Independent news distributor in Chelsea makes a splash on the global stage

Chelsea Now photo by Jefferson Siegel
Lisa Vives, executive director of Global Information Network, a Chelsea-based independent distributor of news from Africa and the developing world, in her office on West 29th Street earlier this weekBy Natalie Huet

On the evening of May 24, a group of seven Mauritanian exiles living in New York City held a press conference in Chelsea, announcing that they had filed a lawsuit accusing their former President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya of torture and crimes against humanity.

Among the crowd of 30 attending the conference were print and broadcast journalists, friends of the plaintiffs, human rights activists and a member of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Many spoke French, a reminder of Africa’s colonial past. Most men wore dark suits, but some bright African fabrics brought light to the otherwise dim room.

“Here we are to let the world know what happened to Mauritania,” said the lead plaintiff, Abdarahmane Wone. “It shouldn’t be left to Mauritanians alone. It’s a matter of human rights. It’s a matter of human dignity.”

That Wone and his attorney, Wesley O’Brien, chose New York City as the platform for their message is hardly surprising, given the presence of the United Nations and other major human rights organizations here. What some may find surprising is that they did so from a small, discrete office on West 29th Street, which houses a niche news organization called Global Information Network (GIN), a nonprofit focusing on Africa and the developing world.

According to O’Brien, who is also the General Counsel of the Refugee Defense Alliance, a New York-based organization providing free legal assistance to refugees, asylees and political exiles, “GIN’s goal, like ours, is to help give voice to people who would not otherwise be heard.”

Mauritania, located on the coast of northwest Africa, is an Islamic Republic divided ethnically between an Arab north and black African south. Taya ruled Mauritania between 1984 and 2005 before being toppled by a military coup.

The class-action lawsuit, filed in the U.S. federal court, seeks compensatory damages “for the gross human rights violations committed by the Mauritanian government” under Taya’s rule from 1989 to 1991. The plaintiffs claim they were among thousands of black Mauritanians subject to a campaign of ethnic cleansing that led to killings, torture and deportation.

“What we want is justice, justice and justice,” said Wone.

Not only have the plaintiffs been denied such justice in Mauritanian courts, but they also have been deprived of appropriate media coverage. “Mauritania has not been much in the New York Times lately that I know of,” said Lisa Vives, GIN’s executive director.

Shedding light on under-reported stories is the primary mission for GIN, a Chelsea-based news distributor founded in the early 1980s. The organization is an essential partner to Inter Press Service (IPS), an international newswire based in Rome that provides professional reporting on developing countries. IPS’s stated aims are to give voice to marginalized groups and to cover not breaking news but, rather, the ripples of long-term processes such as globalization.

IPS has reporters and offices worldwide. Twenty-five years ago, the agency had a U.N. office, where Vives worked. As IPS faced financial constraints in the early 1980s, GIN became a self-sustained organization but kept close ties with the mother ship: Vives described her organization as “the U.S. distributor of IPS.”

Everyday, from a cluttered 1,000-square-foot office, up to eight GIN staffers browse IPS’s Website and select stories to send to GIN’s editor, who is based in Chicago. The IPS articles, which are written in British English, are re-edited for an American audience—this includes writing snappier headlines and more gripping leads. By the end of the day, Vives distributes the articles to mainstream, alternative and ethnic media—both print and broadcast—throughout the U.S. and Canada.

In addition, Vives and her team search the Internet for stories by independent journalists in developing countries, whom they attempt to aid by distributing their stories in North America.

This week, stories on GIN’s Website (www.globalinfo.org) included an account on the spread of HIV in Russia; an article on a state-run community radio station in Sri Lanka promoting peace among the country’s Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim ethnic groups; and a presentation of legislation in Burkina Faso that would set quotas for female representation in government.

“Paris Hilton is almost every day on the front page of major mainstream publications,” Vives noted. “We try to get these other stories out there.”

