I wrote/designed a little piece for Good Magazine this month, its not on their website yet (I think they can’t figure out how to post the map) but here it is in case anyone is interested…(the map is based on those old school, ridiculously extravagant USA Today weather maps)…
Weather in east Africa is myth. Relatively limited access to mass media plus simple and predictable meteorological patterns have conspired to make climate inherent, social knowledge. December to February of each year is the dry season, so is June to August. These patterns have always been reliable, so much so that the burgeoning newspaper industries in Uganda and Kenya do not bother to print even the most cursory of weather maps. Until now.
Years riddled with misplaced climate disasters – including last year’s disastrous floods in the usually dry month of August which displaced thousands in Northern and Eastern Uganda – have convinced the Daily Monitor, the leading independent newspaper in Uganda, and The Nation, Kenya’s paper of record, to revisit the weather map question.
I know because they asked me to design the map.
It is a difficult proposition, drafting a weather map for a country that has never seen one. Not that it is a bad idea. Like much of Africa, Uganda is a fundamentally agrarian society; over 80% of the 30m population is involved in agriculture so the people here are more dependent on the vagaries of the heavens than most places in the world. But I can’t help but feel the hefty irony of making a map for a country that the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change recently included on a list of the 100 most vulnerable countries to climate change.
My bright yellow and relentlessly cheery “Sunny” icons seem to betray the depth of desperation in a third world country bearing the brunt of what Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni calls an “act of aggression” perpetrated by the rich world against the poor world. My lovingly detailed “Partly Cloudy” icons could just as easily portend the flooding of thousands of unstable homes and attendant displacement/famine/death as an afternoon shower. In acting out the mundane job of explaining the weather to a nation, I felt, and still feel, overwhelmed by the inadequacy of it all. I started to think about the perfect weather map of Africa, an utterly honest map that takes into account Africa’s unique but perilous position in the world. I think it looks a little something like this.
Barak Obama claims that he is raising a $1m a day, mostly online and mostly in the form of relatively small donations from private individuals. This sort of political “micro-philanthropy” is a thoroughly modern affair (see Peter Deitz’ amazing slideshow on the phenomenon–one interesting point: in Apr ‘07 distributed fundraising sites more than $3m; see also ChipIn for a widget version). Or, at least, that is what I had always thought. Then this morning, I heard a piece on the Statue of Liberty on Radio 4 that revealed the true father of “micro-philanthropy” - Joseph Pulitzer.
In post Civil War America (postbellum?), newspapers were a genuinely powerful force. The invention of more efficient and cheaper printing presses and an increasingly urban demographic allowed newspapers to become a populist medium for the first time. As a result, papers had enormous influence on the issues of the day. One of the world’s great campaigning newspapers, Joseph Pulitzer’s The World (see page on left) is from this era and is at least partially responsible for bringing the France’s greatest gift (besides all that help with the pesky red coats), the Statue of Liberty, to New York. (There is also one in Tokyo - see photo above courtesy of Stefan on flickr and also one in Paris)
France generously offered the huge, 151 ft statue as a gift, leaving the United States to pay only for the plinth on which it would stand. Alas, most of the fat cats in the country thought of the statue as a New York momument that had nothing to do with the rest of the country and refused to stump for the plinth. But, then Pulitzer got on the case, haranguing both the rich for not caring about their country and poor for expecting the rich to do all the work. The result? Money literally poured in, a great deal of it from school children sending in pennys to see their name in print and to give to what was suddenly seen as a worthy cause. Today, of course, this sort of social movement would start and end on Facebook of Bebo.
This is a crucial lesson for today’s far less powerful newspapers. They need to go retro and engage, even uncover, issues people really care about. They need to become rallying points again.
It tells the shocking tale of the interrogation and charging of five excellent journalists over a story reporting details of a Ugandan Ministry of Finance investigation into a government corruption scandal.
Far from being based on gossip, the original story published back in August is extremely detailed, carefully balanced, quotes from the investigation and merely reports what one government agency is saying about another.
As a result the Monitor five are facing trial in a few days and have been interrogated by the anti-terrorism squad and the department of serious crime - hardly the right use of Uganda’s most powerful law enforcers.
The salary sandal concerns one of the most powerful women in Uganda - Faith Mwondha, the Inspector General of Government. She has apparently been paying herself 50% more than she should, a breach of the Ugandan constitution, and (you would have thought) precisely the sort of thing a free press is there to report.
The charged journalists are: Joachim Buwembo, managing editor; Bernard Tabaire, managing editor (weekend); Robert Mukasa, news editor; Emmanuel Gyezaho, political reporter and Angelo Izama, special projects writer.
I know the two managing editors. They are fine journalists. And The Monitor is a credit to Uganda - a strong, independent voice. (Interest declared: we are helping to relaunch it).
The immediate need is to support the journalists. The longer term tragedy is that events like this will only lose Uganda the respect of the rest of world - which was at an all-time high last year in November when Commonwealth leaders gathered in the capital Kampala.
