An excerpt from the story written by Louise Taylor at The Ottawa Citizen
His mother’s simple daily prayer has guided Bekele Geleta through a life marked by stellar ascents and crushing setbacks, from Ethiopian executive to political prisoner, from humanitarian to refugee and Ottawa gas-bar clerk, and now secretary general of the International Federation of the Red Cross. Louisa Taylor tells his remarkable story.
For further reading, visit The Ottawa Citizen
As the author of this profile of Bekele Geleta, I’d like to say thanks for posting it on your site. However, visitors to Oromantic should know that what is posted here is a only few edited excerpts, far from the complete story. I’d be grateful if you could either post the story in its entirety or have a prominent disclaimer to alert readers to the changes. Readers should know that to find the story in its original form, they can follow the link to the Ottawa Citizen website, http://www.ottawacitizen.com
Dear Louisa Taylor,
I would like to thank you first for writing the inspiring story of Mr. Geleta. I loved it…as you have noticed I summarized it and posted part of your article that matches the theme of this blog and at the end of the post I informed my readers to check your site for more on this story.
Thank you for the compliment - it was a pleasure to write this story, and I’m happy that you enjoyed it and wanted to share it with your readers. I don’t want to diminsh interest in this important story, but unfortunately, the way it is presented here is a problem. You have given readers no indication that what is posted is excerpts and not the full story. Unless you clearly identify the excerpts with a label at the top of the post, you are misleading your readers. FYI, normally you need to have permission to re-post newspaper articles, and that permission would never be granted to re-post such an altered version of the story. Let’s talk about this further by email -
Louisa, I totally understand what you’re saying. After studying the demographics of the people that visit this blog, I decided to post brief stories to keep them engaged and for those who want to read the whole story, I always give out the original source. Like you said maybe I should put a deslaimer at the beginning of such posts.
Thanks so much for understanding, and good luck with your blog.
You’re very welcome, Louisa!
Thank you too for being very gracious and for the wonderful story you wrote.