From an April 7 commentary in the Toronto Star by former editor John Honderich:

First, Rwanda was too poor for anyone in the West to care.

Second, I hearken back to the comment of Kofi Annan, later UN secretary-general, who remarked that many Western nations were reticent to intervene in Rwanda because they didn't feel a "kinship" with Africans.

Translation: Who cares about feuding blacks in Africa anyway.

Could such a story be missed again?

In the past 13 years, the number of correspondents stationed in Africa has dropped significantly.

Virtually every analysis of Western media shows a decline of reportage on Africa. For example, ABC's Evening News spent just 11 minutes throughout all of 2006 reporting on Darfur.

It seems, quite frankly, that media interest in Africa is on the wane. And what stories appear invariably centre on AIDS, poverty or corruption.

Any visitor to Rwanda is struck by the number of memorials to the genocide that carry the ever-present message "Never Again."

Can the same be said of the media missing another such story on this continent?

Based on what I've read and seen, I'm far from confident. Which, as a former editor, troubles me profoundly.