Not long after Bob Rosenthal was posted to Nairobi for The Philadelphia Inquirer, he and a Los Angeles Times correspondent were imprisoned by Idi Amin’s soldiers in a remote part of Uganda. Editors at the two newspapers had to enlist pressure from the U.S. State Department and Congress to get the reporters released.
You know Rosey means it when he calls the desk a lifeline.
He’s made that judgment from several vantages. As a correspondent in the 1980s, before laptops and cell phones, the desk was his “voice from home.” They told him how the Phillies were doing, kept him abreast of gossip in the newsroom, patched his phone calls through to his parents and fianceé, and got his stories the good play they deserved.
When Rosey returned home from Africa, he parked on the Foreign Desk while the bozos who ran the paper figured out what he should do next. It soon became obvious he was gifted at helping other correspondents cope with living and working abroad. The bozos eventually appointed Rosey foreign editor.
“The most important job the desk has,” he discovered, “is giving context to the correspondent.” How does the correspondent’s story fit into the flow of events? Where can the correspondent go to give flesh to the geopolitics, to turn a development into a tale?
Conversation with an empathetic boss back home, Rosey found, can be pivotal. The correspondent and the editor are schmoozing. The correspondent recounts something that doesn’t sound to the seasoned world traveler like a big deal. The editor hears it as something intriguing and, if the editor is like Rosey, erupts:
“That’s the story!”
“Why?” says the correspondent.
“Because,” says the editor, “no one here knows that.”
When Rosey ran the foreign desk it had six correspondents and five assigning editors. It wasn’t overkill. The backfield editors weren’t just shoveling copy or tending the wires. They were available when the correspondent needed guidance in Asia or Africa or Europe, not just during daylight on the desk. They were abetting, guiding, supporting, assisting the correspondents who were immersed in events that, without help, could overwhelm them.
Or kill them.
The desk has to keep acknowledging that it understands the rigors of being alone – and afraid – overseas.“You’re literally putting people in positions where they can be killed or kidnapped,” said Rosenthal. “Especially if you’re sending out people who are green, they really need direction.”
Even vets want a desk back home that comprehends what they are up against, who knows how hard the correspondent’s job is, physically and emotionally, who will ask questions like, “Get any sleep last night?” Or, “When can you get a chance to shower?” Or, “Can I patch you through to your daughter?”
The desk has to keep acknowledging that it understands the rigors of being alone –- and afraid –- overseas. “It’s crucial,” said Rosey. “If the person you work for doesn’t understand, you’re miserable.”
At its best, he said, the editor’s role is not one of fixing stories but of collaborating with correspondents, and they get into “a rhythm, a culture, a pace” together in pursuit of the story.
Rosenthal went on in Philadelphia to be the paper’s top editor, a role in which he resisted demands to reduce the overseas staff and the desk. Now he is managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Watch what happens to its overseas coverage.