Our man in South Carolina (ok, ok, my dad–see photo below) went to yesterday’s Martin Luther King rally in the streets of Columbia, the state capital and, more importantly, my hometown and reports a genial but rather inspiring scene (he also took that nice picture of the State House):
The preliminary speeches lasted for ~ 1 1/2 hours but it seemed longer because it was colder that hell, below freezing with a little wind. In spite of the cold, the crowd was incredibly polite and in very good spirits. The confederate flag people were also there…pitiful group …..they were ignored by everyone. The introductory speeches lambasted SC for being last in most everything including recognizing the MLK holiday, education, health care, etc. The candidates were given 10 min to speak and were extremely polite and complementary to each other (though Hillary and Obama were at each others’ throats later in the day at the debate. It sounded like an exchange from middle school.) They all gave excellent speeches. I personally thought Hillary’s was the best. She talked about MLK’s legacy and was, thankfully, not in “vote for me” stump speech mode, she was somewhat moving. I do think she had no choice given that she was slightly in trouble because of the (basically manufactured) MLK controrversy and so forth. Edwards gave more of a stump speech……and Obama was slick and tried to give people a vision. All the candidates were favorably, even lovingly received. I also met a cool Labrador retriever there.
It was apparently quite an event, the normally quiet Main St. was jammed full of media and on lookers. It made for some strange but moving scenes, gospel choirs, a huge and welcome NAACP presence, palm trees in freezing weather (see picture if you don’t believe me), and more media than the whole state has seen all year. The most interesting thing about my dad’s report is that Hillary was so inspiring. For me, this campaign, has always come down to a battle of two candidates defined by their relative strengths: Obama is a visionary and inspiring speaker, he specializes in spine tingles; Clinton is more an analytical debater, full of practical knowledge that she accesses with incredible speed. To hear that she is improving her skills in the dark art of inspirational speaking is bad news for Obama…
A long long time ago, I worked for a summer at my hometown weekly newspaper in South Carolina. The New Irmo News was based out of a strip mall in a little office sandwiched between Winn Dixie and a famous local restaurant called, of course, Lizard’s Thicket (the photo on the right is Huckabee campaigning at the Thicket). The man who ran the outfit, and who gave me my first job at a newspaper, was named Rod Shealy, an old time political man who started the newspaper basically because he could convince anyone of anything and wanted to prove it. He was quite a sight sitting behind his huge mahogony desk in his trademark Hawaiian shirt, feet up, cigar in hand. Sounds like a vision from stereotypeland, I know, but its true. He always called me college boy, mostly, I think, because he was proud that he never went to college. Instead he “got his education” running campaigns and, secretly, I was always jealous of this.
Now he says he is a “reformed bad boy” (and blogger) but he continues to be a political strategist of some standing. He ran Bob Dole’s presidential campaign in SC in the 80s and the notoriously rough and ready campaigns of former two-term Governor Carroll Campbell (as close as you get to political royalty in South Carolina). He also “studied” (if that is the right word) with Lee Atwater, the former Reagan/Bush strategist and author of some the bloodiest campaigns the South has ever seen (including the Willie Horton ad that basically knocked Dukakis out of the race in ‘88). If nothing else, Rod and Atwater are symbols for how campaigns work in the South, especially because South Carolina traditionally represents the beginning of the second, more nasty, phase of the primary cycle. As Rod said in a fascinating recent American documentary on Dirty Poltics, “when you are limping out of Iowa or New Hampshire, you pull out all the stops”.
And it has started already: there are reports of a Christmas card allegedly from the Romney family being delivered to SC Republicans that quotes a controversial Mormon passage on polygamy (which was outlawed by the church a 100 years ago), Obama is having a hard time shaking the spurious Madrassa claims, Mike Huckabee has been the victim of some nasty flyering on his anti-Southern credentials and so-called push polling has been widespread. The goal of this kind of smear is not to make everyone believe but to make it just credible and just prevalent enough to force the mainstream media to cover it because, as Rod says, “once it hits the nightly news, some people will believe it–not everybody, but some people”. Yes, even in a world run by bloggers–and this is partly Rod’s genius–the local nightly news still means something in the state-by-state political reality of the American presidential election.
What is particularly interesting is how the attacks in the South seem to concentrate on the spark points of religion, race, and national security. I suppose its no surprise. Take my homeland: South Carolina. It is the first state to vote with a significant African-American population, has a strong evangelical contingent and is home to several large and important military installations. Its the perfect mix for some juicy accusations. Just look at this Georgia ad directed against Vietnam hero Max Cleland who lost both of his legs and his right arm in the war. It starts with provocative imagery of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Huissen and goes on to question Cleland’s courage. Keep in mind he lost three limbs in war. If this and other dirty tricks are any indication, its going to be a nasty (and incredibly interesting) few months. I am sure Rod would approve.
In post Civil War America (postbellum?), newspapers were a genuinely powerful force. The invention of more efficient and cheaper printing presses and an increasingly urban demographic allowed newspapers to become a populist medium for the first time. As a result, papers had enormous influence on the issues of the day. One of the world’s great campaigning newspapers,
It was apparently quite an event, the normally quiet Main St. was jammed full of media and on lookers. It made for some strange but moving scenes, gospel choirs, a huge and welcome 
A long long time ago, I worked for a summer at my hometown weekly newspaper in South Carolina. The New Irmo News was based out of a strip mall in a little office sandwiched between Winn Dixie and a famous local restaurant called, of course,