Don't think "foreign." Think "global."

Ellen Hume, Director of the Center on Media and Society at UMass Boston posted a comment on my recent blog post, Global journalism, hiring, firing, and the Internet to let us know about a great new non-profit project, New England Ethnic Newswire. She says it "aims to assemble the best of the region's ethnic news coverage each week, in English, with hotlinks to the original stories, photos, etc." Check it out.

I've been a huge fan of the West Coast based New America Media, which aggregates ethnic media across the U.S.  It's fabulous to see more local and community-focused efforts like NEWz cropping up in Massachusetts.  Unfortunately the local "mainstream" media hasn't done as good a job as it could at mining the community's globally-connected richness. NEWz may help to change that. Ellen writes:

We consider ourselves a portal for all kinds of activities such as our community blog on "What is My Identity?" with provocative columns and comments. We are aggregating research, links to services, and other resources for immigrants, ethnic communities and budding journalists, and hoping to reach across all the ethnic divides. As a former MSM reporter, I was amazed at some of the cool stories our small guys produced which were overlooked by MSM--such as the story in the Irish Emigrant that nine years ago it cost $95 to become a US ciitizen, now it's $400, and the Bush Administration is suggesting it be raised to $800. So much is going on in these communities and cultures, if only we can unlock it and engage everyone. When we started working with the ethnic media three years ago we were blown away to find over 100 in Boston and we haven't even tracked everyone down yet. Hope you check it out and participate. Comments, volunteers, support and suggestions are welcome!

This got me thinking about what I might do if I was one of those three Boston Globe correspondents being called home to Boston due to the closing of the Globe's last three overseas bureaus. Maybe they should start a "glocal" beat and push to broaden the global outlook of the Globe's reporting even on stories that originate locally. They could work with the folks from NEWz and with PlaceBlogger (also run out of the Boston area), and perhaps even with Global Voices to tie in conversations with the global diasporas that have large communities in Boston.

Thomas Crampton, based in Paris for the IHT says he prefers to consider himself an "overseas correspondent" rather than a "foreign correspondent." One great thing that Ted Turner did back in the days when he had control over CNN was to ban the word "foreign" from newscasts as well as the way management and reporters described our coverage. We used "international" instead.

The word "foreign" denotes things that are happening in some disconnected and remote place that has little to do with our own lives. That's not how the world works anymore and it hasn't been for a long time. (I won't repeat my last rant about this, I'll just link to it.)  The news business should purge he word "foreign" from its working vocabulary and replace it with "global." In fact, we should go further and break down the division of news coverage between "domestic" on one hand and "international," "overseas," or "foreign" on the other. 

We need a paradigm shift in the way news organizations actually organize, categorize, and approach their coverage if there's going to be a reversal of the U.S. news media's trend toward parochialism, which in turn feeds Americans' frightening levels of ignorance about the rest of the world. Somebody's got to do something. Perhaps the more globally-minded reporters and editors around the U.S. can try to be more assertive about initiating new ways of thinking and new kinds of coverage?

Comments

[Thomas Crampton]

Very much agree with the concept of eliminating the "us" and "them" divide in coverage of international and even domestic events. (An aside: I prefer your suggested "international correspondent" over "foreign" or "overseas".)

Whatever you call the person, they must give a perspective that brings a story to life for readers not living inside that world while also giving news to people within that world.

This is challenging. In writing for the IHT, I address both a local and global audience. I needed my coverage of SARS to tell people outside of Hong Kong what it was like to live through the outbreak, while I wanted to tell readers in Hong Kong information that was still fresh and useful.

Sometimes the two audiences simply cannot be addressed at the same time. The ability to bridge is a real talent.

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

Thanks Thomas for your perspective from the field. It's easy for somebody like me to make suggestions about how global journalism should change. Finding compelling ways to bridge between readers all over the place certainly isn't easy!

[David Michael Berner]

Bang on, Rebecca. Yet there is so much more.

In what passes for journalism in Canada, any public figure, particularly one elected to office, if gay or lesbian, is always identified as such. In most instances, the person's sexuality has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand. "Joe Glutz, the gay Member of Parliament from Shining Timbers, Alberta says we need less oil, not more." Huh?

And racial profiling is similarly rampant in our press, again to no reasonable end.

It is time for a moral and journalistic awakening, at least here in the tundra.

[Thomas Crampton]

I guess when it comes to "bridging", what that really means is telling stories in ways that are compelling to as many readers as possible.

In this definition, the use of a traditional newspaper or blog or vblog is just an accident of distribution choice.

This reminds me of a story a colleague told about a memo from a newly appointed editor of the NYT Metro desk. The memo presented a very complex set of objectives urging reporters to delve in deep to show new angles to the city in new ways. My friend, newly arrived at the paper, turned to a longtime reporter to ask what it meant to how the should work: "That memo? Don't worry, all it really means is that they want more good stories."

That, I suppose, is where the art and craft of writing comes out: The ability to produce good stories that speak to a wide audience. Some of it can be nurtured - and the wire services do a great job of it - but some people have it by nature - and we know them because they are our favorite authors.

In sum, I guess I see "bridging" as inextricably linked to the art and craft of good storytelling.