(audio slideshow) Come on join the Congo …

The Congo as a news story has burned itself out pretty quick. Few news organizations are interested in posting someone permanently there.  Journalists fly in, smash and grab, and fly out again leaving local stringers fighting to get their stories heard.

I don’t think you can blame the news orgs for that. Even the BBC, who have covered the Congo extensively, work on a limited budget.¬†¬† News orgs are also driven by their audiences and Africa is often perceived as one homogeneous place where murder mayhem and corruption are the norm, which makes it a great place to earn your journalistic stripes but sadly of limited interest to the rest of the world.

Reuters is currently hosting a powerful audio slideshow about the Congo featuring the work of Finbarr O‚ÄôReilly. It offers an interesting contrast to MediaStorm’s brilliant production about the Congo for MSF.

There’s an overbearing integrity to Finbarr’s piece. I think its a really important piece of journalism in which in contrast to MediaStorm the production values take a back seat.

Increasingly people are celebrating production technique over content as we constantly struggle to ‘make it new’, to re-invent the medium.

Fine but make sure you don’t go too far up your own arse cause it’s the people, it’s the people’s whose precious stories your’re telling that count. The rest is glamour.

Thanks to the great photojournalism links for spotting this:

(C) Finbarr O'Reilly

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