Covering Wars and Making it Pay: WarIsBoring.com
We in media have all been asking ourselves for some time now how journalism is going to pay for itself in a landscape where consumers are used to reading and watching for free. Nowhere is this more important than in the world of foreign reporting. As newspaper and television budgets reduce, so does our view of the world through their eyes and lenses. This is, in my view, very, very bad.
Seeing less of the world and other cultures, and failing to appreciate their relationship to us and our impact on them, risks deepening an already serious lack of understanding between nations.
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism will next week publish a study on the future of foreign reporting by Richard Sambrook, a former BBC Director of News and Director of BBC World Service and Global News, called “Are Foreign Correspondents Redundant? The changing face of international news.” I’ll be there, watching closely.
In the meantime, media owners are experimenting with pay-walls, paid-for iPad content and the age old advertising model. As I build up to my own return to the field, I’ve been researching at how to take MexicoReporter.com into a second phase, and I am looking to the pioneers out there for examples.
David Axe, a freelance war correspondent and founder and editor of WarIsBoring.com, is one of them. He was kind enough to switch on his video camera and answer some of my questions about his work – how he does it, and how he funds it.
At eight minutes long, the video is for the real multimedia reporting geeks out there. With details on how he funds his projects and sees the future of foreign coverage as foreign bureaus shrink and even disappear, it’s well worth your time.
Category: Featured, journalism, media, video
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