Journalism's Peace Corps   

Knight International Press Fellows spread the gospel of a free and independent press in the Third World. They experience frustrations and triumphs, and sometimes they learn as much as they teach.

Margie Freaney, editor of the weekly Baltimore Business Journal, touched off a stormy debate when she told some Slovakian reporters they should "never, ever" show a story to a news source before publication. An editor sitting in on Freaney's training session told her, "We do it all the time. If we didn't, we'd never get another interview."

Freaney was one of two dozen Knight International Press Fellows who each year travel to Third World countries to help journalists do their part in developing a free and independent press.

She learned a quick lesson: Preaching comes across as American arrogance. And it doesn't work.

She had started by categorically denouncing this practice, which Slovakian newspaper people call "authentication." Most American newspapers frown on showing a story to a source prior to publication (see "Show and Print," March). Freaney's paper has a policy banning it. She insisted that asking for a source's stamp of approval on a complete story violates a classic principle of an independent press.

But she shifted gears quickly when the Slovakian journalists said they had always shown stories to sources and would have to keep doing so. She switched to a "let's talk about it" approach and led a discussion of the pros and cons of the practice. On the one hand, government officials and journalists had a common interest in accuracy. On the other hand, the officials could use "authentication" to censor a story, and the newspapers were letting them get away with it.

In the end, says Freaney, "I admitted that I had been too self-righteous. I conceded that it is all right to check certain details or direct quotes for accuracy. And the reporters agreed that they might have muscled a little more."

Freaney, working with the editor of Trend, a sophisticated independently owned business weekly in Bratislava, organized and led an eight-week course in the spring of 1994 to turn university economics majors into economic journalists. Five of her 17 trainees are now working at the paper. She also developed a manual for journalism instructors.

Freaney says the most important thing she learned in her three months in Eastern Europe was the value of teaming up with a local reporter or editor. The partner can step in to point out, "They already know that," or "We don't do it that way here," and give the visitor more credibility. "Resentment isn't the right word, but if we come in telling them the way, the truth and the light, that here is the way to do it..." she tapers off. "There are," she adds, "a lot of differences."

Warren Talbot, senior editor of the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Massachusetts, and Richard Foote, formerly of the Montana Standard in Butte, teamed up for a two-month assignment in Albania in the summer of 1994. They planted seeds of press freedom in a culture emerging from nearly 50 years of communist rule and isolation from the rest of the world (see Free Press, June 1992).

They found political parties in control of all the major newspapers, which printed mostly commentary and criticism. Objective reporting was virtually unknown. The young editor of an independent paper told them he prints articles critical of President Salý Berisha "even if they are bullshit" because "that is what sells papers." The ruling Democratic Party is widely believed to be trying to drive independent and opposition papers out of business through punitive taxes on circulation, advertising, newsprint and income.

Working with editors, reporters and students on page layout, newsroom management, circulation, advertising, news writing and professional ethics, the Knight Fellows also stimulated discussion of press freedom and fact-based reporting. Their "Rick and Warren Crash Course in Basic Journalism" sent a group of young Albanian journalists off for summer internships at American newspapers with some idea of how to report the news. Talbot, like some other fellows, found it hard to teach new tricks to old journalists and concentrated on training younger ones.

Not much had sprouted in the way of fact-based reporting by the time Charles Strouse, now with Ft. Lauderdale's Sun-Sentinel, got to Albania last year on a follow-up fellowship. Political parties still controlled most major newspapers. Strouse found the press in Tirana, the capital, unreceptive to further foreign help, so he headed for the provinces, where people had never seen a foreigner. Smaller, up-country papers welcomed his assistance and advice in editing, computer make-up, advertising sales and circulation expansion.

Strouse was particularly taken with the weekly Nositi in Pogradec, a town on Albania's eastern border. Afroviti Gusho, the chain-smoking 29-year-old editor in blue jeans, and her staff of a dozen "have no phone or car, shaky electricity and a negative balance sheet," Strouse says. "But Gusho and her reporters have done some hard-nosed reporting on local leaders' misdeeds: like the police chief who takes free meals from a local hot spot and the city hall leader who gambles away public money. Gusho was delighted recently when the town's parliamentary representative compared her two-year-old paper to 'garbage.' She slapped both his picture and the quote in big letters on the front page."

