Opinion / Josh Fehnert
Beyond the headlines
Journalists, pundits and politicians take a guilty pleasure in making sweeping predictions about the future. But these proclamations – about wars, the weather or what’s next – are often based on scant facts. Scan the headlines and you’ll spot newsroom Nostradamuses making carelessly confident pronouncements about what’s to come for the economy, in an election or a referendum, often to be quickly proved wrong by an unexpected twist. At Monocle we’re rather more sceptical of narratives that lack nuance, of news that’s too neat.
It’s this curiosity about the world and a commitment to bear witness that underpins the stories in the September issue of Monocle magazine, which is out today. It’s there in our sit-down with Indonesian president Joko Widodo and our report on the architects trying to safeguard Tunis’s modernist buildings for the next generation. There’s also a bumper report from Ukraine that shows an often-overlooked picture of daily life beyond the front lines – one that acknowledges the grim and grinding war and the reality of Russian occupation but also leaves a little room for some guarded optimism. It’s a subtler story.
Our on-the-ground reporters witnessed pockets of positivity about some return to normality on their trip through Kyiv, Lviv and Chernihiv. People there are making plans to rebuild from the rubble; some still sunbathe on the banks of the Dnipro (pictured) and others play in the parks of Bucha. The images of joggers, people at restaurants and cyclists amid the reconstruction efforts show a moving resilience that few could have predicted.
How this war might end is impossible to know. That said, taking a moment to look beyond the headlines and observe what’s happening right now feels more important than the newsy navel-gazing.
Josh Fehnert is Monocle’s editor. Subscribe today to read our full Ukraine report and to support our independent reporting.