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As we mark the one year anniversary of the protests and uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Morocco (as well as to a lesser extent, Jordan, Bahrain, Algeria and elsewhere), we thought it was important to share some of what we experienced while covering them as freelancers, and what it meant to us, why we did it and the difficulties we faced, not officially belong to an organization backed by a 1,000 pounds of ink so to speak.For the past five year, newsrooms in the US and elsewhere have decimated their foreign bureaus and cut back on the number of reporters they have abroad. They banked on their readers not caring. They didn't bank on the so-named Arab Spring that compelled people around the world to sit up and notice - and read.

And while they scrambled to send reporters to the Middle East and North Africa, not even the largest news organizations could cover them unendingly as the uprisings went on - and those that ended quickly still had much to report on in their transition periods - so they relied on us, the freelance foreign correspondents. Sometimes it got ridiculous, too: Everyone news outlet broke their rules about only using 'their' reporters or only using 'experienced' reporters or even only using reporters that could speak English. Everyone wanted news, and the harder it was to get into a country, the more 'rule-breaking' desperation there was.

What I saw, throughout the year, as the editor of ARA, were experienced reporters who sometimes struggled to earn a living, yet couldn't help themselves - they had to cover this - it was, and remains, a once in a lifetime story. I was personally accused of finding Europe boring by an intern last year (I am based in Berlin). I supposed I did when compared to the stories bursting across the Mediterranean. I hate to admit it but while the eurocrisis matters, it pales compared to the story of people fighting for their freedom, and dying for it, while politicians fiddle and fuss, as Athens, Rome and Lisbon burn, so to speak.

I saw reporters disregard costs and just go to Libya, Egypt and Syria. Disregard safety. Disregard whether they had commissions or not. Others tried to get involved from Europe and make the calls. Sometimes we got creative in how we managed to cover the uprisings, but we wanted to so much, and some of us did it on our own dime, or money we raised, just hoping to break even.

Editors in the US and Europe were the same. Anything we could get, mostly they would take. While expenses were hard to get covered, they did try to throw a little more our way sometimes. What they really did is keep the space, budget and interest for the stories alive. It might not always have been as much as we wanted but it was more than I expected.

And while staff editors sometimes have little concept of the struggles of freelancers (one asked me why I couldn't contact my colleague in North Africa via a satellite phone as if freelancers can afford that!!!), I also saw new organizations step up to the plate when freelancers got taken hostage, at huge costs to themselves. They learned, and I would say, we did, too, about new ways of getting stories covered at a high standard and still staying solvent.

If coverage of the Arab Spring wasn't perfect, it was better than could have been hoped for because news organizations learned to do things a new way and freelancers stepped up. This blog is dedicated to those freelancers, us, and our thoughts and experiences.

- ARA team, Jan. 25, 2012

Jabeen Bhatti, managing editor-ARA, reporter, Berlin, Germany. Covered, contributed to and edited stories from Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Turkey, Morocco, Lebanon and Egypt:

When I randomly decided to vacation in Tunisia in December 2010 for the first time, I had no idea that it would change my life, or ARA, that I would for the next year, would get caught up in the revolution that started there on Dec. 17, when a desperate young man, Mohammad Bouazizi, set himself on fire.

Even though I didn't witness it directly, I knew something was up while I was there. I didn't have enough experience in the country to interpret it then. But when I returned to Berlin Dec. 21, 2010, I saw it right away what was happening and what it would lead to.

I was obsessively following it. I couldn't get most US papers interested in it initially. And because of financial difficulties (barely being paid for work in 2010), I couldn't just take off and cover it - but I wanted to. Tunisia got under my skin that December, and that was before I knew there was a revolution starting.

In the end, Aida, my colleague and friend in Morocco, and I decided to raise money to cover expenses soon after Ben Ali left to report on the aftermath of the revolution. We did that on a crowd-funding platform, and it tremendously helped (and gave us a community as well, unexpectedly). We wrote a lot of stories on Tunisia after that trip. I wish I could say I was satisfied. I still have a lot of story ideas I would like to fulfill. Maybe I will someday soon.

Besides, for some reason, I can't explain, I take these uprisings personally.

Aida Alami, reporter, Casablanca, Morocco; covered Morocco and Tunisia during 2011:

I finished journalism school in 2009 and I had post-graduation depression for a while. There were no jobs and very scarce opportunities for someone with little experience in the field. The Tunisian revolution brought back a big smile on my face and made me realize I had picked the best job for my personality.

