Friday was another day of
rampant bloodshed and injustice in many parts of the globe, and a great one for
international journalism on offer to the U.S.
The reason to be upbeat was the annual awarding of 15 working
scholarships by the Overseas Press Club of America to early-career talents who
are going abroad (in nearly every case, doing so again) to provide coverage of
the world, for better or worse. Whether as reporters, photographers or both,
they are committed to being the eyes and ears of an informed public.
The determined optimism of this annual event, held in New
York by the OPC Foundation (disclosure: I am treasurer of the Club), was as
always a brave face on a craft that is under siege from many directions,
including the increasingly precarious finances of serious media and the blatant
know-nothingism of broad swaths of the U.S. population. Real courage, however,
is represented in the willingness of accomplished millennials to risk a field
with little promise of good pay and the likelihood of hardship and even injury.
So: A budding management
consultant instead is off to Nairobi to build on earlier “string” about Kenyan
social compulsions (like skin lightening); an endurance athlete who contracted
dengue fever while tracking religious conversions of Dalits in northeast India
is headed back as a photojournalist on emerging-world health issues; a fellow
who wrote about poor Mexicans migrating to carnival work in the U.S. before
taking a bicycle ride across Russia’s Eurasian continent is returning to Moscow
to report; and others with similarly novel experiences are off to now-hazardous
postings in Bangkok, Mexico City and Jerusalem.
Seemingly the youngest of the lot, a University of Chicago senior (in modern Asian history and math) with
a yen for multimedia, Dake Kang, will follow graduation with an internship at
Forbes Philippines, our licensee publication with Summit Media there. Manila
and beyond promise Dake excitement and challenge of their own.
Inspiring as it was to hear of
these achievements and aspirations, it was also good for the few hundred
journalists and supporters at the luncheon to get an admonition from Kathy
Gannon, veteran correspondent for the Associated Press and the event’s
keynoter. (Gannon herself embodies the drive and danger of “foreign”
reporting—last year she and a photographic partner were hit by gunfire on
long-term assignment in Afghanistan. Kathy was grievously wounded and her
friend and colleague died in her arms.)
Though wishing the winners well in their heartfelt aims,
Gannon cautioned them not to go out on a “mission”—but to follow the traditional
reporting creed of fair-minded discovery and transmission: Get the facts;
listen, watch and learn from everybody you can, on all sides. Let the public
know the who, what and why.
It isn’t clear how big of an audience there actually is for
the stories that explain why the world is as it is. It’s even less clear who is
going to pay for this effort, either by purchasing the “content” or sponsoring
it. Yet today I saw 15 great investments in that very uncertain future.