2008 Unity Conference : » Foreign Reporting Must Be Off The Beaten Path

Foreign Reporting Must Be Off The Beaten Path

Friday, July 25, 2008

By KAREN RIVERA
The UNITY News Online

Young journalists and freelancers interested in foreign correspondence need to be “well-versed in the world” in order to succeed, UNITY panelists said in a discussion on Friday.

UNITY panelists said freelancers and young journalists will need to find unique openings in the market as more news companies pull back their funding for international news.

Panelists said news agencies are in need of coverage off the beaten path. But ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are consuming the majority of companies’ budgets for international news, they said.

“Basically, to cover Iraq for one year has cost The Washington Post three foreign bureaus,” said Keith Richburg, the newspaper’s New York bureau chief.

He suggested journalists become stringers in order to break into foreign news coverage. But Richburg said reporters should focus on enterprise pieces.

“I don’t want you doing anything that I can get on the wires,” he said. “Guess what? The wires will do it better. I want you working on something that’s your project.”

However, freelancers do not have the same benefits that a full-time foreign correspondent would have.

Members of the panel also stressed curiosity and a desire to travel everywhere.

“Find a place where people aren’t reporting and be able to pop,” advised Ellen Weiss, NPR’s vice president of news and information.

topic: Industry Issues
tags: foreign bureaus, freelancing, international reporting

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Industry Issues, Online Multimedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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