ACCRA – My senior year of college, I applied for a Fulbright to study in Ghana. I wanted to spend ten months researching whether increasing press freedom had changed media practices. It turns out it was good I didn’t get it, as I doubt I would have needed the full 10 months. After two months [...]
ACCRA – Those of you who have ever tried to get me out the door to go out (or to a movie, or to dinner) know that punctuality is not my strong suit. Those of you who don’t know, well, you’re probably in Ghana. Ghana runs anywhere from 15 minutes late to 2 hours late. [...]
ACCRA – The end of every assignment is always a slight source of discomfort to me. It’s when the soli, or brown envelope, is distributed. Some organizers hand it to you, subtly hidden within a press kit full of brochures and a copy of the keynote address. Some drive you to the ATM to publicly [...]
ACCRA – The American adage about politics and sausage apparently does not exist here. Ghana’s deputy minister of information publicly reprimanded the government’s local public relations officials for party disloyalty. Speaking with Accra’s members of regional government on June 13, the Deputy Minister Baba Jamal warned local PR staff, known here as information service officers, [...]
CAPE COAST – Last weekend, I went to Cape Coast with Sam Simon. It’s an incredibly historic city; one of the main slave dungeons of the Trans-Atlantic Trade Route was there. But this blog is not about the city, the history, or our hostel/bar/world’s slowest restaurant. It’s about the movies they played on the bus [...]
ACCRA – During my second day at the Daily Graphic, I shadowed Jasmine as she went on a political assignment. You can read the story (which appeared on the front page the next day) here: Vetting Was Fair. I want to draw your attention to the paragraph halfway through, referencing some “controversy.” Some Background: Before [...]
