Feb 12, 2010
Read a Reporter's Farewell to Africa
“Yet as I packed up the office and said my farewells, I couldn't help but think that we were turning our backs on a continent that's always needed more media attention, not less… I also thought that this was the kind of story we'd miss now, the ability to put a face on something as big as AIDS in Africa, which must seem to most Americans like an inexorable tsunami swallowing up millions of far-off strangers.” -Goodbye, Africa: Reflections on a continent
Shashank Bengali, McClatchy News correspondent, writes his last blog from Africa. McClatchy, which owns more than 30 papers across the US, closed its only sub-Saharan bureau last month.
Bengali’s honesty is heartbreaking. He tells about his housekeeper silently dying of AIDS, untreated, fearing stigma, and her sons’ diagnosis after her death. He mourns for her and countless others whose stories won’t be told. As of 2010, neither he nor other major reporters will be there to write them (the Washington Post and Tribune Co. have all but shut down in Africa). And so he hands the torch to tweeters, bloggers, freelancers, and relief workers to keep Africa’s issues current.
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