dispatches took root on an olive farm in Provence, flourished on a Kashmiri houseboat, and was toasted into reality with champagne at the East Gate of Angkor Wat. Its founders are a photographer who believes his lens should not filter out humanity, a reporter who feels real news can only be seen from up close in its historical perspective, and a pharmaceutical executive who thinks entrepreneurs should do more than make money.Mort Rosenblum and Gary Knight shaped a rough concept after covering badly understood conflicts together in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. At a photo workshop, Simba Gill told Knight of his own idea for a magazine. After an hour-long conversation in Paris, the three partners established dispatches with no more than a handshake.
Gill, Knight, and Rosenblum refined the idea at a meeting in New York. They hired Amber Maitland, a multilingual administrative assistant who they dubbed Girl Wonder, and worked out details over long crab lunches in a pounding monsoon near Danang, Vietnam.
Fun aside, the purpose is dead serious. Each quarter, dispatches examines a crucial topic in its full context, with seasoned writers whose experience is firsthand and with photographers who have shown an exceptional ability to capture human reality. Its bold design in a book-sized format is meant for people who savor the printed word and the long form photo essay.
From three separate directions, we came to a single conclusion: in an imperiled world that can barely keep up with itself, more people must understand and debate the world around them in order to solve critical global issues.