But the paper was losing about $70 on every issue. To get it into the black, Strouse worked with the business manager to increase circulation by hiring delivery boys and to introduce shopkeepers to the value of advertising.

They wrote a promotional article about the newspaper, distributed a fact sheet to potential advertisers and persuaded merchants to post copies of the newspaper in their shop windows. The idea was that the merchants would be impressed when they saw people stop to read the paper.

A few months later, Gusho reported that circulation had doubled – from 500 to 1,000 – and that the newspaper was breaking even.

The idea of sending American journalistic trainers abroad for substantial periods took root in June 1993, when the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation gathered a group of its beneficiaries at its Miami headquarters and asked for help in finding ways to provide assistance to o>erseas press colleagues, especially in emerging democracies.

Among those polled was the Center for Foreign Journalists (now called the International Center for Journalists, or ICFJ) represented by Thomas Winship, chairman, and George A. Krimsky, then president. For 11 years, the center has been bringing foreign journalists to the United States for training.

From the beginning, Winship and Krimsky had a dream of starting a sort of journalistic Peace Corps. They had put the idea aside because most training was in the United States and that was where most of the available money was going.

At the Miami meeting, Winship and Krimsky broached their concept of overseas training fellowships. They put together a 45-page proposal; the foundation approved it and awarded the center a three-year grant of $3 million to administer the fellowship program. This year, the Knight Foundation approved a three-year renewal of $3.8 million.

Krimsky says that the Knight Fellowships are "needs-driven" – their main purpose is to meet overseas media needs, not provide opportunities for American professionals. And the fellowship requires a partnership between a skilled professional and an institution or media organization willing and able to act as the fellow's "host."

While Krimsky, who has left ICFJ and is now a consultant, is upbeat about the fellowship program as a whole, he privately rates several fellowships as failures. Foreign assignment always is a high-risk venture: The U.S. Peace Corps has a 42 percent failure rate.

Krimsky says his biggest surprise was to find that "seasoned, experienced newsmen can be big babies over their creature comforts, whining about their discomforts and demanding that they be wet-nursed."

Taking care of the fellows is the domain of fellowship program director Susan Talalay. She looks after her charges like a mother hen, faxing and e-mailing reassurances and advice, dispatching care packages of training materials and equipment, wiring money to meet unanticipated expenses.

She sent alcohol swabs to Selma Williams, of the Topsfield, Massachusetts, North Shore Community Newspapers, on assignment in Ukraine. She needed them to clean her computer and didn't think of using vodka. Talalay sent plastic baggies to Carole Brennan in Moldova, where most conveniences are scarce. She faxed a wedding anniversary greeting to Talbot in Albania from his wife, who had remained at home.

Talalay says the center provides a generous living allowance, which varies from country to country. "We don't want people scrimping out there," she says. "We would rather do fewer fellowships and do them well." In addition to the living allowance, a fellow gets funds for on-site travel and professional materials, plus an honorarium of $75 a day.

Fellows attend a week-long orientation program before they head overseas. They receive training manuals and videos, a coaching session on how to run a workshop, and briefings about their destinations. An expert explains culture shock, as well as "reverse culture shock" to the fellows – the unnerving experience of coming home, having people ask you to "tell us all about it," and then seeing their eyes glaze over after a couple of sentences.

Gordon Manning, a former senior vice president and executive producer for NBC News, says he found the orientation of no help. And he describes his host organization in Johannesburg, the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism, as ill-equipped for dealing with a television workshop.

Manning blames the center for what he sees as too little planning and structuring of his broadcasting fellowship.

Still, Manning drafted a list of needed equipment for a television training center and a syllabus for an accelerated news training course and worked for a time at an in-house training center of the Argus newspaper group and at Bophuthatswana Television (BOP-TV), still the country's only television station outside the South African Broadcasting Company's monopoly.

Strouse, in Albania, would have liked more training. He considers the Knight Fellowship system "a little scatter-gun – not a lot of direction. You've got to figure what you're going to do when you get there." But he says that he was able to improvise a successful program.

