Through the reporting, you meet a lot of very sad victims, but there was something about Ismael that really stuck with me. And I was really depressed coming back home thinking, ‘I’ll never see this kid again. What a remarkable kid.’ And luckily, what ended up happening was the story ended up getting a lot of attention. It moved others in Canada. We have a large Somali-Canadian diaspora — they decided to try and help Ismael.

They started Project Ismail and one Canadian in particular, Sahal Abdulle — who lived in Nairobi and he’s a former Reuters photojournalist — he told me, ‘Listen I can’t save Somalia, but I think I can save Ismail.’ So he set out to save him and 10 months after I wrote that story, he called me and said, ‘We’re gonna get him to Nairobi. Come back.’ So I was in Nairobi where they had managed this great escape for him and Ismail came across the border and I did a story about that.

He applied for refugee status and refugee protection and I thought it would take long time, but just a month later, got a call from Sahal [who] said, ‘You’re never gonna guess what, but he’s got a country that’ll take him on an emergency basis.’ And I said, ‘Canada!’ — I was hoping it would be Canada. ‘No,’ said Sahal. ‘It’s Norway.’ And I thought, ‘OK, Norway, that’s fine.’ And then he said, ‘No, it’s Harstad, Norway.’ So we were both Googling where Harstad, Norway, was and that’s how I found myself a year after I met Ismail on a plane with Ismail and Sahal flying 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle to this beautiful little town of 23,000 called Harstad. And that is where Ismail lives now.

— Michelle Shephard on how her article helped lead to Ismail Khalif Abdulle’s rescue

I don’t think of it as graphic. Other people have used that word and we took a lot of criticism for that front page picture. That picture that Tyler took in the early days of the famine we put above the fold very prominently on the front page of The New York Times and a lot of people said, ‘It’s graphic, it’s too disturbing, it’s sensitive.’ And our point was, ‘It’s supposed to be disturbing. What’s happening is disturbing.’ Is it graphic? Graphic almost [means] a gratuitous sensationalist approach to depicting something. We didn’t feel that. We weren’t trying to exaggerate or be especially dramatic. Our approach was to be very nonjudgmental – not so much understatement, but just be very straightforward.

— Jeffrey Gettleman on the photograph that Tyler Hicks took of the dying child in Somalia [complete interview here]

There’s a bullseye on my head when I step into Somalia, wherever I am. People have been kidnapped and killed. Westerners have been taken hostage. I’m going into this area – and putting myself in danger and so is the photographer – and the paper supports us doing that because we feel that this is important, this is part of our job and we have an opportunity as journalists to make a difference.

— Jeffrey Gettleman covers Somalia for The New York Times. On today’s Fresh Air, he explains what he’s seen and why he keeps going back.

newsweek:

Ethiopians rout terrorist group Al-Shabab out of Somalia, leaving locals grateful, but occupied. 

Tomorrow: New York Times correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman talks about his reporting from Somalia. He was the first to report that the Islamist group Shabab had prevented starving people from leaving the country. This week, he’ll be honored with a George Polk Award.