Just How Does International News Coverage Fit Into A Newspaper Going Local, Local, Local?

The question arose during seminar sessions sponsored by the Global Chicago Center of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR) given by a former colleague, Richard C. Longworth of the Chicago Tribune.

Longworth has been a foreign correspondent for some 30 years. He and this writer were correspondents together in London and Brussels for United Press International (UPI) in the early 1970s. In 1973 I was packed off to Helsinki and our paths never crossed again. In the mid 1970s the Chicago Tribune decided it really wanted to boost its foreign news coverage and it poached UPI’s best, such as Ray Moseley, James Jackson, and Longworth. It wasn’t that difficult for the Tribune to achieve as those of us who worked for UPI knew the initials really stood for Under Paid Internationally.

Anyway to a man for whom the world has been his beat for 30 years it must be very difficult to see newspapers across America cutting back on their international reporting. As he is quoted in the E&P article, “ Local news dominates, and it‘s not just local, but ‘local, local, local’ – they’ve gotta repeat it three times – and it’s coming at the expense of the news hole for international news.”

He is absolutely right, of course, but dinosaurs like he and I really know deep down that for newspapers to survive in this Internet world, local, local, local is where it really is at. So the real question becomes how, in that environment, can you still bring international into the news hole.

The answer is not that difficult. To make people understand the importance of international news the media needs to show how that news affects the individual.

ftm background

BBC World and CNN Need To Get Back To Basics – It’s The Coverage Of Live Events, Stupid!
For all the magnificent coverage that BBC World and CNN have provided from the Middle East in the past month both networks are increasingly guilty of forgetting their roots – that it is live event coverage of news conferences, speeches, and crucial UN votes that put them originally on the map – rather than packaged reports -- and their ever stricter adherence to set program schedules are diminishing that coverage. Look no further than the terrible live coverage provided of the UN ceasefire resolution vote.

American Media Cut Back Their Foreign Correspondents Just As The British Media Increases Their US Presence In The US
Last October ftm questioned why so many American newspapers were keeping their costly foreign news bureaus going, when the emphasis was on saving costs and increasing local coverage. Seems the Tribune Company has also asked itself that very same question and the result is the closing of some bureaus and those that remain open will write for all Tribune newspapers, not just the one newspaper that sent them overseas.

RFE/RL and VOA in Russian Sights
International broadcasters are increasingly backed against a wall when it comes to finding easy broadcast licenses for the taking. Governments can prevent access to distribution or, at the very least, make life very uncomfortable for local media affiliates. The enduring rule of media and politics is that no government takes criticism easily, particularly from foreigners.

With the Three Top Newspaper Categories for Recapturing Readers Being Local, Local, and Local How Come More Foreign Bureaus Aren’t Being Closed Down? Many are Beyond Their Final Payment Due Date
The announcement by the Tribune’s Baltimore Sun newspaper that it was closing its London and Beijing bureaus brings up a key question -- how come so many large metropolitan and regional US newspapers currently decimating their newsroom with buyouts, firings, not filling vacancies and the like aren’t closing down those costly foreign bureaus that on a priority basis surely must come bottom of the list?

Should Local Government Have to Pay to Get the Good News Published?
There was a media story out of New Jersey in October that had media analysts all in a huff – a local newspaper signed a $100,000 no-bid contract to publish positive good news about a city’s activities. Words like “unethical”, “bad public policy” and similar made the rounds. But the real issue is really why the city believed it had to resort to such a policy in the first place. And are there other cities out there that feel the local media are not doing their jobs?

That there is a terrorist plot to blow up planes half a world away is of interest. That plots to blow up planes now mean that at your local airport you need to show up two hours earlier to go through rigid security screening hits home.

That there is a flare-up in the Middle East should be of interest to everyone; that gasoline now costs more than $3 a gallon and why hits home.

That there is global warming is interesting – why the East Coast had record temperatures for a week should interest those folks, particularly.

What the media has to get into more and more is not just tell about international events, but explain to the hometown crowd how that international event has a direct affect upon local life.

Strangely, though, that is not how most foreign correspondents seemed to work, and may be one good reason why in the US they are a dying breed. As Longworth says, “The Chicago Tribune is the only newspaper between the two coasts with its own foreign correspondents. Some occasionally send reporters overseas, but that’s just sporadic.”

As a longtime foreign correspondent for an international news agency this writer often wondered why those newspaper correspondents seemed to be writing the same stories that we were writing. Why not leave the bread and butter to the agency reporter that had to write to the largest general audience and concentrate instead of writing those stories of particular interest to the hometown?

When this writer was commercial director of Reuters Television a major client said he was quitting and his main complaint was that he sent crews overseas to cover breaking news events and that coverage was the same as the agencies were providing. Why didn’t the agencies go and out and do something different? As politely as possible it was explained the agencies were reporting for the largest general audience and it was his crews that should be doing the reporting aimed at the home crowd, reporting on those many stories that the agencies did not have the resources to cover. He never really bought into that argument, but he did renew his contract, and at a large increase at that!.

With a few specific exceptions, what many foreign correspondents write can be found elsewhere. The writing style and bias may be different, but the basic facts are there. It is the foreign correspondent that provides that something different who will survive in this world of local, local, local.

It has been more than 30 years since this writer last spoke with Dick Longworth, but as with those from whom one learned much, the memories are still very vivid. He was one really serious dude, who took his writing even more seriously. It‘s no surprise that since then he has won just about every major US award for economic journalism, plus two Overseas Press Club Awards. He is the author of Global Squeeze and he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

But before all of that success, one still remembers to this day in 1972 when the visiting foreign editor of the German DPA agency – then UPI’s largest global client – visited Brussels and told Dick he thought his recent piece that the Brezhnev Doctrine was dead was completely wrong (for those too young to know what the Brezhnev Doctrine was, do a Google search!) Big client or not, that foreign editor got a verbal barrage he won’t forget.

But my favorite Longworth story comes from the day he showed in the office shortly after midnight having just covered a late session at the European Commission located just down the road on Rue de la Loi. He typed up his story (in those days it was still typewriters) and he gave it to the young kid (me) who was running the editorial slot. Feeling those fierce eyes firmly watching every stroke of my editing pen all I had the guts to do was fix any misspelling etc.; no real editing of that copy! Gave the story to the young Belgian teletype operator (actually younger than me) who punched it up, pointing out a couple of small errors in the copy on the way which really made Dick’s long day. Ready to go home, Longworth turned to the teletype operator and ordered him, “Call me a taxi.” The guy looked at me, smiled, turned to Longworth and said, “OK, you’re a taxi!”

Just How Does International News Coverage Fit Into A Newspaper Going Local, Local, Local?

An Editor & Publisher article had an energy reporter for a US newspaper asking, “How do you get the time to write (about international issues) when you need to be out writing about hometown problems?” Easy – relate those international issues to hometown problems.

Richard C. Longworth