Forging a New Path: the Evolving Foreign Correspondent

Janeen Heath, Pulitzer Center

“Just a year after graduating, I wound up in Africa after an internship chasing stories,” Pulitzer Center grant-recipient Jason Motlagh told students at American University this month. “My writing skills weren’t polished at that point, nor had I worked long enough to have established a network of fixers. But I arrived at the border to Mauritania, my Lonely Planet in hand, just as a coup was beginning. I had almost no idea what I was walking in to. But I happened to be the only western reporter covering the conflict, so I got a lot of my stories published, and that success launched me through the continent.”

In today’s era of international journalism, it is important to take initiative and be self-driven to be able to successfully cover and place stories. With more and more overseas news bureaus closing down and front-page international news coverage being cut in half in the last two decades, foreign correspondents often face an uphill battle when trying to pitch their stories. But Jason is proof that the foreign correspondent has not died – just evolved – as long as you are flexible and can adapt to change, as well as work across a wide variety of media platforms.

“Sometimes I feel like I entered the journalism profession 10 to 15 years too late,” Jason said. “This is no longer the ‘golden era’ of reporting. To be viable as an independent journalist, you have to accept that times are changing, and people are turning to other forms of news besides print. I’m a bit dated in my view of news – I don’t consider myself tech-savvy. And I like to hold a newspaper. But now I’m doing more photographic and video work. Print could be fading out, but these other forms add to its relevancy.”

The classroom of about forty undergraduate global media students listened intensely to Jason tell his story of his latest reporting project, which has taken him trekking through rough jungle terrain in India over the last five months to be one of the first westerners to meet with the Maoist rebels waging an insurgency against the government. Students curiously asked Jason how he dealt with the language barrier, how the growing economic gap is affecting the caste system and how he is coping with new media. Freshman and International Communications major Stefania Dimauro-Nava of Miami, FL, was especially appreciative of Jason’s visit to her class.

“I had never heard the Maoist insurgency story before, but now I know. I realized for the first time how important translators and fixers are in the news gathering process. I found it most interesting how Jason got involved with international journalism – how it kind of just happened for him. I can tell he is passionate, and that he downsized the danger of working with the rebel groups. It must be a fearful experience.

A lot of people my age who are still in school, we don’t know what it is really like in a certain profession until we hear about it and a picture is painted. Listening to Jason, we can all appreciate his advice and learn for ourselves what steps to follow, or not to follow. We can make our own educated decisions having heard about it from someone who has been there.”

Learn more about Jason Motlagh's reporting in India

Posted by Janeen Heath, Communication and Production Associate for the Pulitzer Center