I truly believe that 2011 was God's gift to journalists. The industry had been suffering for years from lack of funds and closing of international bureaus all over the world.

When the Arab youth toppled their dictators, they gave us - journalists - a real mission, a new purpose. And it seemed that many newsrooms managed to get enough money to increase their international coverage.

I have always wanted my work to be meaningful and it really had become that after the revolutions. I mostly cover Morocco, which hasn't had a change of regime but has seen, like its neighboring countries, a rise in political awareness - people took to the street screaming against social injustice.

I can only say positive things about the freelance life: flexibility, the luxury to do stories I am interested in and a life that is constantly changing. I think it is also very important to be a part of an organization like ARA, it allows us in different countries to not feel so isolated and have people we can reach out to in case we need advice on anything.

While I am not sure for how long I will be doing this, I am not worried right now about the not having medical insurance or problems because of an unstable income.

For now, I am just learning as much as I can and enjoying one of the greatest jobs in the world.

Jennifer Steil, reporter, London, author of "Woman Who Fell From the Sky" about her experiences in Yemen; covered Yemen in 2011:

Making a living as a freelancer has become progressively more difficult over the past year. And it often seems that I get paid the least for the stories that mean the most to me, which means I spend more and more of my time on work I do not find fully engaging. I have to. I have a child to feed.

I lived in Yemen for four years, editing a newspaper, writing a book, and freelancing, so I have been following the protests there with keen interest. Many of my closest friends are still in Sana'a, camped out in Change Square. Very little of the news reported from Yemen has been very good or very reliable, so I began pitching Yemen stories. There were many fantastic stories to be told, and I certainly had the sources and the knowledge of the country. A British tabloid was the first to commission a Yemen story. Despite my enormous reluctance to write for a paper for which I have very little professional respect, I needed the money. So I set aside all of my other work for two weeks to report and write a lengthy piece. It was set to run and had even been copy-edited (appallingly, I might add) when the story was killed at the last minute "for space."

Not wanting my work to go to waste, I pitched it to an international paper. The editor told me he was desperate for reliable reporting on Yemen, and scheduled my piece to run. Then, at the last minute, he rang me to say that they had a similar piece they would run instead. It was my exact idea, written by another reporter. I would have thought this coincidence had I not then pitched a second story to this paper, and had my second idea appropriated as well. In fact, phrases from my pitch even appeared in the published story, which was riddled with errors. I was infuriated, but felt powerless to do anything about it. I didn't want to ruin my chances for ever working for this paper but I also decided it was too risky to ever pitch its editors again.

Finally, a friend from journalism school put me in touch with the editor of the World Policy Journal, which commissioned a much longer version of my Yemen story. I was thrilled. I had the opportunity to write in much greater detail about the situation in Yemen and a byline in a prestigious journal. The media and international community have largely overlooked the massive humanitarian crisis in Yemen. So rather than focus on the political situation, I focused on the hundreds of thousands of dying children, while putting it all in a political context. I felt passionate about getting this story to the world. So I spent six weeks reporting and writing a 6,000-word piece, which was published in September. I made $500.

Apparently one cannot buy groceries or pay for utilities, rent, childcare, clothing, or the Internet bill with passionate journalism.

To try to make ends meet, I have been writing regularly for a couple of consumer websites. For these sites, I write pieces on how to get the best bargains at warehouse stores and how to get your garden ready for winter. I am grateful for the work but my heart is not in it.

Now even that has grown irregular. One website is doing a complete redesign and starting over without freelancers. Others only have work every other week. It's obvious that soon I am going to have to find something a bit more reliable if I want to keep my family alive. Yet a look at the jobs listings on Gorkana is dispiriting at best. Full-time journalism jobs in the UK seem to pay between 15,000 and 30,000 pounds. This is far, far less than I made when I worked my last full-time job at a magazine in New York. Those kinds of wages don't even cover childcare.

Even when I do get work, I often have to write to media organizations several times in order to get paid. On average, it takes me about two to three months to get payment for a story. And it also takes hours of my time, reminding people that they owe me money. This is maddening.

So I am crossing my fingers and hoping that 2012 will be packed with new freelance and other writing opportunities. It's too late, after all, to become a doctor or a lawyer. This is what I do. And so this is what I will continue to do, despite everything.

