Today's Story Line
BEST OF THE REST
News flash for Iraqi policymakers? In the March issue of Brill's CONTENT, longtime Balkans correspondent Peter Maass reports on how one radio station became Slobodan Milosevic's undoing.
Maass writes: "[Milosevic's] failure to fully silence B-92 was emblematic of the war he fought - and ultimately, lost - to control the hearts and minds of ordinary Serbs. B-92 outmaneuvered and outlasted Milosevic because it had truth on its side and a clever, dedicated staff, but it also had another asset - financial assistance from the United States government, which realized that in today's world, an undesirable dictator can be undermined with accurate information as well as smart bombs."
REPORTERS ON THE JOB
OFFICE POLITICS: Rena Singer (below) found a visit to the governor of Zamfara state in Nigeria required - patience. "To get to the governor in his state-house office, which can best be described as a sort of medieval court," Rena says, "I had to make it through two security gates (I waited at both for permission to go any farther)."
Then, she was escorted into the first of four waiting rooms. "In each ascending waiting room, as I got closer and closer to the governor's office, the furniture got nicer, the air conditioning stronger, and the televisions bigger," Rena says. After a few hours wait, she reached the governor's office, which, she says, seemed anti-climactic. "It was quite small and bare of any wall hangings or decorations."
Despite its small size, a half-dozen advisers were present, addressing the governor on their knees. And a film crew recorded her interview with "the prince," as he prefers to be called. "It was never fully explained what they were doing there," says Rena.
URBAN WILDLIFE: Ruth Walker got to see a little more of Toronto's Pearson Airport for her page 7 story than she does as a passenger on her way to the gate. "And it wasn't just computer screens and new construction," Ruth says. "In a shallow basin just off the perimeter of the airport I spotted several deer - probably about eight of them. The wide open spaces of modern airports often make good wildlife shelters," she says, recalling that Boston's Logan harbors a lot of wonderful snowy owls at this time of year.
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