Farewell To NPR's 'Parallels' Blog — And Hello, 'World'!

On June 5, the Parallels blog is closing, and NPR's international coverage is moving to a page called NPR World.It's part of an effort by NPR to present our digital stories in a new way. So five blogs — Parallels, All Tech Considered, NPR Ed, The Two-Way and The Record — are being retired and stories will instead be organized by topic. In our case, the topic is "World," since that is what we cover.If you want to learn more about why this change is happening,NPR ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen explains here. As she notes, "The same stories will still be reported and posted. But readers will find them in different places, and the stories will no longer carry those blog labels."In other words, the work of our international correspondents, contributors and editors will continue as ever — it will just be available at a different address. The Parallels page will no longer be updated after this post. Our new URL is npr.org/world. (Please bookmark it!)If you already follow Parallels on Twitter, you're all set. Our Twitter handle has changed to @NPRWorld, but you don't need to do a thing. (If you're not following us for global news and features on Twitter, we hope you will.)If you're reading this on an RSS feed, you can update to NPR World here. Or you can use a JSON feed. You can also find our work by following NPR on Twitter or Facebook.Parallels launched as NPR's international news blog five years ago, in May 2013, hosted by Greg Myre, now NPR's national security correspondent. Back then, Greg noted that it was a time "when many American news organizations have retreated from international coverage. ... But NPR has been bucking that trend. We have reporters around the world who are willing to go anywhere to find a good story and explain what it means."Since then, we've published 3,460 stories — a mix of news, analysis, commentary, and distinctive, deeply reported and visually compelling features. Some of Parallels' first stories covered single motherhood in Mexico, the illegal trade in rhino horn and the heavy metal music scene in Kabul.More recently, amid the often dizzying churn of world news, we've brought you stories about dating in Saudi Arabia, conditions facing Rohingya refugees, the aftermath of a chemical attack in Syria — plus a look back at a largely forgotten U.S. military intervention in Russia and efforts to stop sorcery-related violence in Papua New Guinea. One of readers' all-time favorites was about entire Spanish villages up for sale.We look forward to continuing to offer our journalists' best reporting and analysis to make sense of a complicated world. And we are grateful to you, our readers, for taking the time to join us along the way. Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.