Several other fellows complain about inadequate planning and direction by the center and inadequate support and cooperation by their host organizatons. Peter Morales, formerly of the Cottage Grove, Oregon, Sentinel, finally succeeded in helping a Peruvian newspaper completely redesign its pages – but only after three months of delay and indecision by absentee publishers. He brought things to a head by threatening to quit and go home. He says that "this little catharsis" led to a two-month "whirlwind of productive activity" – completing the redesign, consulting on advertising and circulation and visiting other newspapers.

Freelancer Judith Hucka, a journalism professor at the University of Washington when she received her Knight assignment, also had host trouble. The director of Africa's Zambia Institute of Mass Communication (ZAMCOM), she reported, "refused to talk to me, give me any kind of direction or feedback or cooperate with me in any way." She said his "rudeness and hostility to me made my personal experience miserable, and his refusal to communicate or cooperate in any way made it very difficult to proceed with my work."

Despite difficulties, the 12 training courses she developed are in use and her instruction manual is helping ZAMCOM develop local trainers to take the places of short term foreigners who know nothing about Zambia. She went on to help an independent daily in newsroom management, staff organization and copy handling.

Hucka concedes that she should have alerted the center earlier about her problems with the host organization. She suggests that the Knight program consider signing a contract with the host so that it can be held accountable. The center now requires frequent reports from hosts and fellows, but it continues to rely heavily on a fellow's own resourcefulness.

In fact, some fellows seem to relish minimal direction from the host and prefer to improvise (see "Planting a Seed," page 45).

The center and the Knight Foundation order periodic outside evaluations of the program. These appraisals have been highly favorable, but they also point out occasional weaknesses and some failures. Independent evaluators for the Knight Foundation concluded that one fellow was "high maintenance" – insisting on a lifestyle that looked extravagant and must have offended the locals in a developing country. Some fellows were found to lack self- reliance and the ability to take in stride the discomforts of living in the Third World.

Many returning fellows have suggested that future fellowships should concentrate on smaller, provincial news organizations, since those in many national capitals have already received much foreign assistance. Del Brinkman, the Knight Foundation's director of journalism programs, sees merit in avoiding overcrowded capital cities. He observes that Prague is so full of foreign trainers that "it seems as if more people are trying to help than there are people who need help."

Carole Brennan, formerly of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, where she handled special projects and thus was an old hand at "start-up stuff," landed in Moldova in November 1994 and found that her original assignment as a Knight Fellow had evaporated. The American organization where she was to be based "did not prove to be a responsible partner," so she worked with the local office of the New York-based Soros Foundation to establish an independent journalism center.

In a country where journalists are trying to jump quickly from hand-written copy to digital newspapers, she found a one-room space for use as a headquarters, got computers from Soros, hired an interpreter to help her with the two common languages, Russian and Romanian, and soon was supervising short courses of one to four weeks for journalists from all over the Eastern European nation. Brennan left behind an operating press center that continues to help Moldovan newspapers recruit and train staffs.

Brennan, now a consultant for the Knight Foundation and ICFJ, says her greatest challenge was to teach Moldovan journalists that their own efforts could help bring about a free and independent press. "At the start of our time together," she wrote afterward, "they believed that government would have to change first and that eventually media in the style of democratic lands could emerge. We ended our time together agreeing that in fact it was the media and the journalists who run it that would help shape changes in political thinking in Moldova."

One of Brennan's minor achievements was getting the editors of a Moldovan newspaper to question whether publishing pictures of corpses helped sell papers. That was their excuse for running on page one a head shot of a child whose mother was accused of his murder. The gruesome picture was taken after the child had died.

"I called the editor and begged an explanation," she reported. "He replied, 'I have to sell papers.' " Brennan tried to persuade him to stop running such pictures, suggesting that this might not be quite what his readers were looking for. She returned to the subject in weekly meetings with reporters and many seemed to agree with her.

There were no more pictures of dead people's faces for a while. Then one day the paper featured a picture of the body of a naked man who had been decapitated. "They had done what I suggested," Brennan jokes. "No dead faces on page one."

Weeks later, she continued, "the paper printed on page one the mug shots of three dead people. I screamed aloud when I saw it." But things weren't as they seemed. "I was told," she recalled, "that it was a survey to see if people liked the idea of seeing dead people's pictures. Hmmm... Progress, perhaps." l