What is Back Story?
By Mike Daily Dispatches: Nairobi will be as much about the process of photojournalism as it will be about the product. You will see our main Features on the Home page – that’s the product. But we’re keen to engage with you too about how we go about getting our stories and pictures, who we try to interview, where we research background material and who we talk to along the way – this is the process. And that’s where Back Story comes in. Whenever I’m working on a story, I’d estimate that somewhere between 50% and 80% of the material I have gathered never gets into the newspaper or onto its website. Of course all that extra stuff feeds into my understanding of what I’m writing, helps me choose my emphasis and identify what’s crucial to include, and what can be cut. But I often feel that there should be Read More…
“You have to be faster”
Emmanuel Sinzole weaves his minibus taxi through Nairobi’s morning traffic | Photo: Brendan Bannon Mike Pflanz rides the matatus through Nairobi’s sun-rise stress and rush-hour hustle KAWANGWARE, April 1, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – It’s already past 7:15am and Catherine, a 32-year-old civil servant, knows she’ll be late for work. It’s less than two-and-a-half miles from the Petro gas station, the start of the Route 46 bus near her home in Kawangware, to her Upper Hill office just west of the city centre. But that will take Catherine at least an hour this morning, as steady sheets of dawn rain fell and traffic crawled along the slum’s choked streets.
