Thursday, February 28, 2008

Foreign correspondence ain't what it used to be, according to new Dutch research.

Today De Journalist, the magazine of the Dutch trade union for journalists (NVJ), reports on the state of Dutch foreign correspondence. It's not a pretty picture.

The subject is close to my heart. In 2004, as a foreign correspondent based in China, I also tried to gauge the future of foreign correspondence for the Nieman Reports. At the time I noted a huge decline in the number of foreign correspondents -- which started in the U.S. in the 1980s, spilled over to Europe in the late 1990s, and I noted that numbers were still dropping dramatically due to cost cutting in the media industry.

I wrote that foreign correspondents were leaving Africa (no news), Japan and Hong Kong (too expensive) -- but the ones remaining increasingly headed to China, where prices were still affordable.

In that article I expressed hope that the Internet might create options for foreign correspondents. However, most of the initiatives I mentioned then have since disappeared or did not have the impact I expected.

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But the Internet did have an effect, according to NVJ's new research. Dutch news stories usually usually are written at editorial desks in the Netherlands, while foreign correspondents tend to focus on background stories.

That sounds like fun. Furthermore, since 2004 the numbers have gone in a different direction than I expected: They have exploded in China, but not only there. Poor journalistic job prospects in the Netherlands might be one reason, but the life of a foreign correspondent still appeals to many.

Today's Dutch foreign correspondents report enjoying their work -- although they have to work harder and provide material for a multitude of media. Also, since most of them are freelancers, heavy competition for exposure in the major media has undermined their negotiating position.

There are still a few media outlets where coverage abroad is key, so they send out their senior people: the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Dow Jones. Also, working for so-called verticals in the trade magazine business remains lucrative. One Shanghai-based correspondent covers plastics; other industries also are covered by specialized correspondents. Not very romantic compared to the classic foreign correspondent, but it pays the bills.

The hard part is that these days freelancers work for shockingly lower rates. "My income halved when I moved abroad," NVJ quoted one correspondent as saying, "so we keep the cost low to make a living."

NVJ didn't provide figures, but in China the going rate for English-language journalists is 15 cents/word (U.S.) -- and that actually looks nice because the U.S. dollar currently is so low. I have met (and, I must admit, hired) journalists for less. Chinese journalists would refuse to work for those rates; American journalists need a few years of experience before they accept them; and Europeans are the cheapest in the market.

How to survive? I decided to quit the foreign correspondent business and have started a speakers' bureau. In financial terms, that's a bit of a different league. Today, many foreign correspondents survive because their partner has a decent job.

I'm not sure that is a sustainable strategy for quality foreign coverage.

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