You don't have to be a war reporter to be a real journalist

All kinds of journalists, from culture writers and columnists to war correspondents and news reporters are a valid and necessary part of the journalism ecosystem

Jun 21, 2019

Not everyone is built to be a foreign correspondent. I did it once, by accident, and I hated it.

I was in Nepal in 2015 for a reporting fellowship when the earthquake hit. I was working for the Guardian at the time, but I was out there to write features about the country's healthcare system.

I had just got off a 20-hour flight from New York to Kathmandu and was napping in my hotel room when the room started shaking. I later found out that the earthquake lasted for about 90 seconds but I felt like I'd slipped into a parallel world where I was stuck in a broken, trembling loop.

After the building stopped swaying, we all rushed out of our rooms and the hotel staff instructed us all to sit out in the garden. I didn't know this at the time, but the safest place to be in an earthquake situation is out in the open. Sat in a plastic lawn chair, I got a call from the news desk to ask me if I could report the story because there was no reporter in Nepal and it would take at least 24 hours from the southeast Asia correspondent to get there.

I went to the hospital and spoke to overwhelmed doctors, I saw dead bodies; I went to the city's park, which had become a defacto camp for people who'd fled their destroyed homes. I wrote my story on my phone and somehow managed to email it to the news desk over 3G before the phone provider cut me off for using too much data. I got my first frontpage byline from that story. And as soon as the correspondent arrived, I got on the first flight I could get on out of Kathmandu.

When I got back to the office, one of the news reporters asked me why I was back so soon. I told him because I'd been in a 7.8 magnitude earthquake and wanted to come home. "Not much of a journalist then really," he said.

After he said that to me, I went back to my desk and questioned whether I should have stayed in Nepal. I internalised the idea that I had to be doing a certain kind of reporting to have the privilege of calling myself a journalist. That misguided belief followed me around for a long time.

I don't think I'm the only to suffer from this affliction. Something I've noticed recently is how different journalists, particularly freelancers, qualify the type of journalism they do. "I'm not a war reporter, what I do isn't proper journalism," "I've never broken a news story," or "I don't have a staff job."

It's a fallacy to think that one type of journalism is superior to another. All forms of journalism, from culture writers and columnists to war correspondents and news reporters are a valid and necessary part of the journalism ecosystem.

It's taken me a long time to realise that not staying in Nepal was definitely the right thing for me to do. That's not the kind of reporting I want to do, and that's completely fine because guess what, I'm still a proper journalist. I report on weird stuff that happens on the internet, I write profiles about important cultural figures and I still get the occasional frontpage story.

However none of those things are what actually make me a real journalist. What makes what I do real journalism is a commitment to curiosity and a dedication to finding the truth. The holds true just as much for cultural writing as it does international news reporting. And that truth does not always mean a macro-level governmental injustice, sometimes the real truth lies in the everyday lives of citizens.

FJ&Co updates

Thank you to everyone who came to the Breaking into Freelance Feature Writing panel discussion on Wednesday. To find out about upcoming events, follow FJ&Co on Instagram and Twitter.

Dollyvision

Dolly has no self doubt, be more Dolly.

Calls for pitches

Phoebe Hurst @phoebejanehurst

Erm, yeah, so some personal news: I'm excited to be taking on a new role as Managing Editor of @VICEUK! I'll still be commissioning @munchies stories but also looking for ideas on all the usual VICE topics. Freelance writers, pls come at me 🗣️

The reading list

My piece on extreme productivity for this month’s issue of Wired is now also online.
For the Guardian I interviewed the actor Maxine Peake about her latest project, an immersive performance piece about the deeply complicated figure of Nico. Best known for singing with the Velvet Underground, Nico was immortalised as a muse but Peake wanted to examine her on her own terms.
How to spot the signs of burnout. The symptoms often look very similar to those of depression.
If you ever needed evidence of the importance of cultural essay writing, this brilliant piece by Rebecca Liu on the complexity of complex female characters on TV is a must read.
I personally can’t get enough of the defences of part-time and freelance work that I’ve been reading lately.
Including this one by Katie Hawkins-Gaar who was surprised that she fell in love with freelancing.

Testimonials

Naomi Zeveloff: I love your newsletter so much, it makes me feel less alone as a freelancer! Monday invoice days — brilliant idea.

The Professional Freelancer is written by Anna Codrea-Rado, illustrations are by Léo Hamelin. It’s a production of FJ&Co, a platform that gives freelance journalists the tools, resources and community support they need to make a sustainable self-employed living

If you're new to freelancing, download First Aid for Freelancers, my free e-book on handling the early days of self-employment. You need to put your email address in to download it; you won’t be signed up to the newsletter twice