When Kurspahic was injured while fleeing snipers, Gordana Knezevic, the deputy editor-in-chief, took over. Printed at night under battlefield conditions and distributed at dawn, the independent newspaper chronicled the fighting and provided a manual for civilian survival. It became a source of information and a symbol of defiance in a city of 400,000 trapped, hungry and embattled people.
For Knezevic, life in Sarajevo became intolerable. Each day there was increasingly less food for her son and she missed her daughter who was living with friends in Croatia. She said, "I could not let my children suffer because of my political beliefs." In 1996, Knezevic moved with her family to Canada, where she recently was the target of protests by Serbs because of an article she wrote supporting the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia.
Kurspahic has received numerous press awards and a Nieman Fellowship, and has written a book on Sarajevo. Since February 1997 he has been managing editor at the Connection Newspapers in McLean, Virginia. From September 1999 through August 2000, Kurspahic served as a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace where he was working on another book.