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Sent from: jim@SmallWorks.COM (Jim Thompson)
When the dictator's secret police try to silence your microphone...
Forwarded-by: mlinksva@netcom.com (Mike Linksvayer)
TRENCHCOATS AND SUBMARINES. Like every real news hound before
Watergate, the child Chief Copyboy dreamed of being a foreign
correspondent, wearing a trenchcoat in Morocco, dealing with
sweaty fat men in white linen suits who knew when the Nazi subs
were prowling the harbor and how to get a good deal on emeralds.
Kent Taylor ("Boston Blackie") could've been the poster boy.
Investigative reporting and newsroom yuppiedom all but did in
the genre; if you don't want to leave the newsroom to cover a
schoolhouse fire, what chance for a Botswana famine? But save the
regrets! There's an Internet mailing list for foreign
correspondents.
Not that Boston Blackie would've lacked adventure in this
group. The first week's contents included:
-- When the dictator's secret police try to silence your
microphone, push it in the spook's face and ask why, on-air. If
this concept sends a chill up your spine, consider staying home
and trying for the cooking beat.
-- Reuters seeks language skills in its hiring, but there's
no guarantee you'll be sent where they speak any of yours. It's
still good to develop street smarts and have a way to communicate
with those most important sources, cab drivers and bartenders.
-- Foreign correspondency is not war correspondency, but
these days the beats tend to blend suddenly, so be ready. That's
how stringers, beset by slow paying editors and teaching English
to survive, jump to fame and get smoke in their hair.
-- Work for an English-language newspaper or radio station in
the country of your interest. Not only will you learn the local
intestinal-distress cures, but which insects like to plant their
eggs in your flesh and which landladies moonlight as bootleggers.
And you'll have the advantage of being on hand when the volcano
blows.
-- Packing a weapon invites someone else to use one in your
direction. Non-combatant does not rhyme with 9-mm.
-- But if you carry, early advice leans toward a Browning
semi-automatic (heat resistant, and the safety is positioned for
quick disengagement) though the Glock, mini-Uzi, Smith and Wesson
and of course the Ballester Molina .45 (safe, user friendly, big
enough to act as a reasonable argument and small enough to carry
comfortably) win mentions.
-- Tell local cops and the embassy or consulate that you're
around and pick the brains of other correspondents for advice of
all kinds.
-- Beware rip-offs and black market moneychangers and
remember before you take the job that you'll never be able to pack
enough toilet paper. So maybe the local money will come in handy
after all.
-- During the Balkan war a sniper could earn about $100 for
cutting down an American reporter. And of course in Lebanon there
was once that dreadful tradition of kidnapping foreign
correspondents.
-- If you're on-line, join the correx-l mailing list by
sending an e-mail to Listserv@dino.conicit.ve and in the text
say "subscribe correx-l." Yes, the list is based in Venezuela.
Why not?