One of the great challenges of reporting foreign news is to avoid simply recounting isolated incidents and give readers a sense of the consequences and hence the importance of any given report.
In August, Fairfax Media published a story about the plight of Brazil's indigenous tribes in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, at a time when the world's attention was on Rio de Janeiro and the Olympic Games. That story was shocking and moving, but its real importance rests in whether or not Brazil can change the way it deals with this sort of problem. Which is why our follow-up story - on farmers in the state now facing charges - is so important.
By the same token, an explosion like the one in the Chinese town of Xinmin is a tragedy in its own right, but becomes far more significant when seen in the context of repeated industrial accidents in China and how these will affect the relation between a changing state and its increasingly vocal citizenry.
In Thailand, the uncertainty about the political future after the end of King Bhumibol Adulyadej's seven decades on the throne gives another bombing in southern Thailand implications beyond those of an often overlooked insurgency.
Even Donald Trump - who can seem like the quintessential one-off - fits into a wider story of conspiracy and witch-hunts that needs to be brought into the daylight so that we can understand its role in an election that affects our lives here in Australia.
Other must-reads:
How China's north is turning into an uninhabitable sea of sand;
While the world watches Syria, Russia is advancing a metre at a time in Georgia;
Paul McGeough asks: what do Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini really have in common?
