Foreign correspondents: Internet means a changing audience and more competition

Posted by Emma Heald on March 16, 2009 at 3:43 PM

IHT correspondent Anand Giridharadas discussed the interesting development that due to increasing Internet usage, "foreign correspondents no longer cover one place for the exclusive benefit of readers somewhere else." The possibility to access multiple news sources online means that people do not any more just read the news specifically targeted at them, but can read news written for readers on the other side of the world. Hence, a foreign correspondent's audience has changed significantly: they are not just writing for people "somewhere else," rather "the reported-on are among the most avid consumers of what we report."

He cites Google Trends statistics which show that the phrases "new york times India" and "Washington post India" are searched eight times as much in India, proportionally, as they are in the US. He contrasts this with the situation just 25 years ago when correspondents' work would just appear in the country it was commissioned from, while the populations in question remained "for the most part oblivious to what was being said about them."

But now, they can not only find out with great ease (as long as they are online, of course) what is going on, but also respond. They can email, they can blog, they can comment, and Giridharadas commented that in his experience as a correspondent in India, the majority of activity comes from within that country. For the correspondent, this means that they have far more effective and scrupulous 'watchdog' readers, who will look for errors and will criticise stories that over-exoticise. It also means that the correspondent has to be more careful about publishing stories that could put themselves in danger, and that sources might be more wary about supplying information.

The world of foreign correspondents has also changed in more general ways: not least because they must now be contactable at all times, and work to different, online-imposed deadlines. Also there are fewer of them: as papers make staff cuts, foreign bureaus are at risk and many correspondents have been cut and papers rely on wire services or local pieces: for example, the Chicago Tribune recently closed its bureaus in Rome and Jerusalem.

This is one of the reasons cited by online-only international news site GlobalPost for its existence: to fill this void in international reporting. GlobalPost is to an extent adopting the old model of a foreign correspondent, described by veteran AP reporter John Daniszewski as "that sort of authoritative, contextualized, interpretative voice, which adds the different perspectives that people bring to a story with their own personalities." The correspondents are country-based, and know the language and culture of the people that they write about: rather than just being sent there to report on a major event, which often happens nowadays. Hence they are expected to provide more in-depth reporting about the situation on the ground.

The Internet has truly revolutionised the way that people get their news, and foreign correspondents have a much wider audience and a significantly different role to play. They are no longer providing the only voice from their posting to people back home, nor are they writing just for that audience. Rather they are part of a wider globalised debate, in which they have to stand up to far more competition and criticism.

Source: International Herald Tribune