Archive for the ‘Journalism’ Category
The audacity of online ad revenues
I just read this NYT piece about how newspapers are using online data to refine their strategies, from what is presented where and for how long on the WSJ home page to whether “long-form video” works online at the Post. One thing caught my eye: At a recent meeting with the top online editors of [...]
A chorus of truth-telling: On hegemony, Africa and the news
Forget h/t. An out and out handshake to @sonjasugira for a link to The Revolution Will Not Come By PowerPoint, a very unsentimental essay by Martin Kimani at the role of rational thinking (read: development) in Africa that left me profoundly moved. Every paragraph had me thinking deeply about something. I’ll highlight just one section: [...]
Kigali grenade attacks: Journalistic choices in three acts
Act I, in which I am not a good authority on anything that happened last night No confusion: I didn’t cover the grenade attacks. Last night, I posted links to the work of a bunch of journalists who did — Hez Holland and David Kezio-Musoke/Reuters; Josh Kron/CNN International (last night, though oft with the NYT); [...]
The alleged power of one
Tom over at aviewfromthecave offers a critique of a recent Washington Post article about a couple, the Hughses, who went on safari in Tanzania and then decided to start a bike charity for residents of Karatu, a village near the safari site where the couple stopped at a local school and learned the kinds of things [...]
Why Enough will always get Congo “wrong” — and why we should maybe thank them for it
I’m going to go straight to it: Because advocacy is politics. Advocacy is aspirational; it is rhetorical; and it is manipulative. And none of those things is prima facie bad (though there are better and worse ways to do them). It seems to me we should no more expect advocates to offer a nuanced and [...]
The White Reporter’s Burden in Africa II: Journalists who get over it
In an effort to be productive in my criticism, here are nearly two dozen or so Western journalists I think do good work in Africa. This all started with Phil Bronstein’s Easterly-inflected praise of the courage of Nick Kristof to admit “that there is a white man’s burden in reporting on Africa.” That’s the wrong [...]
I am a freelance journalist and multimedia producer who covers human rights, Africa and foreign affairs. [