The NI is a queer fish. The first queer thing about it is that it is not lying deeply lodged inside the guts of some shark-featured media empire. A free-swimming fish is a rare thing these days. The second queer thing about it is that it survives because of you, its subscribers, not its advertisers - which is lucky because most commercial advertising does not get past its ethical gills anyway. This freedom isn't just nice. It is vital to the survival of an independent magazine.

Here's a salutary tale. In 1967 the staid New Yorker magazine started running articles criticizing US involvement in the Vietnam War. It opened eyes. The magazine began to attract a new, younger, more liberal readership. The audience grew - and magazine profits plummeted. What happened was that the advertisers pulled out. The New Yorker was now attracting the wrong kind of reader, they complained. Not the kind with disposable income to spend on Rolex watches and the like.

This is unlikely to happen to the NI. And the idea behind this issue of the magazine does seem to fit with the publication's alternative ethos. We decided to do the stories that no-one else wanted to do - for whatever reason. In principle it seemed simple: the trays that circulate around the editorial office are always overflowing with newsletters from action or pressure groups containing the seeds of such stories. As well as telling the stories that don't get told we would provide some analysis of why they don't get told.

There was a warm response from the action groups and organizations I contacted. Ideas for articles began taking shape. But what I hadn't reckoned with was how NI's long lead-in time might create problems. It takes about 16 weeks to produce a magazine from start to finish - plenty of time for an untold tale to, for some reason, finally make it into the news. For example, the situation in Burma had been well out of the news for some time and this made it a likely candidate for inclusion. Then it suddenly popped up and stayed in the press for several days.

I began getting a bit cagey when talking to people about the planned contents of the magazine. In fact, by trying to do something unusual - running the stories nobody else wanted to - I was lapsing into the possessiveness and competitiveness much more typical of mainstream journalists. My response to a pressure group eagerly telling me it was finally getting TV coverage for one of 'my' untold stories became somewhat mixed. Er... maybe the mainstream wasn't doing so badly after all. It was good that these issue was being aired at last - but I couldn't pretend it was making my task any easier.

Perhaps by the time you read this you will have come across one of these so-called untold stories elsewhere. Well, I'm now inclined to say, so what? If it's important a second telling won't do any harm. What I am more concerned about is all the stories that have been left out. Perhaps we should do an issue on...

Spiked!
Vanessa Baird examines why some stories just don't get told.

One thorn bush at a time
Making peace doesn't make news. Rakiya Omaar sends a moving report from her Somaliland homeland.

Not our war
Ivan Vejvoda on what most Serbs feel about Serb nationalism.

Simply - News for you

The Return of the Indian
Indigenous people are turning the tide of history. Philip Wearne is one of the few people who has noticed.

The Facts - plug into the Global digital highway super-babble.

No Pablo, no story
Sarah Stewart explodes a few myths about drugs and Colombia.

An open door
Sometimes it takes courage to tell even good stories. Dinyar Godrej reports from Wallingford.

The Mafia and Mrs Ciller
Nefarious deeds in Turkey unearthed by Ivy Anderson.

You can be sure of Shell
Andrea Goodall wipes the 'greenwash' off the world's richest oil company.

Action/Worth reading

Letters
Letter from Lagos
Updates
Reviews: plus Angela Carter classic
Curiosities
Endpiece: by Steven Hill
Country profile: Kenya

FRONT COVER BY MARK MASON
INCLUDING PHOTO BY ARA GULER / MAGNUM.
MAGAZINE DESIGNED BY CLAIRE PALMER
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER