In 1977, Johannesburg had separate municipal toilet facilities for blacks and whites
Joe Lelyveld’s reporting for The New York Times—which he drew on for his book “Move Your Shadow”—brought home a truism. Real stories are about people. In the 1970s we were becoming increasingly critical of the South African government’s policy of apartheid. But the people who suffered most from it did not really appear as people. They were what we wrote about in an impersonal way. Joe’s piece made clear how it affected people in their daily lives. We did then humanize our stories more but to this day I regret that we did not do so on a much bigger scale.