How to write an article for the New York Times on suffering in Africa

The New York Times today ran a front page article on pediatric HIV in Lesotho. Unfortunately, the reporter was too keen on spreading old stereotypes about misery in Africa to hit on any of the real issues.

It seems like there is a common template used by most news organizations, where a reporter only has to insert the names of a country and of a suffering child, add a few quotes and the article is done.

For anyone else who wants to write a Times-quality article on Africa, I offer the following nine suggestions, with quotes from today's article in italics:

1. Give your article a broad title about Africa, generalizing about the entire continent from the tiny little corner of it that you visited:
     Africa Starts to Care for AIDS children.

2. Open with a terrible story about a suffering child:
     The 7-year-old boy weighed 36 pounds. His hair was thin and patchy, his eyes dull. [He had] emaciated limbs and a torso tattoed by a bloody rash.
     "Wow," said one nurse, out of his hearing. Another murmured, "Look at him."

3. Don't bother learning the proper name of the country, and then phoneticize your invented mispronounciation for your readers:
     Here in Lesotho (pronounced lay-SOTE-ho)...
(No, it is not lay-SOTE-ho, it is le-SOO-too, but the reporters weren't here long enough to catch that. The article is based on two day trips to the country.)

4. When the facts don't seem grim enough, make them seem worse through thoughtful omission:
     In all Lesotho, there is only one government-paid pediatrician.
(Fact check: there is only one funded entirely by Government, but another funded by the Clinton foundation, three more funded by Baylor, and at least three more coming in the fall, and probably more. But saying that there were actually five wouldn't express the tragedy of having only one pediatrician in the whole country.)

5. Buy into the Bono/Sachs story that the only good work being done is by international charities, and the only issue is funding:
     The Clinton foundation opened a new clinic. With $2M, BMS built another pediatric centre. Doctors Without Borders is training nurses...

6. Repeat the implied mistruth from earlier to reinforce how bad things are:
     For Dr. Monika, the government's sole pediatrician, frustration spills over...

7. Tell a completely irrelevant story about what someone in the rural parts does for a living, because to Western ears it sounds desperate:
     His grandmother, 67 and half-blind, sold homemade brooms for the $5 bus fare to the clinic.

8. Remind us how much the poor little child is suffering:
     [Tsokotsa is] pitifully thin and rash-covered, [and has] been seriously ill for about five years.

9. Completely miss the opportunity to inform yourself and your readers of some of the real issues at stake, like the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS even among health care staff, the challenge of keeping small children adherent to medication when their caregivers change daily, the vast amount of misinformation spread about the disease and some of the popular myths that keep it spreading...

I like the New York Times. But I find their treatment of aid issues can get a little bit stereotypical. Today's reporter had this great opportunity to write a fascinating and informative article about the challenge of fighting HIV/AIDS in a unique corner of the world, and instead painted a completely bland picture to match our preconception of Africa as a continent of starving children waiting for the next handout from the West. The entire content of the article is summarized in a single sentence: "HIV/AIDS drugs now being given to children in Lesotho." But there is so much more to say. I am disappointed.

[Ethan Zuckerman has a good article about the mischaracterization of the African continent as a place of misery.]