A story on journalism and diverse voices

My story of the day...  

This month, I pitched an American magazine a feature about the legacy of Frantz Fanon, ahead of his centenary...

I wrote that I: 

 -was encouraged to contact them a few years ago by a friend and researcher for a US think tank;

 

 -had pitched a few times before...

 -have been writing about minorities in France and the UK for about 15 years, and worked as an African news journalist for the BBC World Service, DW then RFI, covering Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, C.A.R, South Africa, Senegal, Tunisia, and Algeria - where my family is from;

 -did extensive research on Fanon's work in 2017/18, for a potential film project (still in the making), meeting his son, Olivier; his former intern, Alice Cherki; many researchers who wrote on Fanon's work, friends of Fanon, including Elaine Mokhtefi, who worked with him in Africa and was the last to see him before his death;

 -interviewed in April a French Caribbean who directed a feature film on Fanon, released in France to much success: over 200,000 entries in cinemas;

 -also talked to one of his main biographers at a book festival in April too, and we were about to discuss further, ahead of the actual birth date, July 20; 

- was about to interview another filmmaker, African American, whose feature length social-justice documentary delves into Fanon's writing on race as a psychiatrist, philosopher, and activist, and worked closely with the Frantz Fanon Foundation, created by Mireille Fanon, his daughter...

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The magazine praises itself to do such work: 

"We began as a global affairs magazine focused primarily on the Middle East because we felt that this region, for so long the center of U.S. foreign policy, needed far more coverage from those who have lived and worked there. Many of our staff cut their teeth covering revolutions, wars and terrorism across different countries in the Middle East — often from the perspective of someone born and raised in places on which they were reporting."

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Well, what happened is that:

-They never replied (though they had encouraged me to pitch the first time I contacted them. 

-And this week I saw the magazine had published a piece with almost no interviews, just quotes from books, from a white male American, Paris-based journalist...

Someone who has already quit his daily job and moved on to cycle over Europe this summer, to chose to move back to the US and to work freelance (can obviously afford it despite the current climate!). 

No need to say, he's not been to Algeria or the Caribbean, or elsewhere Africa.

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Sometimes, and more than ever in 2025, I wonder how naive I must have been to have chosen such a profession.

Even when media say they want to improve diversity of journalists - whether in terms of class, of gender, or of origins, even when they can do so, when they have the opportunity to do so, they still choose an upper-middle class white man who doesn't need a salary. 

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If you care the slightest about my perspective on Fanon... Well, it seems you'll have to wait.

But because I'm primarily a journalist and not a memoirist cycling across Europe, I did my job and interview someone, who speaks brilliantly about Fanon and you can listen to him here:

Interview on Frantz Fanon with film director Rico Speight, from Harlem

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If you can a bit more, you can subscribe to my free newsletter on Substack (where sadly, you'll never read about my cycling ventures, but you can read news and features from the perspective of a woman, a North African born in Europe, from a working-class, immigrant background, an African-news specialist, focusing on interviewing Global South voices, for what it's worth in 2025):

Melissa on the Road