For a tiny organization, GIN has impressive subscribers. Lexis Nexis pays the monthly $150 subscription fee, enabling most universities and newspapers to have access to GIN archives. Dow Jones and the department of Homeland Security are two other major clients. “Both are interested in what’s going on in the world,” Vives said. “Dow Jones has customers interested in stories about intellectual property rights, pharmaceutical rights, countries at war.”

But GIN’s largest client base by far is the more than 200 smaller alternative, ethnic and minority media outlets that receive its press coverage, among them New York Amsterdam News, the Haitian Times and Caribbean Life.

Milton Allimadi, editor-in-chief of The Black Star News, a New York-based investigative newspaper, said he is grateful for GIN stories. “They enhance our international news section. Lisa [Vives] provides an invaluable service—she gives a voice to journalists in Africa.”

Allimadi said his paper weekly picks up 15 to 20 GIN stories each week, which he described as “more analytical” than those provided by AP and Reuters.

The Black Star News has also co-hosted several presentations with GIN on African issues, including a roundtable in January at Rutgers University, titled “Somalia: Is a regional war inevitable?” with a Somali African History professor as guest speaker. “I don’t know any other media institution that would host that kind of presentation or cover the news [GIN] does,” Allimadi said.

The Africa roundtables sponsored by GIN are part of the organization’s secondary function as a “community center for African issues,” in Vives’ words. “Our goal is to go beyond the famine-disease portrayal of Africa and present a fuller picture of the continent,” she said. “There are not enough venues to hear people from the continent speaking in their own voice about issues in Africa—that’s what we try to be.”

Vives said she was thrilled by the turnout at the press conference on Mauritania, which several West African journalists and human rights activists attended. “The people here are articulate, bright activists. That’s another dimension to Africa that’s not being shown in the mass media,” she said.

EXPANDING TASKS, SHRINKING STAFF

Like many independent news organizations, GIN works on a shoestring budget—Vives has just $125,000 to work with annually, the bulk of which comes from grants by the Ford foundation. “The past five years have been very difficult,” Vives said. “We don’t have big financial backing, so we’re always in a struggle to stay alive.”

At the same time, Africa is becoming “an increasing source of news”—between the Darfur crisis, the bloody diamond war in Sierra Leone, and the importance of Chad’s oil production for Westerners, according to Allimadi. Considering this need for increased coverage, he said, GIN is “stretching to the limit and could definitely use more resources.”

GIN, which at one time had a three paid full-time editors, has only one now, plus Vives and the bookkeeper. The remaining staff are volunteers, many of whom are recruited through GIN’s internship program. (Internship openings are listed at colleges and on www.idealist.org.)

GIN’s press interns provide valuable reporting and other work, generating story ideas, covering local demonstrations (on Darfur and immigration rights, for instance), and writing articles on the arts and culture, including book and movie reviews.

Grace Akinrinade, a student at Barnard College double-majoring in English and Africana studies, started as a press intern in January and finished last week. “It made sense” for her to intern at GIN, she said. “It pertained my career interest—something in the field of journalism combined with my Africana studies.”

But Akinrinade was surprised, so early in her journalistic career, to have the opportunity to publish clips in minority media across the U.S. and Canada. She pointed to an article in the Louisiana Weekly that she wrote, criticizing the U.S. food-aid program for famished African countries: “If U.S. aid dollars could buy food directly from Zambia’s food reserves [and not from the American “agribusiness”], it would boost the local economy and save time and money in the process of delivering food,” the article read.

Akinrinade described GIN as “the AP for alternative media outlets,” the difference being that “the bigger news organizations don’t offer such one-on-one mentorship” for interns like herself.

To help mitigate GIN’s financial woes, Vives brought on two interns (from Peru and Argentina) about a month ago, hoping to capitalize on the growing Spanish-language media presence in the U.S. and Canada by stepping up its efforts to distribute IPS’s Spanish-language articles to those outlets. (IPS is a multi-lingual wire service.) The goal for Vives—to diversify GIN’s offerings and expand its client base—is a matter of survival, not only of her organization but of non-profit independent media, in general, amid the successive waves of corporate media consolidation.

“We’re up against a media environment that’s very well-funded,” said Vives. “The greatest challenge is to get another voice to be heard.”