The Washington Post has 16 foreign “bureaus,” and 12 of them consist of just a single reporter, according to the newspaper’s website. The four remaining bureaus all consist of two journalists. Is the Post using the word bureau a bit loosely? One Post reporter, Sudarsan Raghavan in Nairobi, is listed as the paper’s “bureau chief in Africa.” Raghavan is the chief of a bureau of one in Kenya. For the continent of Africa.
A 2011 report in the American Journalism Review found that the number of full time foreign correspondents employed by US newspapers declined steeply since 2003. But news outfits that have slashed budgets for foreign reporting are nonetheless eager to present themselves as global news organizations. This is why NBC will at times feature a reporter in its London bureau discussing events in Athens or even Iraq. The correspondent might as well be in Hoboken. “Many news outlets that have no foreign staff are eager to pretend that they do,” former International Herald Tribune editor Mort Rosenblum wrote in Little Bunch of Madmen, a book about foreign reporting. News organizations want audiences to believe they have the resources to scour the globe, even when it isn’t true.
The word bureau should be retired when used to describe a single employee. I am not the Columbia Journalism Review’s bureau chief in Orono, Maine. I’m a columnist for CJR and I happen to live in New England. The use of the word bureau to describe a single correspondent in Islamabad or Buenos Aires is meant to trick audiences into believing the news organization funds a sprawling newsroom in that location. Years ago, many news organizations did have big newsrooms in foreign countries. Today, though, budgets have been cut and priorities have shifted. The Los Angeles Times had 24 foreign correspondents in 2003, according to the AJR report, a roster which fell to 13 by 2011.
Today, The Los Angeles Times has ten foreign “bureaus,” and eight of them consist of just one person. The Times’s website does not, however, list any reporters manning single-person bureaus as “chiefs.” In December, Al Jazeera English announced the founding of a Chicago bureau, staffed with one journalist (former ABC reporter John Hendren). Of course, the founding and maintaining of foreign news facilities is something we should celebrate, but news organizations should never use flashy language to exaggerate their global reach. Al Jazeera hired a Chicago correspondent in order to expand its 2012 US presidential election coverage, and this is a good thing, but the organization has not built a branch campus in the Windy City.
*[Editor’s note: This paragraph was amended as of 4/24/2012. More details below.] I’m aware that the difference between being called a “bureau chief” rather than “correspondent” at some news organizations is similar to the difference between assistant and associate professors at universities: the coronation often nets greater job security and a bump in salary (and in some cases demands greater responsibilities). Still, journalists are supposed to use clear language. Period. A bureau in one’s bedroom is a chest of multiple drawers, and a furniture peddler who refers to a banker’s box as a bureau is being dishonest.
Some news organizations are more straightforward about their foreign operations: GlobalPost, for example. Its Cairo-based reporter, Erin Cunningham, is listed as “Senior Correspondent for the Middle East and North Africa,” which concedes that she has massive ground to cover, but at least doesn’t falsely imply she’s the chief of a bustling GlobalPost office in Egypt. Nichole Sobecki is listed as “covering Turkey for GlobalPost,” not as the chief of a bureau in Istanbul. The Christian Science Monitor similarly lists its foreign reporters as, simply, staff reporters in a foreign locale.
Contrary to contemporary speculation, foreign reporting is by no means dead. The Associated Press still has an army of reporters throughout the world, and NPR, Reuters, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal all have vibrant, and in some cases expanding, operations overseas. Al Jazeera has a global editorial staff in the thousands. Nonetheless, many US newspapers and television networks have downsized their global operations, and they shouldn’t use embellishments to suggest otherwise.
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This revelation perhaps is not too surprising due to the massive cuts in the sector, however, if we can't trust the global media in this way then we cannot trust anything at all in the pages of these papers or online. Further, a single reporter/photographer/interviewer/writer/editor/scheduler/you name it, simply isn't sufficient to cover the main events in news in any town over 300,000 much less a large city of a million plus or 10 million, heck you can't even get across town in a half a day. There isn't enough time to verify either. It's a total misrepresentation. Thank you for the article.
#1 Posted by Lance Winslow, CJR on Tue 24 Apr 2012 at 07:23 PM
GlobalPost has trimmed its overseas writing staff, beefing up instead with aggregators who are paid $1500 per month to write 68 stories largely by referring to the work of other journalists from wires that GlobalPost does not subscribe to.
Ms. Sobecki no longer writes for GlobalPost, they probably just forgot to update their website. A simple Google search, with attention paid to dates, would have told you that.
#2 Posted by abby, CJR on Wed 25 Apr 2012 at 07:59 AM
"The Christian Science Monitor similarly lists its foreign reporters as, simply, staff reporters in a foreign locale." It should be noted that over three years ago, "McClatchy and the Christian Science Monitor announced Monday that they have begun exchanging news stories from their bureaus in South Asia, Africa and Latin America."
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/12/01/56807/mcclatchy-christian-science-monitor.html
#3 Posted by David McClurkin, CJR on Wed 25 Apr 2012 at 09:08 AM
It does get lonely in cities in the middle of nowhere where you have only yourself and a video recorder. Possible you will have a second person that you pick up locally to hold the camera and move as you do. At times I have acted as a stringer to other reporters once I have my report in the can. Sometimes my report does carry other peoples names, but that is part of the business. I shot that, but it is not my voice. I wrote that, but it is for another to make the story feel real. Somethin like doing the research for the editor to write up his views. Do I need a tear sheet at my age, no.
In a war zone reporters will find that you need not have a lot of people seeing you being a reporter since either side that is trying kill each other, might turn on you. Just look at the body count in wars that NATO has engage in. Being a reporter has gotten reporters killed sometimes on the battlefield, sometimes just standing around. You want to wear the word"Press" on youit is like a bulls eye.
Reporters might believe that they are need to take risks, yet when they do stupid things they pay the price.
It does not have to be in the Middle East to get killed, it could be in Chicago with its gang wars that have been going on for decades. But those stories have been old news for just as long, most pay little attention to who is getting killed and why.
News can become old seconds after it is made, with the Internet and iPhones you can be scooped by average citizen who just snap a few seconds of just the story you have cover.
Bloggers can be just as deadly as the story is repeated by the thousands where it can be twisted by those who want readers to see their agenda.
Covering some major event in a city requireds you to spend time at that place if you do not have stringers working for you who could as easy cover it.
Bureau Chiefs have to make a quick judgement call when trying to cover several things on the same day. A place like Chicago might have a dozens worthy events going on at the same time scatter miles apart. Local Chiefs will cover them and share information using the same video as their own. You can see video at an event switch angles of their camera using different tripods for those angles. It looks funny, but at the same time.
#4 Posted by Richard Cornell, CJR on Tue 25 Sep 2012 at 05:54 PM
Got to re read what I type. For those errors. More than a few times. Type too fast.
#5 Posted by Richard Cornell, CJR on Tue 25 Sep 2012 at 06:01 PM