Harare, Zimbabwe • For 37 years, it was the official newspaper of Robert Mugabe. Then, this month, the staff of the Zimbabwe Herald got an impossible assignment: They would have to cover the downfall of their benefactor.
In the days after Mugabe was detained by the military, editors and reporters gathered in a wood-paneled newsroom in an old office building downtown, trying to figure out what to do. Should they back Mugabe or the military takeover? Did they still have to echo the party line? What was the party line, anyway?
"In the past we could never criticize the president," said Felex Share, a political reporter, in the hours before Mugabe's resignation.