Joshua Maricich, reporter and author, Egypt; covered Yemen and Egypt in 2011:

It was quite a year, 2011. Going into it, I certainly did not expect to be deported from my base in Yemen for photographing bloody crackdowns on anti-government protesters, or to then navigate a traditional sailboat 700 miles down the Nile in the midst of the ongoing Egyptian revolution.

At the end of 2010, Yemen had just hosted a successful Gulf Cup of Nations football tournament, prompting the Arab press to ponder whether the country might be ready to join the Gulf Cooperation Council. Thus the youth-led opposition movement caught many by surprise.

As the number of revolutionaries in Change Square steadily rose from a few dozen in late January to over a hundred thousand strong by March, clashes between protesters and security forces became more frequent and violent. Plainclothes baltagiya took to the streets with clubs beating protesters and threatening journalists. The Yemeni government began denying entry visas to the vast majority of foreign correspondents. Then, on March 14, I was arrested and deported along with three Western journalists. Four days later, loyalist snipers shot dead over 45 unarmed protesters in the streets of the capital, and the Western media was forced to depend on the few remaining freelancers who admirably braved increasingly dangerous conditions to report on the least covered uprising of the Arab Spring.

Blacklisted from Yemen, I went to Egypt. Living in Cairo, I was struck by how little was being reported from outside of the capital. In particular, I was interested in Middle Egypt, the densely populated swath of country between Beni Suef and Qena that had been marginalized by the Mubarak regime for decades. Therefore, a colleague and I decided to buy a felucca and sail it the length of the Egyptian Nile. 

I'm aware that this is an unconventional approach to reporting, but by sailing through the country as it trudges through a revolution we were able to witness first hand many of the daunting challenges facing the post-Mubarak Egypt. We listened to the frustrated voices of unemployed and unmarried Egyptian youth. We saw how flare-ups of sectarian violence and the general lack of security threaten to devastate the country's all-important tourism industry. Finally, we watched the citizens of a number of governorates gear up for and successfully complete what might have been the freest and most transparent elections in the history of Egypt.

In both Yemen and Egypt, working as a freelancer allowed me the flexibility and freedom to pursue the stories I was passionate about during this truly historic time. However, it is a competitive profession and many of the freelancers covering the Arab Spring have been forced to take gambles. There is no guarantee that a story will sell, and there may be no one to assist if you get into trouble. When arrested in Sana'a or when accused of being Israeli spies and hauled off to central security in Egypt, we freelancers were on our own.

Thankfully, after 74 days on the Nile we have arrived safely in Cairo, and will complete the final leg to Alexandria this spring as we continue to follow closely the January 25 anniversary, the Mubarak trial, and the writing of a new constitution as the new Egypt continues to define itself.

Akram Khalifa, fixer and reporter, Tunisia:

I found myself writing for newspapers and magazines against my will. I have been translator/interpreter, then fixer and a reporter for the past six years. Since the Revolution of January 14 broke out, such activities have become my daily bread. On Jan. 8, 2011, I received a phone call to accompany a French TV to the regions of Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine to cover the protests and confrontations between the population and the law enforcement officers (including the snipers) there for their 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. news shows. This allowed me to be at the heart of action, for the first time in my life, and be a witness of such atrocious events completely new to Tunisia and to me. That's how I became interested in reporting. I was taking notes for my own record in an effort to immortalize the moment.

Journalists followed in their wake. After the French, more French, then Danish, Americans, Canadians, Japanese, Australians, British, and the list goes on and on. Some were reporting for television and other for newspapers and magazines. Journalists from the US called me on the phone and I was reporting for them, live from Tunisia.

The crisis in Libya and the refugee camps in the border region gave me more work. There, I met with journalists from all over the world. We stayed in the same hotel that was transformed into a reporting base and spent long hours at the crossing station hoping we could cross the border into Libya. On March 3, 2011, I went back to my hotel room late in the evening and losing hope, and wrote my first piece that I abandoned half way. It starts:

"The Tunisian southeastern border region witnessed not only the arrival of hordes of refugees who have been evacuated from the fighting since the beginning of the uprising in Libya but also the many groups of journalists from different countries waiting on the Tunisian-Libyan border to be allowed in, but in vain. Like many of the humanitarian organizations trying to get food and medicines to the victims of the confrontations between Gadhafi's military troops and mercenaries on one side and the rebel forces on the other; those journalists from BBC, France 2, ITN/ITV, TV2 Denmark, TV2 Norway, NRK, SVT and others, could have neither their pens nor their cameras traverse into the battlefield."

The experience on the Tunisian-Libyan border marked me and made yearn for reporting. Until, one day, I was requested to contribute to articles that were published in papers such as USA Today and The Washington Times.

What marked me especially in my "fixing" experience is that most of the journalists who came to cover events in Tunisia had covered war in Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia and so on. Many of them wanted to make Tunisia resemble a battlefield. I could see that in their eyes, their gestures and their restlessness. They could not hide their frustration and even disappointment when an event didn't not rise up to their expectations of "violence." One Danish TV reporter said to me once while we were covering confrontations between protestors and the police on Habib Bourguiba Avenue, the central strip of downtown Tunis few days after the revolution in January 2011: "This is not enough! We need more action otherwise the story will not be in the news! It has to sell itself!"

Putting reality into words is one of the greatest pleasures you could ever have. The first time I saw my byline on an article, I was the happiest man on earth.

Sarah Lynch, reporter, Cairo; covered Egypt and Libya in 2011-present:

Boarding a small, rickety wood-decked fishing boat packed with rebel fighters on a sunny day last April, I was off to the Libyan city of Misrata, then under siege by Gaddafi's troops. The rebels were going to defend their families, trapped in one of the country's coastal battle zones. I was going to cover it.

Aside from the jeans, boots, and shirts we had on our backs, the fighters had munitions and antiaircraft guns. I had a borrowed flak jacket, a camera, and a receipt reminding me that I just bought a $600 a month reporters' insurance policy that I was paying for on my own. That night I slept next to a black plastic bag full of AK-47s.

Thirty hours later, we pulled into port where dozens of shipping containers lay in flames, destroyed by Gadhafi's men. Countless wounded - fighters and sometimes innocent children hit by stray bullets - poured into the hospital where other journalists and I slept. Many of those wounded died.

There was an invigorating, often frightening, sense of uncertainty those days - uncertainty about the future of nations overthrowing dictators, about where the next Arab uprising would spring, and, personally, about where life would lead the following week, day, or even hour. But events like the trip to Misrata and the time I spent there, in a city where people desperately fought for their lives, inspires and reminds me of the extremes people risk and what unity can achieve when fighting for freedom.

My coverage of the Arab uprisings started when I heard about the turmoil unfolding in Egypt from my small apartment in Beirut. I was overcome with a sense that this was going to be the story of a lifetime.

And I wasn't going to miss it.

I jumped on a plane on Jan. 28 with a ticket I bought at the airport that morning - with $1,000 in cash, no real plan, and a few cameras that would soon be tackled off of me by Mubarak's plainclothes police. There are countless other freelancers with similar stories, similar hardships, but more importantly, memories and moments that have changed us forever, many for the better, some not.

I was drawn to cover the Arab Spring because I knew that covering history would be worth it.

It was, and remains so.

Mike Elkin, reporter, Spain; covered Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in 2011:

I had been freelancing for a while out of Madrid, but the work was becoming both scarce and repetitive. A Spanish freelancer and I had spoken for a year about working together to cover hot spots, and when the revolution erupted in Tunisia we put that plan into motion. I didn't have much time to contact editors before leaving (I think I bought my ticket the night before) so I only wrote a few stories, but I got a feel for how things worked in that environment and then shifted to Cairo, where work increased and I was able to make more contacts. 

But the freelancing didn't really take off until we went to Benghazi in early March. There, I was writing non-stop for various media outlets around the world.Overall, I had a good experience freelancing the Arab Spring. All my editors helped (with some cheerful prodding on my part) to get me as high a rate as possible, and many chipped in for expenses. I think the hardest part was keeping all my pitches and stories straight when dealing with around five strings. That and making sure I was able to get enough sources and quotes for different stories without repeating. Those late nights writing at the Al Wahad or the Al Nouran in Benghazi involved a bit of forced schizophrenia.

Sumi Somaskanda, reporter, Berlin; reported from Syria-Turkey border, and contributed to stories on Syria from Berlin:

When you're a freelancer based in Berlin, it's not always that easy to get out and, well, report - which is why I got into this business in the first place. There's so much interest in stories coming out of Europe, especially since the eurocrisis started. Still, with the Arab Spring revolutions sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, I couldn't help the urge I felt to head to where the news was happening, somehow.

So my colleague Nurhan and I decided to travel to the Turkish-Syrian border in June 2011 to report on the tense situation in refugee camps there. It was a whirlwind week and at times - ok often - we both felt pretty overwhelmed. The overnight flight, numerous taxis and hot, dusty bus ride with little food or water didn't help, of course. But we had some amazing experiences.

On the first day we arrived in Antakya, we somehow managed to make it into one of the Syrian refugee camps - something no other journalist had managed to do. We spent the next few days getting to know Syrian and Turkish families and their stories full of pain, sorrow and violence.

We watched as floods of refugees turned up in rustic, poor villages along the rocky Turkish border searching for shelter and respite with family or friends. We saw just how integrated the Syrian and Turkish cultures and languages were along the border, how mothers called to their children in Arabic and Turkish, and how they shared each other's grief and despair over the violence playing out across Syria.

It was an incredibly rewarding experience to be able to hear and share those experiences with the world, especially because the families we met welcomed us into their homes and businesses as if we were one of them. We were even invited to a wedding in a tiny, mountainous village right along the Syrian border, where a Syrian bride was marrying a Turkish groom - despite the conflict.

Even though the experience was enlightening and enriching for both of us, it was a stark reminder of how difficult it is to simply pick up and land in a new, completely unknown place and find a way to understand the culture, the people and the issues that move them. Back in Berlin, once the stories were written and the trip was behind us, we (ARA) started mapping out a strategy to cover the Arab Spring the best way possible. That plan often involved tapping freelance reporters or even fixers or stringers working in the countries where revolutions were underway, from Tunisia to Libya and Egypt. They would gather quotes and news on the ground and we would gather analysis and official reaction from our (very cosy) base in Berlin and put together full, well-reported stories. 

It worked. Our reporters and contacts were able to get compelling interviews and interesting color that we could weave into bigger stories, often on a really short deadlines. And that convinced me of something: Even though I love to be out on the road reporting and telling stories, even if that's the reason I got into this business in the first place, working with reporters and fixers on the ground actually produced a better end product when it comes to countries or regions I don't know or haven't lived in. That's because these reporters or stringers are people who have often been there for months or years, or come from the country where they're reporting. That doesn't mean I won't travel to cover stories, or that reporters who drop into a war zone, for example, can't tell compelling, meaty stories. But it does mean that we can find a way to work with freelancers who are already on the ground and have a better knowledge of the story than we might.

Now that I've said all that: I'm still hoping to take a trip to Libya or Bahrain sometime in the very near future. I guess I just can't kick the urge...

Kristen Gillespie, reporter, Jordan, Syria. Covered both countries over the past decade and contributed to Syria coverage in 2011, wrote the Arabica column for World Crunch:

When it comes to reporting on the Arab revolutions, citizen journalists do a better job than most Western journalists.

Over the past decade, while I have been living in first Syria then Jordan, I have watched how Western media has reported on the region: Full of cliches and generalities. Since January 2011, with the ushering of the Arab revolutions, it has only gotten worse.

Okay, so cliched coverage of the Middle East is nothing new in American papers and magazines. But some publications such as The New Yorker have quickly become a master of the genre with the scribblings of the latest wide-eyed wanderer in the region, Wendell Steavenson, whose vignettes of Egypt and Syria carry political pretensions that are erroneously assigned larger value than their worth. Traffic in Damascus and "Ramadan treats drizzled with grape syrup," for example, are signs that the situation is normal, while out-of-season sales and empty restaurants are signs that it is not. Which is it?

Steavenson has spent years in the Middle East and has an impressive string of reporting credits. But she remains unable to decode the signposts in front of her to draw substantial conclusions, and readers continually miss out on opportunities to learn about what is driving the Arab revolutions. Steavenson is at her best as a stenographer, transcribing insightful observations from people on the ground, but doesn't know what to do with them. Added with a lack of Arabic, and Steavenson misses common linguistic and cultural cues that reduce her articles to little more than coming-of-age journal entries. A reliance on translators and elites result in articles that provide shallow, trite coverage of the Arab revolutions, which are about more than walking through streets, hanging out in cafes and "being introduced" to people (by whom, exactly we also wonder?)

Steavenson's articles are top-heavy with long paragraphs of boilerplate history that have the feel of Wikipedia entries. She likes to remind readers that she is in the field and present, especially when others are speaking. Two recent articles, "Roads to Freedom (August 29, 2011) about Syria, and "Who Owns the Revolution?" (August 1, 2011) on Egypt, illustrate that point, with dozens of instances of "told me," "I heard from...," "When I was introduced to...," "I asked..." "I started to tell him," "I said," and on and on. (Highlight: Traumatized man from Hama still in shock after escaping the siege. Steavenson offers him water, and to stop telling his story if he wishes: "Twice, I put my hand on his arm and told him that he could stop if he wanted. He shook his head.") Seriously? This is reporting?

