Journalism
So You Wanna be a Stringer?
I spent five years as a stringer for various British, American and Irish news organisations in Africa. I built my portfolio up from scratch until I was the first port of call for up to a dozen newspapers and radio stations. The money was good, the hours flexible enough for the occasional 18 holes in […]
Kandahar Eyewitness Account – Felix Kuehn
It was perhaps twenty minutes after the call to prayer had sounded and we were breaking the fast, sitting on the floor around a plastic sheet with plates of rice and meat, when I was knocked sideways to the ground. It takes a split second till you realize what happened; the shock-wave had blown out […]
Felix in Kandahar – Eyewitness Account
Please see the previous blogpost for more on this story, but here is Felix Kuehn (my friend and colleague in Kandahar) on CBC Radio talking an hour or two after tonight’s bombing: Just press play on the Houndbite bar above. Felix will be updating his blog and reposting here tomorrow morning when he wakes […]
Kandahar City Bombing
I’m sitting in Dubai at the moment so can’t claim to be the man on the ground for tonight’s bombing in Kandahar City. That dubious honour goes to Felix Kuehn (@felixkuehn on Twitter and www.felixkuehn.com for his blog). I just spoke to him over the phone and he added some details to the mix: – […]
Guest Post: Votes we can believe in (Felix Kuehn)
It’s the middle of summer down here in Kandahar, with temperatures peeking around 50 degree celsius by noon. In the run up to Afghanistan’s second presidential and provincial council elections foreign troops stepped up their efforts, launching multiple operations to prepare the ground for voters. British casualties passed the 200 mark, with friends from London […]
“Go tell the world about our fake election”
So it finally happened. The election that we’ve been waiting for and looking forward to at least since last winter took place today all over the country. I’ll refrain from writing anything about the rest of the country. There are plenty of places to get a good sense of what happened. Make sure to check […]
Kandahar: City of Nobody’s Dreams
For outsiders, Kandahar was never really somewhere you could fall in love with. You know the kind of thing I mean: places people went to honeymoon, places with a certain ineluctable quality to them… Back in the seventies, when Kandahar was a popular stopover city on the hippy trail to Kabul and India, one such […]
Frontline Broadsheet is coming
The quarterly Frontline Broadsheet is coming. It’s high quality. It’s printed – and yes I do mean on paper, we’re doing this the old fashioned way – and it’s subscription only. To find out more send an email to broadsheet@frontlineclub.com with the word BROADSHEET in the subject header. For blog readers and Twitter followers, here’s […]
Peter Beaumont’s secret life of war
Peter Beaumont, Observer journalist who has reported from war zones for twenty years, talks about his experiences on the Guardian website with Tracy McVeigh today. The newspaper runs an excerpt from his latest book, The Secret Life Of War today. Peter will be at the Frontline Club on May 12 to talk more about his […]
Doing journalism in Sri Lanka
They live in fear. A dozen have been assassinated. Such is the fate of journalists trying to cover the war in the north of Sri Lanka. link A report from CBC about journalists working in Sri Lanka. The sub-7 minute feature takes us inside the offices of The Sunday Leader, the newspaper Lasantha Wickrematunga edited […]
Fixing the foreign correspondent web
How does the Internet affect the work of a foreign correspondent? That’s the question Andrew Stroehlein, a journalist and Communications Director for the International Crisis Group, discusses on the Reuters AlertNet blog. Andrew draws together a lot of current thinking and makes the point that it’s often impractical for a foreign correspondent to work effectively […]
The Who will pay for journalism?
Hard times breed new journalism models. Donation driven journalism is nothing new. Christopher Albritton was something of a pioneer at the beginning of the second Gulf War. Sandeep Junnarkar used donations to fund a long form journalism project – Lives in Focus – on AIDS patients and access to medicine in India. He continues along […]
Not down, not out, not yet
What with reports of newspapers being in survival mode, websites like Paper Cuts twisting the blade, Twitter channels like The Media is Dying dancing on the grave and research that reads like an obituary, any sane journalist must be thinking of shutting up shop, going home and seriously mulling their next move – out of […]
Afghanistan: the forgotten war?
