Making radio for Mandela

It was a big push covering Mandela’s death on The World last week, especially as it meant building a whole new show from scratch starting just before 5 pm. Here’s a blog post I wrote for pri.org with a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at how we do what we do.

Show Producer’s Blog

Just to say I’m not using this page much right now but I am blogging at The World if you want to check out those posts. Thanks!

The Fear by Peter Godwin

Marco Werman interviewed Peter Godwin about his new book The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe today.  It’s a riveting conversation about a riveting book. I’ll put the longer unedited version on the history podcast as soon as I get a chance.

Here’s that long version I promised.

Libya and Darfur

I started doing international news in 1998 and one of the first stories I covered was Kosovo.  Five years later, as I watched the news of atrocities unfolding in Darfur, I naively thought that the international community would act swiftly to stop atrocities in Darfur.  But of course it didn’t,  and in December 2004, I wrote a radio story exploring all the reasons Darfur was not like Kosovo.  Now I am again stunned, but by an opposite situation: the speed with which the Obama Administration, European allies, the Arab League, the UN Security Council came together to act on Libya. So today, (acknowledging none of these analogies really works because each case is so so specific and different), I am exploring the reasons why Libya is not like Darfur. Here’s the story.

http://www.theworld.org/2011/04/libya-intervention-darfur-sudan/

Humanitarian Intervention or Regime Change?

Today’s story on what’s next in Libya with thoughts from Robert Pape, Michael Knights and Richard Andres.

Don’t miss this related post by Laura Rozen.

Aristide Returns

Reporter Amy Bracken was at the airport in Port-au-Prince when Aristide arrived home. Here’s her conversation with Lisa Mullins on  The World today. And here’s a little backgrounder I did on Aristide that followed and a longer conversation with Robert Fatton on The World’s history podcast is here.

Libya: The Italian Occupation

Marco Werman interviews historian Ronald Bruce St John about the Italian colonial encounter with Libya on this week’s episode of How We Got Here.

How We Got Here #63 – Jean-Bertrand Aristide

This week’s history podcast is an interview with Robert Fatton of the University of Virginia looking back at Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s role in Haiti’s recent history and politics. I went to Haiti for the first time this year to do some reporting and have been trying to fill in some of the political context ever since. This interview is a good start for thinking about the life and times and impact of Aristide and what his return to Haiti might mean.

New Challenges for U.S. Foreign Policy

Today’s story on The World–a look at how the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East are changing the Obama Administration’s foreign policy calculus.

Libya and Intervention

Today’s story: