foreign correspondents
simple fixes. John Lichfield, the Independent’s former Paris correspondent, says: “In 1983, I spent 20 minutes dictating a very detailed story to the Sunday Telegraph on a European currency crisis. The copytaker took it all down patiently then said, ‘Are you sure this is for the News of the World, mate?’ I had got one digit wrong in the phone number. ‘Never mind, mate,’ he said. ‘I’ll just run it across the street.’ ” Even when laptops and modems put the copytakers out of business, the core of the job remained the same: to bring the country to life. And often that meant going places. Nash remembers: “If something happened – violence in the Basque country, a bridge collapsing somewhere – often the desk would say, ‘Why don’t you go there? I think you should go.’ Although there was good information about the event on the wires, there was still the appetite to say ‘go’.” Jason Burke, the Guardian’s Africa correspondent, based in
Johannesburg, a couple of decades younger, works in a different world: “It’s a continuous express train of news and your job is to jump on and hold on as long as possible before being hurled off. It’s a fire hose of news blasting past all the time from a million different outlets so you try to surf it. “In Africa, you’re still doing journalism – something
happened so you go out and find out what’s happening. But more and more today, you have the journalist as aggregator. There’s much more scrutiny, especially on social media, much more emphasis on speaking languages – it’s a lot more diverse.” And there’s what he calls the Great Flattening. “Everything’s
less hierarchical. You can’t get away with just having a drink with someone at the embassy, 1970s style. There’s a mass of local media that are much more knowledgeable. “In India, for example, where I used to be based, there are lots of start-up websites, some of them really good, that have broken up the monopoly of the big papers. Now local people read your stuff. Before, people in Uttar Pradesh or in Upper Kenya would never see what we wrote. Now people can read everything.” He continues: “Before, there was always the thing about where are you going to file, how are you going to file? Now, even in Africa there’s always someone with wifi. The communications have been completely revolutionised. The rhythm of work has changed as a result. In the Gaza war in 2014. my first file was at 8 or 9 am, then
A rival to a ‘local hire’ in India
IN MY novel India Be Damned, set in Delhi in 1947, Fred Niblett is the new correspondent of The Times: For The Times, Niblett was
a bargain: as a ‘local hire’, he came without the bells and whistles of his predecessor: the home leave, the aeroplane and limousine account, the dues for the Gymkhana Club, the boarding school fees for his children, the large domestic staff. He lobbied successfully for a bigger place to live, and for a teleprinter to be installed. He didn’t bother about any of the other things. Then Zacharay Starr, a
thrusting young Brit, is after Fred’s job: It was decided in the
Editor’s splendid room before conference. The Foreign Editor fumed sleekly. “After that absurd lie,” he said, “Niblett simply clammed up. Zacharay told him we were waiting for an explanation. But not a peep.” “Poor show. So he’s been
snapped up by the Obs. Or the Mail.” “According to Zacharay he
denies it stoutly.” “As one would.” “We need to run
something tonight. Starr’s ready and willing. We’ll have to fix the byline of course.”
“So what’s detaining us?” “There’s a price. He wants
Niblett’s title.” The Editor’s eyes flickered
across the enormous Canaletto on the wall. “Is Niblett in the union?” he enquired. “No.” “Then I don’t see what’s holding us up, do you?”
I’d go out and report, update early afternoon, then head out again, come back, write the news story through then write up the report I’d been working on.” But it’s not all slog, and a Guardian colleague of Burke’s
reveals that a big trend in the past couple of decades – the explosion in the number of female foreign correspondents – has made the job less all-consuming in its demands. Kate Connolly has reported from Berlin since 1996, first for
the Telegraph, now for The Guardian. She has two children, aged 9 and 11, and, although her husband is a high-flying doctor, she’s continued working throughout, and the paper – with women in senior positions from editor down – was always understanding. “During the pandemic,” Kate says, “it was very gratifying that The Guardian never kicked up a fuss about home schooling. They never said it’s just not on.” She says that the job has also become more collegial. Three
days a week, after filing, she has a conference call with the other Guardian corries in Europe and the foreign staff in London. “We started doing it during the pandemic,” she says, “but so many people are still working from home that we’ve continued.”
That way the sense of being far from home – “the paranoia of the foreign correspondent, the feeling of
being out on a limb,” as she puts it – is diminished. And, when correspondents are in touch with each other regularly, there is a gain for the paper, too.
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