Knowing it

The Times reviews club member Christina Lamb’s new book Small Wars Permitting today. Quentin Peel, the FT’s international affairs editor and reviewer of the book, makes some pretty spot on observations about journalists,

It is not just a question of being in the right place at the right time, as [Christina] says herself, but of knowing it. Some journalists find stories almost by mistake. Others miss what is happening under their noses… It is a shame that fame and fortune has taken her to Sunday newspapers, that see foreign correspondents as parachutists sent to cover crises for a couple of weeks, rather than specialists who burrow under the skin of the country they live in. Too often the story is decided in London, and not on the ground. But that is the modern idea of reporting. More’s the pity. link