I had never before operated a professional video camera, but had learned that morning that Almudena was squeamish around blood, so knew I needed to step up. We were on a street corner in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, working together on a story I never thought I’d tell. Stamil Hamadi was about to shoot up heroin in her neck; she had been using for so many years that it was her only remaining vein. Stamil was gracious enough to let us film her in this moment, and all I was thinking was, “Please don’t get shaky footage for Almudena.”
I met Stamil, and multimedia reporter Almudena Toral for that matter, because of the International Reporting Project — which recently announced that, after 20 years, it is closing its doors. The news came as a shock. Group IRP trips to, say, Senegal or India have always felt part and parcel of the messy world of international journalism.
The program has helped hundreds of early and mid-career reporters — 651, to be precise — tell stories about global health and other international development issues from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, largely for “Western” audiences.
What can we learn from IRP, in how they succeeded — and also in how they faltered? What kinds of opportunities did they provide journalists like me, and at what cost? Can we use this moment to rethink the way journalists portray marginalized communities around the world?
TThough I have reservations about the group trip approach to journalism, I am forever thankful to the IRP. They took a bet on me as a young and earnest reporter, and made me curious enough about East Africa that I packed my bags and moved there four years later.
In September 2013, I participated in a group IRP trip to Tanzania to report on food security and nutrition (and stayed on after it formally concluded to cover heroin), and the following year on an individual IRP fellowship to Brazil to report on crack-cocaine and abortion.
Journalism fellowships like these have given me so much. IRP took me to remote Maasai villages and crack houses in São Paulo. They gave me access to high-level government officials, community activists, and countless people in between. They introduced me to like-minded journalists — vital in an industry that is both excruciatingly lonely and highly dependent on personal connections. They helped me produce the story I’m proudest to have ever authored.
In a sense, they helped me become a journalist.
II’m confident that the world of international reporting fellowships will find its feet. After all, IRP has spawned several other fellowship programs, including those of IWMF, Pulitzer Center, and ICFJ.
How can these other programs improve to be more relevant for 2018, and not suffer IRP’s fate? How can they recast the role of the “foreign correspondent” covering health and development issues? How can they improve the overall quality of international journalism?
Here are five changes I’d personally love to see in this space:
1. Keep it small.
We were 17 people strong in Tanzania; this was hardly conducive to deep, personal conversations. Our short time with interviewees meant that reporters would ask their most pressing question straight off the bat, without first building rapport with the subject. This is fine if you’re talking to a senior oficial from the U.S. State Department, less so if you’re asking a group of Maasai mothers through a translator about their parenting practices.
The setup was strange; the women sat like they were on a panel, instead of in a more casual conversational format. Immediately, one journalist raised her hand and asked, “So do you exclusively breastfeed your child?”
I suffer from extreme second-hand embarrassment, and I began to sink in my chair. It felt like such a personal question to ask before even knowing someone’s name, and it felt rife with judgment. Of course all three said yes, and everyone dutifully wrote in their notebooks, “They exclusively breastfeed their babies until six months of age.”
A lot of this could have been solved with a smaller group size, more translators on hand, and more opportunities for one-on-one conversation.
2. Stay put.
In another reporting trip I participated in, we took a “day trip” to a neighboring country. Upon landing, we learned that our interview subjects were four hours away. We traveled there on bumpy roads, talked to a few people, drove five hours back due to traffic, slept in a (five-star) hotel for six hours, and flew back.
That’s how these trips often go. In a quest to expose reporters to as much as possible, you spend a lot of time in planes, trains, and automobiles. I would rather pick one or two places and go deep. It’s not an accident that Almudena and I were able to film Stamil in such a vulnerable moment; we spent a week with her and her community and built (a small degree of) trust that’s impossible to earn in a rushed conversation.
3. Keep tabs on the money.
There’s a joke in the global health world that you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Gates grantee. (Disclaimer: us, too. BRIGHT Magazine retains editorial independence.)
One story I published from the IRP trip — which was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — profiled a nonprofit that happened to also be funded by Gates. When I returned home to New York, I had some follow-up questions for the founder, and it turned out the easiest way for me to get in touch was via a Gates conference line. The only study referencing the efficacy of the program was funded by Gates.
I put as many disclaimers as I could in the piece to keep my journalistic integrity intact, but the whole thing felt off. I wish I were introduced to people and organizations that didn’t put me in such an awkward position.
Also speaking of money, these trips cost a lot. Far more than most journalists earn from the stories they sell after the trip. This leads me to my next point…
4. Offer mentorship.
Since becoming an editor, I’ve received a number of pitches from group reporting trips. I can smell them from a mile away; I can sense the limited time writers spend with sources, the range of people they meet, and the perspectives to which they’re usually exposed.
Reporting trips exist in a world where the traditional ladder to journalism success has been scrambled. There are few opportunities to get an internship at a newspaper and slowly work your way up, journalism school is unaffordable for most, and many editors are hungry for MORE CONTENT and give little in the way of feedback.
If programs like these want to improve the state of international reporting, I’d love to see them invest in their fellows beyond the trip. Put the reporters in lower-quality hotels and instead spend resources on mentoring. Help them draw out implications from their interviews, develop news hooks, and ruthlessly edit their stories before a real editor sees them. Question the reporter’s assumptions and biases, and help them become an authoritative leader in their field.
5. Think local.
Here’s a radical thought: why take American freelance writers to Tanzania in the first place? Why not help talented Tanzanian journalists get regular gigs in international media outlets?
On my trip, I don’t think any of us had spent much time in Tanzania, and none of us spoke Swahili. I understand that outsiders can have valuable perspectives (and access to different audiences), but a part of me also wondered, “Is this what’s so derisively referred to as parachute journalism?”
They had hired a Tanzanian journalist to serve as a fixer and translator, but he could hardly translate for everyone at once, leading to awkward gaps in conversation. I also learned that he’s a regular stringer for the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Guardian. Why was he a fixer, while the rest of us — who knew a lot less about the country — were fellows?
BBetween IRP closing, Foreign Policy magazine shutting its international bureaus, and Trump coverage plastering the news, it sometimes feels like international journalism is imploding (particularly in American news outlets). In his first 100 days in office, Trump was the focus of 41 percent of American news coverage. Who cares about Kenya’s media blackout when Trump is demanding a grand military parade?
But international journalism had a lot of problems to begin with, and maybe this destruction is also an opportunity to rebuild. I’d love to see bolder, more in-depth stories told by people who are from the places they’re reporting on — or at least have spent significant time in those regions. I want stories that don’t feel phoned in but finely crafted with the assistance of crack mentors. I want stories that don’t focus on the largesse of Western donors and other saviors and instead rethink the concept of a savior altogether.
I want stories that give me a new window into the world — which international journalism, as it exists now, has too often failed to do.
