelines for ethical blogging in Pakistan. It should be made optional for those bloggers who want to join this group of ethical bloggers or not! I will share with you a secret that Pro-Pakistan is already working on this initiative with title something like “Ethical Bloggers Association of Pakistan”. Its membership will be voluntary for the bloggers. We might take help from the founders of TeaBreak on it.

·         Pakistan is in a state of war against terrorism, what an average blogger should do to create awareness among their audience and promote patriotism in this grave time?

The War on Terror is a total mess and confusion. In these hard times, we should remember one thing that we are only here till our country is here and we will be nothing the moment we lost our homeland. So no matters what we do, we should never let our enemies take advantage of the situation to harm our motherland. As bloggers, we can play a very important role. We should be the defenders of our country in the information warfare that is very important these days. That is the very reason for Pro-Pakistan to bring together all Pakistani’s to one platform and present a united voice. 

·         Your favorite blogs and why? 

We believe that all those blogs who join us in our mission and present the true image of Pakistan are our favorite blogs. We will not point out any one blog. That is one reason you cannot see any blogs in our blogroll except the two personal blog sites of our team members. 

·         We have observed that blogging has an effect on the personal life of bloggers both negative and positive. What’s your experience?

Yups we agree and we would add another interesting experience to it. Actually we start blogging out of urge to share our thoughts with the world and sometimes the opinions of others on our way of thinking either change our very thinking or we become successful in changing their thinking patterns. So it can be both positive change and a negative change depending on situation to situation. 

·         How would you grade the relationship of Pro Pakistan writers with both silent readers and vocal commenter? Aren’t some commenter’s out of line some times?

Pro-Pakistan tries to maintain a long term relationship with our readers but as you might have seen that we get a lot of Indian readers who sometimes disagree with our opinions since it goes against their country so they go out of line sometimes. In any case, bloggers should keep a very open and cordial relationship with their readers as it benefits both sides

·         What new changes and updates shall we expect from Pro-Pakistan?

Pro Pakistan will be coming out with a lot of things in the near future as we are expanding our blogging team. Moreover, we are also working on the new face of redesigning of the website and inshAllah we will have our new design ready in the near future. Pro-Pakistan team is trying to come out with some new innovative ways to promote blogging in Pakistan. 

·         Your message to fellow bloggers and youth of the country? 

 Pakistan is the greatest gift of Allah to the Muslims of the sub continent. We should strive hard and start from our very own self to preserve and develop it. Mark our words that if this country is lost, we will lose our identity. We will have a life far worse then what we all can imagine. So let’s get together and start working towards a prosperous and progressive Pakistan.

·         Your opinion about Tebreak.pk and its team?

Ahh my favorite question! Teabreak was an idea that our team considered when we were very new in the blogging but since the team lacks people with technical expertise, we were never able to move beyond the phase of idea generation. I think TeaBreak has truly revolutionized the blogging in Pakistan. Having said that, I still believe you can do a lot more with the type of technical expertise your team posses. I have followed your personal sites and I think you guys can do wonders with your knowledge and skill set. Best of luck with your future endeavors.