I ask her how 2011 is shaping up, with the Arab Spring of revolutions, Japan’s earthquake and nuclear disaster, and the killing of Osama bin Laden. She sees it as a test case for her career and for the industry at large. “We’ve had more news in the last three months than all of 2010,” she says.
Multiple, big-news stories are a challenge not just for GlobalPost as an emerging force, but also for larger news organizations, Sobecki says. “Everyone’s running to cover stories the way they deserve to be covered,” she says, back in Istanbul long enough to pack for a trip to Berlin. “But you never have all the resources you want to tell all the stories you want to tell.”
Correction: This piece originally misspelled the last name of a photographer living in Istanbul. She is Monique Jaques, not Jacques. CJR regrets the error.
So to be brief - a bunch of American kids most of whom have sources of income outside of journalism, fetch up in Istanbul and decide to become freelance journalists?
And we wonder why most foreign reportage is so superficial and devoid of insight.
#1 Posted by Bob Syerankle, CJR on Wed 20 Jul 2011 at 03:21 AM
The coverage is terrible but it seems rash to simply blame some adventuresome young reporters learning on the job. I think at some point one needs to acknowledge the role copy of desks back home in ensuring that coverage is trite and based on already-stale institutional knowledge. Many of those reporters are much smarter than their stories, and the young ones are perhaps responding to the system in general. Seems unrealistic to ask twentysomethings to be standard bearers.
#2 Posted by Matt, CJR on Wed 20 Jul 2011 at 01:39 PM
The author's obsession with women's hair is just bizarre:
1. A native of New Jersey, Jaques, twenty-five, has curly brown hair
2. the dark-haired Hilton
3. (Sobecki) A slim, dirty-blonde New York native
Neither of the men in the piece even get a nod in the direction of their follicular prowess. What's up with that?
More importantly, what on earth is interesting in this piece? By the end of the article I learned that there are some struggling freelance photographers and writers that live in Istanbul. Wow!
#3 Posted by George Pink, CJR on Thu 21 Jul 2011 at 04:38 AM
Most foreign reportage might be so superficial and devoid of insight because the stories you read are not written by these 'struggling freelancers' that ive in Istanbul.
#4 Posted by A, CJR on Wed 24 Aug 2011 at 02:27 PM