Dispatches International (DI) is a feature magazine produced by student journalists from around the world. The mission of DI is simple: To publish compelling feature articles that are based on interviews with experts and eyewitnesses about underreported issues. Every article published by DI includes exclusive quotes and facts acquired by our reporters in face-to-face interviews conducted in five continents and dozens of countries around the world. DI aims to offer readers excellent feature articles while providing its reporters with the opportunity to work and learn as student journalists.

With the news industry facing dramatic upheaval, the first cuts typically include foreign coverage. And with those cuts a growing number of corners of the world are growing darker, with fewer reporters on the ground to investigate. DI aims to help fill this news vacuum by recruiting, training, and facilitating the work of local student journalists to bring new stories to the forefront.

Part of DI's commitment to improving journalism abroad includes providing the support student journalists need to learn the craft of journalism and to produce worthwhile stories. In 2009 DI hosted a conference in Ontario, Canada to train reporters from four continents, and in 2010 DI ran a conference in Kampala, Uganda to train reporters from Africa.

Publications are also rapidly shrinking, with page counts evaporating and articles increasingly contorted into miniscule slots. DI aims to provide a forum for longer, in-depth pieces to shine, where content and quality are the sole determining factors in length.

DI was founded in 2009 by a group of undergraduates in the United States and Canada who wanted to prove that student journalists can produce feature articles and manage a professional publication with an international staff. Since December 2009, when the first issue of DI was published, its staff has grown to include more than three dozen post-secondary students who work as editors, reporters, and photographers.

You can connect with DI on Twitter by following @newsdi and join its group on Facebook. The management of DI aims to be accessible to its readers; please feel free to contact the Editor-in-Chief or Publisher at editor@dinews.org .