The editor of Guardian Cities, Chris Michael, explains the innovative approach he and his team take to covering stories from some of the world’s most under-reported locations
My favourite Jakartan is Evi Mariani Sofian. It’s not just because she knows the city’s spiciest fish restaurants, cheerfully brings her seven-year-old son along on her assignments for the Jakarta Post, where she is managing editor, and relishes a bit of good-natured ribbing at the expense of naive journalists visiting from London. Rather, at the risk of sounding grandiose, one hot day when Sofian took me to the city’s waterfront she showed me a new kind of journalism.
Thousands of residents of Jakarta had been living for decades on the waterfront, in what the authorities call slums. Certainly, they live in homes built with their own hands, denied access to municipal services such as electricity and running water, and support themselves informally, through fishing, kiosks and services such as cutting hair.