Can Newspapers Reach the Young?
Newspaper reading isn’t a daily habit for most young people. Instead they catch headlines on Web sites, share opinions on Weblogs, and see breaking news alerts along TV scroll bars. Nor do they think they should pay for news reporting. “Deliver the newspaper to me free, and I’ll take a look,” typical young readers tell focus groups as news organizations look for ways to unlock the mysteries of how to connect with these reluctant consumers. – Melissa Ludtke, Editor
Baghdad Blues: A War Diary
David Turnley
Magowan Publishing LLC and The Vendome Press. 160 Pages. $25.“… In February I was given an extraordinary opportunity by Eason Jordan of CNN to go [to] the gulf region, where I served as a correspondent mixing video, photography, and on-air reporting. My brief early on was to work in the surrounding countries and along the border of Iraq to tell stories of people who were in some way affected by Saddam Hussein’s regime, and to put a human face on the population of the region.
“For the first month and a half of my three months in the Middle East for CNN, I worked in Syria and then in Turkey in the Kurdish-controlled area along the border of Iraq. As the war approached, our plan was to be in a position to enter northern Iraq, which was held by the Kurds, and to eventually get to Baghdad to cover the war from there. The only two ways to get into northern Iraq were through Iran or through Turkey, but both routes were shut off––officially, at least. I couldn’t get a visa from Iran, and the Turks would not allow me to cross their border legally. For the first time in my 20 years of covering conflict, I resorted to being smuggled, first in Syria and from there into northern Iraq. This is where my story begins. … “The photographs in this book were transmitted to CNN in Atlanta every day of the war, and many were seen on television, with me as narrator. ‘Baghdad Blues’ is the culmination of my personal experience during this time. As a photographer, I am accustomed to communicating about the world visually, but in this book my words and images work together to convey the immensely human story of life during the war in Iraq.”
David Turnley, a 1998 Nieman Fellow, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist.
