Graphic Novels and the New Age of Foreign Reporting
Sarah Glidden’s new graphic novel fills an important void as media organizations cut back on traditional reporting.
As the Iraq war turned into an unmitigated, bloody disaster, another disaster was unfolding in newsrooms around the world: Ad sales plummeted, and print subscriptions dried up thanks to all the free content on the internet. While Marines and Iraqi civilians bled out in Mosul, newsrooms hemorrhaged red ink.
Massive layoffs commenced, and many small-town papers shut their doors. But some of the most devastating casualties of this media catastrophe were foreign bureaus. When Sarah Glidden went to Turkey, Iraq and Syria in 2010 for her book —the follow-up to her award-winning 2011 —these changes were already well underway.
