I always had mixed feelings about the Los Angeles Times. It's a prestigious newspapers but their reporting on the Middle East and Africa should be tremendously improved. I understand that it's terribly expensive to send reporters there but it will make their articles more real,credible and truthful if their reporters travelled to the countries they are reporting about.

When we talked to Tereisa Watanabe, a Japanese-American journalist from the LA times, I was convinced that my idea is right. Watanabe is the head of the Japan Bureau of the LA times however, she also writes about the Middle East. We talked to her about the Middle East for a while and after we told her to come visit us. She said she is scared. The fact that she writes about the Middle East but is not aware of how things are in one of the major Middle Eastern countries is very interesting. This does not only apply to the Middle East. Later on, I will discover it applies to Sudan and Africa too.

We visited the LA times headquarters in LA. It was huge, well equipped and modern. What I really liked about the offices there is every office is as personalized as you can get. People spend alot of times at work. Their office becomes part of their life and because it is part of their life, it should reflect their personality, tell people about their life. I like it when people put pictures and things that represent them in their office. Our tour guide was an Asian-American too. It's interesting because 30 years ago, this wasn't possible. Females and minorities joined the LA team in the 1970's and 1980's. I was interested in finding out about LA times reportes in Africa and the Middle East. To my surprise, LA Times only had three reported for Africa and two for the Middle East. They didn't have any reporter in the Sudan, a country often in the news. they shouldn't necessarily have a full-time reporter there but when they want to report something there, they should send somebody to see things with their own eyes and get the true story. This is often not the case. I've read some articles published by the LA Times with false claims about the Sudan. I wasn't convinced enough by his claim that Darfur is too dangerous to report. In 2006 alone, over 40 journalists died in Iraq. During a number of years, many journalists died in Palestine. Not a single journalist died in Darfur.