Journalism is a competitive professional field, where journalists often work hard to get the unique angle, the scoop, the exclusive. But it’s also a collegial profession with a tradition of journalists helping each other in both small and big ways.
In the current climate of layoffs and downsizing in the media industry–notably the decline of the international correspondent–there are some bright ideas being put into action to keep the flow of international news alive.
Two media organizations, GlobalPost and World Focus, are reshaping the way news organizations operate and function. GlobalPost, the brainchild of executive editor and vice president Charles Sennott, is an international news source–that is entirely online. With more than 60 correspondents in countries all over the world, GlobalPost has an old-school mentality about news gathering with a new-school dissemination, the web.
According to Sennott, GlobalPost is international news told in an American voice aimed at an American audience. For a nation of people often accused of being too U.S.-centric in its collective world view, the flavor of GlobalPost could be just the right seasoning Americans need to open their eyes more to the outside world.
It’s a relatively young operation, only up and running for about 2 months, but Sennott is optimistic that the “super stringer” model of journalists living and working in the locales they report on will be financially sustainable in the long run. Reporters for GlobalPost are part-time and file four stories a month. The rest of their time is spent on a diverse range of other activities–writing, producing, movie making, acting.
As Sennot aptly put it during a recent panel discussion on new media at the Overseas Press Club of New York (OPC), “Journalism is an expression”. Sennott wants reporters with their feet on the ground who have diverse interests and activities. It could just be that this is the wave of the future for foreign correspondents: live and work overseas for a media organization, but have several other irons in the fire.
To hear Sennott (a former foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe) and others talk, it does sound like the glory days of globe-trotting foreign correspondents are over. But it looks like the way is being blazed for a new day, even if nobody is quite sure yet how it will pan out.
Joining Sennott at the OPC event were Keith Richburg, a contributor to Dispatches magazine, and Marc Rosenwasser of World Focus, a nightly international news program that airs on PBS affiliates. Part of Rosenwasser’s vision includes using various media organizations in partnerships to gather news. That includes print, radio, online, and television news gathering organizations around the world. The model takes the burden off of one organization, both financially and personnel-wise. It also brings a diverse voice to the news presented to the public.
Rosenwasser is also finding ways to operate on a relatively small budget of about $8 million a year by using computers to transfer video files instead of a satellite feeds, among other innovations.
If the the future of journalism is not death, but a rebirth of new ideas and approaches to gathering and disseminating the news, World Focus and GlobalPost could be two harbingers of change. What’s interesting and encouraging is that as energy and finances are refocused, the lens of those gathering the news is shifting in the direction of international news.
For an American audience, this could be just what the doctor ordered for a shift of focus in general. Timely, well-reported, easily accessible international news–especially in today’s climate of upheaval–could help Americans to become more outward looking. And it might just help us see the rest of the world more clearly, and the place we have created for ourselves in it.
