Bypassing Mainstream Sources to Bring You the “Stories that Elude Bigger News Organizations with Shorter Attention Spans”

With Your Help, Narco News will Continue to Report “from the Front-lines of the Struggle for a Country called América!”

By Sean Donahue
Narcosphere Co-publisher

October 16, 2007

The media in the U.S. never saw the fall of the Soviet Empire coming because they didn’t pay attention to the steady rise of dissident movements behind the “Iron Curtain.”

And they may be missing a story just as big as people throughout Latin America are standing up to the U.S. and beginning to take control of their own lives and their own destinies—and their countries’ vast resources.

That’s why Narco News is so important.

Narco News reporters bypass the official sources and spend time building relationships with campesinos, community organizers, trade unionists, and whistle-blowers. They go into the barrios and the countryside to find stories that elude bigger news organizations with shorter attention spans—and as a result they are often the first on the ground when big stories break:

• Al Giordano has covered the Zapatista movement for over a decade, keeping news of the movement flowing steadily as others have come and gone. (And still finding time to cover politics from Bogota to Washington.)
• Narco News broke the media blackout when the people of Venezuela rose up to thwart the U.S.-backed coup.
• Narco News covered the water war, the coca war, and the gas war in Bolivia long before most people in the U.S. had even heard of Evo Morales.
• Bill Conroy spent two years digging into the U.S. governent’s complicity in murders in Ciudad Juárez before other publications picked up the story (often using his work without giving him credit.)
• Nancy Davies and George Salzman were covering the resistance movement in Oaxaca long before Ulises Ruiz sent cops to beat the striking teachers, and are still reporting long after the street battles have ended and the rest of the international press have left.
• Dan Feder and Laura Del Castillo Matamoros are reporting from Colombia now as a rural resistance movement is challenging Latin America’s most brutal government.

None of this reporting can continue without your support. The Fund for Authentic Journalism, which funds Narco News depends almost entirely on small contributions from individual donors. And for a limited time, the Angelica Fund is matching those contributions dollar for dollar!

You can make your contribution today, online, at this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or send a contribution made out to The Fund for Authentic Journalism to this address:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
PO Box 241
Natick, MA 01760

Please give as generously as you can to make sure the news keeps flowing from the front-lines of the struggle for a country called América!

Sean Donahue
Narcosphere Co-publisher

Sean Donahue is an independent journalist and graduate of the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism (Bolivia, 2004).

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