by CAINE O’REAR

In an effort to cut costs, The Boston Globe announced in January 2007 that it would be closing its last three foreign bureaus in Berlin, Bogotá and Jerusalem. The Baltimore Sun and Newsday have also shut down all their bureaus overseas.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal are the only U.S. news organizations, with the Times boasting the largest number of correspondents, that currently maintain a substantial foreign staff.

Observer photo by Caine O’Rear.
Documentary filmmaker Bill Gentile said he thinks Iraq War coverage by the American press has been inadequate.

“In my opinion, it’s unconscionable, precisely because we are engaged in two foreign wars,” said Bill Gentile, who teaches a course on foreign correspondence at American University. “We’ve got nearly 200,000 servicemen and women risking their lives for this administration’s policy. And I, for one, don’t think we’re getting enough information back from the field to tell us how the policy’s working out.”

Keith Richburg, a foreign editor at The Washington Post, doesn’t see things improving in the near future. He predicts that 2008 will be tough for foreign bureaus, namely for financial reasons.

“Next year is going to be tough for foreign news in general,” Richburg recently told a class of 20 students at American University. “I can’t even begin to tell you how enormously expensive it is to cover Iraq. It’s the cost of three other bureaus.”

Richburg said the enormous costs of covering the 2008 presidential election, as well as the Olympics in Beijing, will pose a serious threat to U.S. papers’ foreign bureaus in other parts of the world.

The closing of foreign bureaus also means that newspapers will have to increasingly rely on wire services for their foreign coverage, according to Elisa Tinsley, a former USA TODAY foreign editor and director of Knight International Journalism Fellowships.

“Wire services don’t always do the best job,” she said. “They’re not everywhere.”

The cost of running a bureau in Iraq has hampered newspapers’ coverage in other parts of the world, said Carol Stevens, managing editor for news at USA TODAY.

“The expense of having a Baghdad bureau can be mind-boggling,” she said.

In Baghdad, Stevens said the paper has incurred costs for armored cars, security staff and security advisers.

“It gets more and more expensive, and more and more dangerous,” she said.

Stevens also noted that foreign coverage, historically, has not been the most read coverage that newspapers have provided. She said that factor has been partly responsible for the downsizing of foreign bureaus.

“We could take the approach that we should educate our readers and provide it,” Stevens said. “But that doesn’t work.”

Gentile also believes foreign bureaus have been downsized primarily for financial reasons, and that U.S. media outlets have lost sight of their purpose.

“I think too many U.S. media outlets have forgotten their role, their social responsibility to give Americans the information they need to make intelligent decisions about their lives and the life of the country,” he said.

With the closing of foreign bureaus, more news organizations are relying on “parachute” journalists, as opposed to correspondents based in the region, to report on crises around the world. Gentile thinks that is unfortunate.

“There are some terrific journalists out there who work under extraordinary constraints,” he said. “But nobody, operating out of Washington or New York or Los Angeles, can do the same level of reporting of someone who is based in that country.”

But there has been some good news in the world of foreign coverage. In October, ABC News announced that it would be sending seven digital reporters to seven foreign cities. The move by ABC was meant to boost its foreign coverage without taking on the cost of operating traditional foreign bureaus. The digital reporters will work solo, serving as their own editors and producers.

Gentile thinks it’s too early to tell if ABC’s move will prove successful.

“We don’t really know whether it’s a money-saving measure, or face-saving measure, or if it’s going to make a difference in the quality and quantity of reporting,” he said.