Sarajevo Daily: A City and Its Newspaper Under Siege

The Sarajevo newspaper Oslobodjenje managed to publish daily throughout the first two years of the Bosnian Serb siege despite intermittent lack of electricity, water and fuel--not to mention the incessant bombardment and sniper fire that accounted for some 6000 deaths in the city in 1992-1993. Artillery shells tore the newspaper building apart floor by floor until it collapsed; the staff then moved to underground rooms originally intended as atomic bomb shelters. Gjelten's account of Oslobodjenje's fight to stay alive is a perfect metaphor of the struggle of a sophisticated European city to retain its multiethnic character even as it is being turned into ``a great prison, a place of torture and deprivation.'' The newspaper's staff represents a genuinely multicultural model of life and work, demonstrating that it was still possible to work together in harmony. Gjelten, who won the George Polk Award for excellence in overseas reporting, has covered the war in the former Yugoslavia for National Public Radio since 1991. Photos not seen by PW. (Feb.)