Is Afghanistan at risk of being forgotten by the outside world? Not at the moment, you might think, what with lots of print generated each day at the hands of foreign reporters. Obama, too, is considering his own surge of resources to the country, and it seems the larger newspapers on both sides of the […]
Attacks on the Press
The Committee to protect journalists launched Attacks on the Press 2008 today. The CPJ will be holding a press conference at the United Nations later to publicize the report. You can watch the livestream on the UN website at 9.30am EST Tuesday 10 February. Taking part will be, Joel Simon, CPJ Executive Director, Paul Steiger, […]
Salam al-Dosaki shot dead in Mosul
Salam al-Dosaki, a journalist with the al-Hadba newspaper in Mosul, Iraq, was shot dead by a policeman on Thursday afternoon, 5 February according to Reuters, Mohammed Yunis Mohammed, a Mosul policeman, had been drinking when he approached the home of neighbour Salam al-Dosaki, a journalist with the local al-Hadba newspaper, police said. An argument ensued […]
Spoiled crybabies
So, all those Foreign correspondents who couldn’t get into Gaza despite the Israeli Supreme court ruling and many, many attempts are nothing but a bunch of “spoiled crybabies”. That’s the word according to Daniel Seaman, director of Israel’s Government Press Office in a statement issued on Sunday, “Israel did not want to endanger the lives […]
The Decline of the Foreign Correspondent
Princeton University recently held a panel discussion on the Decline of the Foreign Correspondent. They talk about the “dramatic shift of traditional media away from foreign reporting and the growth of web-based citizen journalists and the effect on coverage of international news and human rights issues” Taking part are, Loren Jenkins, Foreign Editor, National Public […]
Reporter
Reporter is a film about the work of New York Times foreign correspondent Nicholas Kristof. The film, produced by Ben Affleck, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival last week, “As journalism of all kinds becomes more desperate to make money, then there is a tendency to focus more on celebrity,” Kristof said in a telephone […]
CNN vs. Joe the War Correspondent
I said I wouldn’t say anything more about Joe the War Correspondent. And I won’t. But, CNN’s Rick Sanchez does have something to say to the war correspondent who thinks “media should be abolished from reporting”.
Inside the Gaza tunnels
Two journalists, one living in Gaza and one living in Israel, work together to produce a report on the tunnels that link Egypt and Gaza, Zouheir Alnajjar, a Collective Journalism contributor who lives in Gaza, and Jaron Gilinsky, a CJ Contributor living in Israel, show us two inside perspectives on the war in Gaza. Their […]
Global Post looks to engage bloggers
Global Post, a new online news agency, is set to launch on Monday, January 12. The site claims it has 60+ foreign correspondents ready to report from 40+ countries in text, pictures and video. They plan to begin by trying to answer the question: “What does Obama mean to the World?” Charles Sennott, a Frontline […]
Press Freedom report 2008
Reporters sans frontières release the 2008 Press Freedom report today. While the figures are depressing they are better than 2007, “The figures may be lower than last year’s but this should not mask the fact that intimidation and censorship have become more widespread, including in the west, and the most authoritarian governments have been taking […]
Major TV channels pulling out of Iraq
The United States three mainstream broadcast networks, namely ABC, CBS and NBC, have stopped sending full time correspondents to Iraq. At the same time the channels are trying to bolster their numbers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Americans like their wars movie length and with a happy ending,” [said Mike Boettcher, a Baghdad correspondent for NBC […]
Anthony Loyd heads to forgotten wars
Looks like Anthony Loyd is in for a busy eighteen months. The Times war correspondent and Frontline Club regular, will be on assignment for the coming year and a half covering forgotten war zones,What of the rest of the world’s conflicts? What of the thousands killed in Mexico’s drug cartel battles or the fighting in […]
The future of news
This could make a good Christmas read. The Media Re:Public report on the future of media in the digital age is published just in time for the holidays and it’s free to download. As Ethan says, My friend Persephone Miel came to the Berkman Center more than a year ago to take on a challenging […]
Foreign Office elbow World Service to drop pirate report
A BBC World Service report by Mary Harper has been pulled after a request by the Foreign Office last Sunday. In the report Harper talked to Somali pirates holding the Sirius Star and its captain. The Guardian reports the FCO asked the service to pull the slot as “it claimed that after each broadcast the […]
Fixers are vital
Marcel Berlins, former lawyer now journalist and columnist, attended screening of The Fixer at the Frontline Club recently and writes about the importance of their “unsung” role in foreign news reporting. You only have to look at the fate of the fixers in Somalia working with Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan to see the danger […]
50% of UK media jobs to go by 2013
[video:youtube:vpAdAG8ktAk] Robert Andrews has a thoroughly depressing (but realistic?) post up on the excellent media watch blog PaidContent about the number of job lay offs forecast for the UK media industry in the near future. “We calculated the total jobs in the media in the UK at about 400,000 … at the end of 2007. […]
