Fink, NY Times deliver brilliant W.H.O. critique

The death toll due to Ebola in Western Africa is reaching two thousand, and the New York Times is in the heart of the storm. To put it plainly, Sheri Fink’s story last Wednesday was a multi-dimensional gem.

In an article that explains the reasons for the W.H.O.’s lack of involvement in the ebola crisis, Fink starts by interviewing the big heads at the W.H.O., and moves down the ladder when she gets into more specific issues.

She gives the reader the ‘W.H.O. press release’ version of the story, then gives more and more facts behind why the W.H.O. isn’t helping out in the way that they are supposed to, due to budget cuts and other reasons.

Fink breaks the story up to talk specifically about the W.H.O.’s shift of focus due to budget cuts, and also about how ebola hit the right nations at the right time to be devastatingly effective. The sheer amount of interviewing that Fink did for this article is ridiculous, especially considering that most of her quotes come from W.H.O. corporate heads that were likely reluctant to discuss their organizations’ weaknesses.

Not only was the story impressive, though; the pictures (also taken by the Times), were brilliant. They were relevant to the story, and allowed the reader to visualize the third-world crisis. Thinking about the conditions that those reporters and photographers from the Times put themselves through to get this story makes the piece even more impressive.

Graphics that inform the reader of the virus’s path of destruction also add another dimension to the reader’s experience. However, despite the impressiveness of the three different dimensions included in the story, I would still liked to have seen the following things:

1. More graphics on the effects of the W.H.O.’s budget cuts. I would love to see the numbers that Fink discussed in print used in a graphic, especially because that issue seems to be central to the story.

2. More explanation of what the W.H.O. is doing to fix the problem (and/or get more funding). The organization has to be feeling heat, and I wondered about what their real-time solution is to the budget problem.

Overall, this was another fantastic New York Times piece. The combination of investigative journalism, extreme photography and interactive graphics make this piece both informative and aesthetically-pleasing.