Readers patient enough to slog through the usual roster of "unnamed Western diplomats," English-speaking elites and pundits in both articles will find small nuggets of insight - one Syrian artist, for example, notes that Damascus residents are largely pro-regime "either because they have their benefit from it or because they are afraid." The Egypt article features this gem from writer Alaa al-Asawni: "An Egyptian could live and die after doing his military service without knowing anything about the army." Another insightful interviewee is Seif Allah Fahmy, a consultant to Egyptian defense contractors and unapologetic fan of the military.

She also falls into another trap that those without local language skills often do: Steavenson notes in parentheses a comment Fahmy makes that questioning the military is a "red line." A red line, she writes, "is a term I have heard many Egyptians use when referring to a subject that they did not dare discuss." In fact, a "red line" is a direct translation into English of al khut al ahmar, which is standard Arabic used around the region to mean a taboo topic.

Whether it's "labyrinthine passages" and "hidden courtyards" of the Old City in Damascus, "Sunni worshippers mingling with Shia pilgrims" or the most tired cliche of all, that Syria is a secular state (it is not - Sharia law is the foundation of Personal Status laws), Steavenson writes thousands and thousands of words on the Middle East almost entirely devoid of substance, and forgotten almost immediately after consumed.

The reports lack context, substance, confidence and heart. It's a shame because readers need and deserve solid contextual reporting about these revolutions. There is serious, solid reporting out there (see Anthony Shadid's "Sons of No One," anything by The Guardian's Ghaith Abu-Ahad and others). In the case of Syria, a scan of Arabic clips on YouTube provides a deeper, more intimate look into how Syrian farmers, children, teenagers and countless others risk their lives, using their mobile phones and their voices to capture scenes from their towns and streets. These unwitting citizen journalists are the true chroniclers of their revolutions, and it is their voices that are telling the real story.

Ruby Russell, reporter, Berlin; covered Turkey and Syria:

Covering the Syrian uprising from Berlin was not ideal but with the near-impossibility of getting into the country (even if budgets had allowed), I became immersed in the Syrian uprising from a frustratingly removed vantage point. As refugees flooded across the border into Turkey I spent my days glued to the phone, Facebook and email, being fed information from colleagues on the border and forming link in the chain between citizen journalists in the midst of the protests and newspaper readers in America. Everything else was neglected, from better-paid work to feeding myself and keeping the apartment clean.

It was almost impossible to reach people in Syria directly. Gently asking Syrian activists in London or Beirut if there was any way at all they might put me in touch with their contacts on the ground, I had just how dangerous it would be for anyone in Syria to talk to the press explained to me with varying degrees of patience. 

But there was one exception, when I was able to call Hervin Ose, an activist in Qamishli who had just lost a close friend, leading Kurdish activist Meshel al-Temo (whom we had interviewed a few weeks before his death). It was a bad line. I struggled to follow what she was telling me: a previous attempt on his life, how she witnessed the security forces firing on mourners at his funeral, his last words to her hours before he died, how his death would mark a turning point in the revolution.

I was deeply affected by Ose's words and at the same time helplessly far away, not just geographically but in terms of life experience. I could hear shouts in the background and pictured her rocked by a great crowd of people living through something immense at the other end of that muffled line.

Hanging up the call I had to focus on the story: Was this really going to ignite a fury in Syria's Kurds that would spell the beginning of the end for Assad? Or was that what a grieving woman has to believe because the alternative is that the brutal end of her friend's life was only what his killers intended it to be: a man who might have made a difference erased from Syria's future.

Most reports from Syria, particularly in the first few months of the uprising, came through networks of activists and ultimately from ordinary Syrian people driven to speak out. You are acutely aware that your best sources are far from neutral. But you also know that mostly, these are people who need the truth to come out and to that end, are risking their lives, more than their own lives actually, and certainly more than meals and clean dishes.

-- Jabeen Bhatti, Ruby Russell, Sumi Somaskanda, Sarah Lynch, Jennifer Steil, Mike Elkin, Joshua Maricich, Aida Alami, Akram Khalifa and Kristen Gillespie.