We’re Back, and Bolder Than Ever

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We have reappeared in the world today as BRIGHT Magazine! Throughout this week, you’ll see new stories from meningitis-infected villages in Nigeria, a cholera treatment center in Haiti, prisons in the United States, and more. And next week, we will be launching our first issue on Calamity.

We thought we’d kick off our relaunch by explaining why we personally do what we do. Enjoy, share news of our launch, and please subscribe!

Sarika Bansal (Editor-in-Chief): My journalism career started when I was living in India. I moved there immediately after college, and for someone with a budding interest in international development, I took what may be considered an unlikely path: I decided to become a management consultant, and later worked in microfinance.

While in microfinance, I helped build a business in five Indian states. I owned the financial model, designed our training materials for field staff, and traveled extensively to the small towns where we had set up branches. I spent a lot of time with the women we were ultimately serving — and unfortunately, grew pessimistic about the impact microfinance would have on their lives.

Throughout this time, I was living in Mumbai, a cosmopolitan city that felt a world apart from one-industry towns like Ichalkaranji, Maharashtra (when I visited, Ichalkaranji only made white bedsheets. That’s it. One guy disrupted the market by adding blue dye). I started resenting the way friends and colleagues would pass judgment about people they didn’t know and places they had no intention of visiting. It felt helplessly one-dimensional, fueled by generations of class divisions and the sensationalistic Indian media. I also became interested in writing, which I started to do frequently on my Wordpress blog.

At the beginning of 2010, my disillusionment with microfinance was reaching its peak — and I realized that I wanted to make my mark on the development world not through direct service but through writing and thought leadership. If I could broaden people’s perspectives on the lives of the most marginalized populations, I thought I could change the way development happens.

Seven years later, that’s what I still hope to do. The mission of Honeyguide Media, the nonprofit organization I started last year, is to reinvent storytelling about the social issues that matter most. We cut the jargon, avoid tired tropes about international development, and bring panache, creativity, and a solutions-oriented mindset to our work.

Colleagues, what brings you to this work?

Abigail Higgins (Editor): I’ve wanted to be a journalist since I was seven. But when the newspaper industry faltered in my teens and threatened to flat line by the time I got to college, women’s rights research and the nonprofit sector seemed like wiser choices — a real indictment of journalism’s stability. Those nascent career paths landed me in Kenya, the first place that expanded my narrow life experience and the thrill of trying to understand a new place.

Kenya stuck but staying away from journalism didn’t. I started freelancing across East Africa, bowled over that I could get paid (however terribly) to travel and tell stories. I fell hard for journalism but learned quickly that when it came to international news coverage — particularly of the developing world — the industry could do a whole lot better.

I felt frustrated with the disconnect: the East Africa I saw was nuanced, complicated, and fascinating. Burundians attempted and failed a coup. Rwandans struggled to remember — and forget — the genocide. Congolese students fought creeping autocracy. But what made it onto the pages of international news felt blunt and often patronizing. It wasn’t just incorrect; it was uninteresting.

I’ve covered a lot of violence on the continent — such as al-Shabab’s bloody attacks on Kenya’s Garissa University, near Kenya’s border with Somalia, and the ongoing South Sudanese refugee crisis. They were — and are — important stories, but sometimes they felt like the only stories. More than that, myself and my American and European colleagues were too often the ones defining how those stories were told. Too many times I heard that these were the only stories from Africa people cared about. I couldn’t help wondering if maybe we just weren’t telling stories very well.

I jumped at the opportunity to be part of a publication that matches my journalism philosophy: that creative and high-quality journalism from every corner of the world matters, and that who tells those stories makes a difference. Education, health, and international development aren’t “soft” topics; they just needs elevating. The problem isn’t that people don’t care about these stories, it’s that we need to tell them better.

Marion Durand (Art Editor): I first started working with Sarika photo editing for The Development Set. I still remember my first photo research, for her introductory letter in the publication. We wanted to convey humor and that TDS would be offering a new point of view on international development — and the Parr photo below got that idea across perfectly:

Being part of a small team at a digital magazine was worlds apart from Newsweek International, where I’d spent the last few years. Everything was fresh and possible! It’s been an incredible opportunity indeed to produce stories I care strongly about: Matt Black’s Flint essay, Sarker Protick’s photos of a school for the blind in India, and countless others with deeply committed and talented people, Chiara Goia and Amy Vitale I’m thinking about you.

I’m looking forward to continue in that vein at the new BRIGHT Magazine and couldn’t be happier to be part of a team of incredible journalists, all fierce and creative women.

Helina Selemon (Engagement Editor): Before I came to journalism and BRIGHT, I worked in a cardiovascular research lab. I got there by way of a conversation (and fast friendship) with its lab manager and an interest in ultimately studying infectious disease. I had always loved education and I came to know and love public health, and hoped that someday I’d get a chance to merge the two.

There was camaraderie in my humble but bustling lab. But as grant funding started thinning out, so did the staff. I soon became disillusioned with my options, and the field. But I still always liked explaining my work to people who didn’t understand it. Understanding science, something we’re all innately fascinated and intimidated by, excited people. Access mattered to me, even then.

I left research a few months after graduation, looking for the career that gave me creativity, community, and a use for the knowledge I had acquired. It wasn’t long (well, two years) before I found it in health and science journalism.

This pursuit meant leaving home and all familiarity for a new city, school, and life. But it worked, and I found not only a use for my knowledge, but a whole lot more knowledge.

I worked the last few years as a freelancer, in as many roles as I could find — fact-checker, editor, reporter, social media editor — before I got to serve as engagement editor for Honeyguide. Aside from covering two areas I care about, health and education, BRIGHT embodies what I’ve sought all along: creativity, community, and use for our acquired knowledge.