Deca is a cooperative of magazine writers co-owned and managed by its members. Their cooperative model is based on photo agencies like Magnum and NOOR. Each journalist reports and writes independently but stories are edited and promoted collectively. Their writers are based all over the world, including Rome, London, Shanghai, Barcelona, Beirut, Abu Dhabi, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Collectively, they have reported from more than 90 countries and every continent but Antarctica. Deca's tagline is "The world, firsthand." They offer a subscription service to their stories as well as an iOS app, with an Android app in development. Readers can also purchase the stories for download as Kindle singles on Amazon.com.
History
Deca launched in June 2014 with the story "And The City Swallowed Them" by Mara Hvistendahl and a Kickstarter campaign that raised $32,627.
And The City Swallowed Them
"And The City Swallowed Them" is Deca's debut story, written by Mara Hvistendahl, published in June, 2014. It is a true crime nonfiction story about the murder of 22-year-old model Diana O'brien in Shanghai on July 6, 2008 based on dozens of interviews with investigators, models, and both the victim's and the convicted murderer's families. The short book touches on issues of urbanization, migration and underground economies, anchored by the narrative of the lives of the Diana O'Brien and her murderer. The Wall Street Journal, China Real Time blog wrote about the book: "And The City Swallowed Them looks at the world that brought two different kinds of newcomers together—foreigners, including young models fighting for emerging opportunities in high fashion, and China’s own migrants, including those traveling from poor villages who were willing to go to desperate measures to scrape together their own living.”
Hvistendahl is the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist book Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men.
Homelands
"Homelands" is Deca's second story, written by Stephan Faris, published in July, 2014. It was reprinted on Longform.org and excerpted on Roads and Kingdoms. Following in the tradition of George Orwell’s “Marrakech” and, more recently, Ta-Nehisi Coates’s case for reparations in The Atlantic, "Homelands" is an essay exploring the global migration crisis and calling for open borders. It draws on the reporter's experiences in Liberia, Kenya, Italy and South Africa while working for magazines such as Time, Bloomberg Businessweek, and The Atlantic. The narrative opens and concludes with the story of a Liberian orphan named Patience who is adopted by American parents. A large part of the essay focuses on the parallels between the global migration crisis and South Africa's apartheid regime. It examines the economic, social and moral implications of restricting people's movements based on where they were born.
Faris is the author of Forecast: The Surprising—and Immediate—Consequences of Climate Change.
Come See the Mountain
"Come See the Mountain" is Deca's third story, written by Tom Zoellner, published in December, 2014. It centers around the idea of "dark eco-tourism," the environmental version of dark tourism, where people pay to witness environmental degradation. The short book focuses mostly on a firsthand account of visiting the popular tourist destination and extremely dangerous Cerro Rico mine in Potosí, Bolivia, where hundreds of people die in collapses and explosions every year. It also reflects on the centuries of colonial exploitation that led up to the mine becoming a tourist attraction. The book touches on other similar phenomenons of "dark eco-tourism", including taking cruises to watch glaciers melt, flights over the Great Pacific garbage patch and bus tours through New Orlean's Lower Ninth Ward, which was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The story explores issues surrounding the unintended consequences of development, colonialism and waste in the Global North on the Global South. Deca's website describes the book as a "journey into the guilty heart of progress".
Zoellner is the author of five books, including Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World.