Rob Orchard Delayed Gratification - Slow journalism

slow-journalism.com @dgquarterly
THE
SLOW
JOURNALISM
MAGAZINE

Fast and slow journalism:
differences and
challenges for education

Welcome to
journalism!

You’re in debt!

And entering a highly
competitive industry!

Which is severely
under-resourced!

There are very few
sub-editors...

... And minimal
local media!

Your job may not
exist in ten years!

And if it does, its
social status may be
even lower

Meanwhile...

Your friends are all
going into ﬁnance!

In addition, if you’re
joining a fast media
company

You’ll be racing
against Twitter

You’ll have boundless
space to ﬁll

You’ll be assaulted
by PRs

You’ll be under
pressure to make
things sound
dramatic

You’ll have strange
incentives

If you’re joining the
Slow Journalism
Company

You can ditch Twitter

...and PRs

You’ll return to
stories after the dust
has settled

...And look for
untold stories

You’ll follow stories
for long periods

You’ll be assessed on
context, depth and
veriﬁcation

On
dangerous
ground
S
oma has grown quiet. Three months after 301 miners
were killed in Turkey’s worst ever industrial incident,
there are few visible signs of the disaster. Only a
few shops still display messages of condolence to
passers-by and the black ribbons have been removed
from public buses. The reporters who arrived en masse in the
hours after the incident have all moved
on. But this does not mean that life has
returned to normal.
“The town is paralysed,” says Gülay
Yildiz, who works in the Soma Café, a
small teashop across the street from a
statue of two miners, a tribute to the
industry’s history in the area. The 6,000
people employed by Soma Kömür, the
operator that runs three of the five deep pit
coal mines in Soma, do not have an official
date for their return to work. Meanwhile,
prosecutors have launched a court case
against Soma Kömür for the incident at
its mine, and eight company officials are
still under arrest, charged with “causing negligent deaths”. The
first hearing will not take place until at least November.
“Every time we hear the sirens of an ambulance we fear that
something else has happened,” continues Yildiz. “Sometimes I
feel like our whole town needs therapy.”
Three months after a deadly explosion
in a mine in Soma, western Turkey,
Constanze Letsch returned to the town to
see how it is dealing with the fallout. She
found a place divided by fear, politics and money
Tue
13th
Soma is just the
latest in a long
line of mine disasters
in Turkey: more than
2,500 miners have
died since 1991 and
some 13,000 miners
suffered accidents at
work in 2013”
Rescue workers
carry a miner out of the
Soma mine the day after
the explosion
AP/PressAssociationImages

1960-1967: From
Harrogate to Biafra
Chris Ejiofor grew up in Zaria,
an ancient, largely Muslim city in
Nigeria’s arid north, where his father
was a prosperous businessman and
the family lived in comfort. In 1960,
aged 14, he joined the Nigerian army,
proudly swearing allegiance to Queen
Elizabeth.
In 1962 he won a military schol-
arship to study in the UK, at the Army
Apprentice College in Harrogate. “It
was a beautiful experience,” he recalls,
“although in those days some people
had the impression that black people
were not intelligent.” He did his best
to dispel this myth, graduating with
flying colours and winning multiple
awards for excellence, as well as being
feted in a BBC radio interview and
profiled in the local press.
Ejiofor returned to Nigeria with
high hopes, eager to make a contri-
bution to the building of his newly
independent nation. It was not to
be. In 1966, military coups plunged
the country into civil war, split the
army and ignited ethnic tensions.
Pogroms were conducted against
the Igbo people which claimed more
than 30,000 civilian lives and saw a
million Igbo fleeing to seek refuge in
their ancestral homeland in southeast
Nigeria. Ejiofor’s family was amongst
them. Ejiofor himself was based in
Lagos with his battalion, and got out
in the nick of time after being tipped
off that fellow army troops were en
route to his base to kill all Igbos.
On 29th May 1966, yet another
massacre began in the north. The
widely broadcast anthem of this
pogrom was a bloodthirsty chant in
the Hausa language:
Mu je mu kashe nyamiri | Let’s go
kill the damned Igbo
Mu kashe maza su da yan maza
su | Kill off their men and boys
Mu chi mata su da yan mata su |
Rape their wives and daughters
Mu kwashe kaya su | Cart off their
property
O
n or around 15th August
(in rural Nigeria people
can be tremendously
hazy about precise
dates) a jubilant crowd
made its way to the Ngamikpo IV
Palace in Oyofo Oghe. The people
chanted as they marched and were
joined by neighbourhood children who
dashed into the dusty road to take part
in the fun. As they arrived at the 12 foot
high palace gates with their bright gold
lettering, they called out for their ruler.
“Igwe!” (King) they shouted.
The king, 67-year-old Igwe Engr.
Chris Ejiofor (Ezekwesili) Ngamikpo
IV, appeared in front of the palace.
Resplendent in floor-length black
brocade robes embroidered with
delicate gold filigree birds and flowers,
he wore necklaces made of ivory and
coral and a gold crown trimmed with
red velvet and leopard skin. Gold
beads, hung in strands from the sides
of the crown, swayed gently as he
approached his people. The crowd
roared. “Igwe! Igwe!”
The procession marked the return
of a group of the king’s subjects from a
successful raid on an illegal settlement
on his land. The king surveyed the
scene with satisfaction. It’s fair to say
this kind of thing rarely happened
during his four decades in Derby.
The last King
of Derby
In 2009 Chris Ejiofor, a soft-spoken aviation engineer
from Derby, was suddenly and unexpectedly elected ruler of
a kingdom in Nigeria. Susan Schulman has been following his progress
for the last four years, and tells the story of his fight to make
the most of an extraordinary second chance
Thu 15th
Ejiofor returned
to Nigeria
with high hopes,
eager to make a
contribution to the
building of his newly
independent nation.
It was not to be”
SusanSchulman

Anatomy
of an
exodus
In the first few months of 2015
as much as five percent of Kosovo’s
population – an estimated
100,000 people – left the
country in search of better opportunities
in the EU. JAMES MONTAGUE and
MITRA NAZAR witnessed the upheaval first
hand and traced the human cost to those
taking the newest route into Europe
9th December 2014
Pristina, Republic of Kosovo
Despite the perpetual motion of people passing through
it, the Pristina bus station is a grey and dismal place. It
looks run-down and dirty, no matter how many times its
concrete steps are swept and cleaned.
It’s 11pm, and it’s getting cold. There is one bus left for
the night, but the stalls, shops and one cafe still thrum with
people. For years the bus to the Serbian capital of Belgrade
would leave every evening almost completely empty,
passing the border that separates Kosovo and Serbia with
just a handful of passengers. Not tonight.
Several hundred people have crowded around the
bus to Belgrade. They have packed lightly. There are
young families clustered together in fours and fives.
Young men – friends – in groups of two and three. Older
men travelling alone.
They all have tickets but there are not enough seats
to go around and, as the bus leaves, the aisles are full to
bursting with standing passengers. It is a six-hour journey
to Belgrade, but it only takes an hour to get to the Kosovo-
Serbia border.
Wed
25th JodiHilton

The skills required

And if you decide to
become an editor or
publisher...

Thank you!
rob@theslow.co.uk
slow-journalism.com
slownewsday

Rob Orchard Delayed Gratification - Slow journalism

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Rob Orchard Delayed Gratification - Slow journalism

Similar to Rob Orchard Delayed Gratification - Slow journalism (17)

More from European Journalism Training Association

More from European Journalism Training Association (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Rob Orchard Delayed Gratification - Slow journalism