Panel probes global journalism

Doug Cosper, left, talks with Andrew Gumbel and Andrea Welsh prior to the start of their panel discussion.

By Josh Boissevain

International journalism is the kind of profession people make movies about. And why not? It's exciting, it's glamorous and it's surrounded by an aura of mystique and adventure. At times a stranger in strange land, a foreign correspondent could be in Spain writing a story on Carnival one day and covering civil war in Africa the next.

Sounds like a great job, right? 

Yes and no, journalists with international experience told CU journalism students March 22.

For Andrew Gumbel, a U.S. correspondent for the British newspaper The Independent, the experience of living and working in foreign countries has been "absolutely fascinating," he said. The idea of plunging into the unfamiliar and finding out about it is one of the things he said he enjoys most about his career.

"Part of your job is to immerse yourself in other cultures and explain them to your readers back home," said Gumbel, who is based in Los Angeles and has been covering the United States for almost eight years.

Gumbel was visiting the School through the Hearst Professionals in Residence program and was one of four current and former foreign correspondents who discussed the ins and outs of international journalism at the School-sponsored panel.

Gumbel has covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Soviet communism and Yugoslav wars of secession, and he wrote "Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America."

The panel also included Doug Cosper (MA '83), who worked for a number of years as a correspondent for United Press International in The Hague, Netherlands; Beth Potter, a reporter for The Denver Post who covered the Iraq War for Agence France-Presse for two years; and Andrea Welsh, who covers Brazil for the Dow Jones Newswire and is a Ted Scripps Fellow at the CU-Boulder Center for Environmental Journalism.

The panelists said international journalism is a highly competitive field and that for aspiring students, becoming a foreign correspondent may prove to be a bit more challenging than submitting a résumé to Monster.com.

Gumbel and Welsh compared the challenge of going abroad and breaking into the world of international reporting to the challenge of being an ambitious young actor or actress heading out to Hollywood looking for a lucky break.

"You go out there, and you're trying to hit the lottery with a good story, but you've got to be willing to do these awful, awful bit parts like working for a wire service," Welsh said. "It's a grind, but you learn a lot of skills, and you learn to write quickly."

It also helps to be good at reporting before leaving the United States, said Cosper, who has spent the past several years training journalists in Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Vietnam and, most recently, Azerbaijan.

"If you can't do it at home, then your chance of doing it overseas is pretty slim," he said. "So learn how to cover city hall first, then try for an overseas job because the fundamental tasks of a journalist are going to be the same anywhere you go."

Potter agreed.

"I find 90 percent of being a journalist anywhere in the world is logistics – just being able to show up at the right time, being able to get all the information and knowing who to talk to."

As with any job, Potter said, the more experience and preparation a reporter has before trying to make his or her way into the field of international reporting, the greater the chance of success.

Speaking another language can also be a huge advantage for a foreign correspondent, he said, but it isn't always a necessity. Sometimes a little bit of ingenuity can be an even bigger advantage.

Gumbel, who classified his Spanish-speaking ability as "scandalously bad," described how he managed to survive the time he was sent to cover a few stories in Ecuador. "I knew I was going to have to work in Spanish a lot of the time there, and I didn't have the luxury of hiring a translator," he said. "So my entire linguistic preparation was tuning into the Spanish language track of  'The Incredibles' on the plane. It was remarkably good preparation."

In addition to above-average reporting skills and the ability to negotiate unfamiliar situations, a successful foreign correspondent's most important tool is a sense of curiosity, Gumbel said.

"The very fact that you know nothing becomes your biggest asset because you are seeing things through fresh eyes," he said.