Click for Congo

Janeen Heath at the Pulitzer Center argues for keeping Congo in the headlines now that the US election is over and violence in the DRC has escalated yet again. However, as she argues in her post on the Untold Stories blog, space for international news coverage in general and in the US in particular is hard to come by these days.

Just 5% of cable television’s news hole is dedicated to international coverage; 9% for network television and 12% for newspapers (2007 Project for Excellence in Journalism). Soon, like most underreported international news stories, we will see Congo coverage beat out for other breaking news. link

Michael Kavanagh campaigns to encourage editors to commission more work in the DRC,

Click on every single Congo story you see and email it to friends. Editors notice how many hits different stories get, and that’s what will let me go back there –- if editors realize people actually care, they’ll shell out the money to let journalists like me cover this disaster with the depth it deserves.”

I’m not sure how effective a click campaign would really be, but I am certain of the power of Marcus Bleasdale’s multimedia feature above.