They’re in this together
GlobalPost collaboration hints at fate of foreign news outlets
I heard the future of foreign news coverage a couple of weeks ago from “The NewsHour’’ host Jim Lehrer. At the end of his nightly program on PBS, he referred viewers to the show’s website for an in-depth report on the Taliban. This was the product, he said, of a collaboration among “The NewsHour,’’ Public Radio International’s “The World,’’ and GlobalPost, the new website here in Boston devoted wholly to international news.
“The World’’ has provided excellent international news coverage aired daily on WGBH radio for 14 years. It has had three partners - PRI, WGBH, and the BBC. It can call on BBC staff reporters and editors for help on stories, paying only expenses, just as the BBC can do the same with reporters or editors from “The World.’’
Launched in January, GlobalPost, in turn, is syndicated in newspapers from the New York Daily News to the Hong Kong-based
That Boston has two grown-up foreign news sources says something very good about this city.
Another collaboration will occur next month, when the G-20 summit is held in Pittsburgh. GlobalPost reporters in those 20 countries will file pieces about each one to run in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, another paper in GlobalPost syndication.
“The NewsHour’’ is always looking for partners, says executive producer Linda Winslow. For example, the program recently ran an extended interview by a Time reporter of Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir.
“Our participation in this project is the most passive part of the agreement,’’ she says about the Taliban report. It was filed by Charlie Sennott, a former foreign correspondent for the Globe who left to cofound GlobalPost. “We provided airtime and exposure. But I’d have loved to have known more of this story before Charlie went because I’d have sent a cameraman with him to shoot video. That’s the kind of thing I’d like to do more of in the future.
“Online, radio, and TV is a good model for us to grow our individual audience,’’ she adds. “We don’t have reporters, and GlobalPost does. The allure for us is to extend our reach.’’
The Observer predicts that these kinds of collaborative projects, built on multiplatform delivery systems, will grow exponentially as more foreign news organizations pick their spots and pool their resources. Barring a tiny group of outfits like The New York Times, individual newspapers are out of the international news business. It’s simply too expensive to go it alone.
What’s distinctive about a collaborative effort like the Taliban package is the shift in approach from proprietary news to shared news. Pride of ownership diminishes. If the pieces are good, everyone benefits. And when they share costs, the price of news drops.
I should fess up that I’m in the tank on this story. As a former foreign correspondent and a former foreign editor at the Globe myself, I’m addicted to international news and prize those who cover it. Sennott was one of my foreign correspondents, and for reasons that escape me, I like the guy. End of spiel. (It should be noted that Phil Balboni, the visionary who created the highly successful New England Cable News, is cofounder with Sennott of GlobalPost and president and CEO of the venture. Unique visitors to the website have grown by 35 percent each month it has been operating.)
It is instructive to examine the anatomy of this Taliban report to learn how these joint ventures can come together. Sennott has been interested in religion reporting wherever he was stationed, most notably in the Mideast. Bob Ferrante, “The World’s’’ executive producer for the past 11 years, had craved a religion desk in his newsroom for ages. Long before GlobalPost was launched, the pair had talked about creating some kind of joint venture on the subject.
“Religion is as important as anything else in the world,’’ says Ferrante. Indeed. Consider the role it plays in the Mideast and India and Pakistan.
A year and a half ago, Ferrante and Sennott cooked up a grant proposal to the Luce Foundation, which, among other things, funds religion reporting around the world. Sennott wrote it and the foundation eventually came back to “The World’’ with $200,000 for two years. Ferrante then gave Sennott the money to go to Afghanistan for their first joint project.
“The question was if we could do a report that steps back to get at the theology and history of the Taliban,’’ says Sennott, who has been in and out of Afghanistan for 15 years. He recorded with audio the stories he found and the interviews he did there. He was joined by Seamus Murphy, a fine photographer who shot video and haunting black-and-white stills.
The final product was “Life, Death, and the Taliban,’’ a series of short pieces by Sennott, who first put four 10-minute radio pieces on “The World.’’ The program then put the whole package on its website earlier this month, as did “The NewsHour.’’ It appears on the World website as “Inside The Taliban’’ and on the NewsHour website as “Profiles of the Taliban.’’
Ferrante says that he, Winslow, and Sennott will meet in mid-September to come up with their next collaborative projects.
“The Taliban package was a test case that worked for our menus,’’ he says. “Next time, it might not be Charlie reporting. It could be anything that fits our mission to deliver foreign news.’’
Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com 
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