McClatchy News, which was the only news service in the US whose reporters comported themselves like journalists rather than cheerleaders during the run-up to the Iraq War, has decided to close its Africa bureau.
McClatchy had decided to shut its bureau in Nairobi, our only outpost in sub-Saharan Africa, to divert resources to a new bureau in Afghanistan, and I was coming back to the United States. With newspaper revenues declining and the war in South Asia escalating, the calculation was regrettable, but I understood it.
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.
When I started my Africa tour in 2005, as a 25-year-old reporter on his first foreign assignment, I hoped to offer a different view of the continent: neither a dreamlike safari park nor a bleak otherworld of disease and disaster, but a place that Americans could recognize.
….McClatchy, however, isn’t the only news organization that’s been forced to withdraw from the continent. Tribune Co., the parent of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, has gone from three reporters in sub-Saharan Africa down to one. The Washington Post recently closed its bureau in South Africa, leaving only a correspondent in Kenya.
This doesn’t mean the end of news from Africa; far from it. There are legions of freelance journalists, bloggers, relief workers and experts — African and expatriate alike — who continue to report, post and Tweet from the continent. They form a vibrant community, even if their insights don’t often trickle into the mainstream.
Yet for now, at least, American newspapers have decided that there will be less independent, professional journalism coming out of Africa. Economics don’t support it, and perhaps only some readers will really miss it.
For now though i have a lot of inbox clearing,bill paying, and whatnot to do.