Frontline club - solo foreign correspondent

graham holliday || kigaliwire.com

foreign correspondent

Tuesday, 31 May 2011

Good evening and thanks for coming. Apologies for coming over a bit BAFTAish, but I’m sorry I can’t be with you in person tonight.

Photo by Hez Holland/Reuters


Who am I? well that’s me - the one with the press badge on - in northern Rwanda, in August 2010 at a huge rally for Paul Kagame during the presidential election. Just to help give a face to the voice during this short presentation.


After over a decade in Korea and Vietnam and three years in France, my wife, six year old son and I, decided to up sticks and move to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, in the summer of 2009.


I left a dining room table office in France, for a dining room table office in Kigali - although this one was made by trainee carpenters out of eucalyptus - it didn’t come from IKEA. For the most part, if I’m working from home, this is where you’ll find me on a typical weekday morning in Kigali.

Once upon a time...Tuesday, 31 May 2011

It wasn’t always like this. My working day is radically different from what it was when I first started out as a freelancer, in Hanoi, in the late nineties. With that in mind, I’d like to split this presentation into three parts. Firstly, how to work as a pure pitch and produce freelancer - I have mostly worked for print and online, so Ill be coming from a newspaper/magazine perspective. Secondly, I’ll look at how I work now - in 2011. And finally, I’ll let you know five little secrets about working abroad, about big media and about freelancing and what it really means for your long term prospects as a journalist.


But first... How does it work starting out? OK. Before you go anywhere, you’ve gotta go and meet editors face to face. Go with ideas, not just a pretty face. Find the editors you’re interested in working for and follow them on Twitter, find out what they’re about and read the sections they edit. And the archives. Read everything. Work out what they find newsworthy. Ask yourself, what do they want? And then take them what they want - when you meet them. They’re busy, you might only get ten minutes. So, use them.


Research. Research like crazy. Research every conceivable market. Create a database of editors and contacts. Paperboy is a fantastic resource for outlets across all markets and regions. Even the oddest places have an English language press. And, they might buy stuff from you. Most importantly, research the local press, find an “in” - within a few weeks of moving to Hanoi I was offered an editing job on the English Language Vietnam News and later a magazine editing job. Either job would have paid me enough to live on.


You gotta go fishing, fishing for stories and fishing for commissions. You have to pitch, and pitch a lot - it seemed like I was pitching every day when I started out. Be short and concise. Three short paragraphs are enough. Sell the idea, the who, the what and the why. And the why you’re the person to do the job. And then - send it everywhere - use your database of contacts that you built from paperboy and elsewhere and fire your pitch off to all relevant markets - make sure you hone the pitch to the particular vagaries of each section and editor. No-one - especially not an editor with attitude, and they all have attitude - likes receiving an irrelevant pitch.


Once you’ve got one commission - go for others. For instance, back in the day, I had a commission to write a piece about some rare dolphins in a remote part of eastern Cambodia. BBC wanted a news piece, but one measly commission was not gonna cover the transport, visa, food and hotel costs I would incur going into Cambodia from Vietnam


However, I was pretty sure Action Asia would take a ecotourism kinda angle travel piece too - so I pitched them


TIME Asia, on old regular, would take a nib of a quirky news piece for their Global section - I pitched them too


The Guardian Travel section would likely take a similar piece to Action Asia - be careful to be clear what rights you sell to your editors - these are all different, non-competing markets.


The South China Morning Post was normally good for a news slot coming from a slightly different angle than the BBC. Sold plenty of stuff to them before - I pitched them as well.


That dolphin conservationist mentioned she was from Scotland, maybe it’s worth suggesting Scotland Magazine consider a profile piece on the conservationist. In a relatively short space of time and with a lot of lateral thinking, you built upon the one commission. Now the trip is more than viable, it’s even profitable.

£500$250$80£250$150£125


All in all, it all adds up to an OK week of work which would probably involve 3 or 4 days of travel. And another day or two of writing. A week’s work


Fast forward to 2011. I do far less journalism these days. For the basic, hard financial fact that media training and consultancy pays way more than doing journalism. Having said that, I still do journalism wherever I am. I don’t want to rely on any single outlet, or the vagaries of newspaper payment systems. I want to do things more my way. And that’s pretty much what kigaliwire is about - it’s an independent publication.

At the end of this presentation, I’ll give you a link that’ll take you to various pages including more detail about how I set the site up technically, the thinking behind it, the amount of work it has generated etcetera.

Publishing kigaliwire


However, firstly, I though it might be quite useful to mention the tools I use most at the moment - please note, this short list changes every 4 or 5 months or so - that is the nature of online publishing, distribution and collaboration.

Google reader is a fantastic tool to help you bring the news you want to a single website for filtering. I start my day with this tool. Long before I even open the email inbox.

No two ways about it, if you’re interested in news, you have to be across twitter and use tweetdeck to filter tweets. Use it to learn of breaking news stories - great - use it to become the go to guy where you live, for people to come to you with stories - better

Wordpress - use this excellent blogging tool to creat your site. Perhaps think of spending a little money on a decent template to really design the site in the way you want. I recommend graphpaperpress templates, especially if you’re going to be producing photos or video.

Diigo is a bookmarking tool. I use Diigo to archive every interesting news story I find. I editorialise each bookmark, send some to twitter and send the rss feed to kigaliwire.com as a news wire. In addition, I send these news items to delicious.com and embed the tag cloud as a news archive on the blog. Yes, I know that all sounded rather technical - it’s not really, but I don;t have time to explain the nitty gritty - just think; twitter, news wire, news archive - they’re all covered using these tools

Flickr is a great photo-sharing tool. I pay $12 a year to use it. I get a lot of enquiries to use my photos, it acts as a shop window, with a great social element. Having said that, I distribute to 50 or so other photo-sharing websites too.

Which is where pixelpipe comes in - this is a fantastic distribution tool. It allows you to knit together your entire online presence, so that you can post once to multiple destinations. Well, worth exploring.

When you publish across multiple outlets, often simultaneously, you quickly realise the idea of a static website is very old fashioned. I don’t mind whether people interact with me on twitter, flickr, facebook, the blog, wherever - the important thing is to be in the conversation where it is happening.


• Google Reader











• Google Reader

• Twitter and Tweetdeck











• Google Reader


• Wordpress











• Google Reader


• Wordpress

• Diigo











• Google Reader


• Wordpress

• Diigo

• Flickr











• Google Reader


• Wordpress

• Diigo

• Flickr

• Pixelpipe










Three rules


As far as I see it, there are three rules to working as a foreign correspondent.


Go somewhere cheap - especially if money is an issue - and go somewhere odd. If you’ve done your research and you’ve made contacts and you have a fairly good inkling of what you’re going to be letting yourself in for - Just go.

1. Go somewhere cheap. And odd. The odder the better


Go somewhere cheap - especially if money is an issue - and go somewhere odd. If you’ve done your research and you’ve made contacts and you have a fairly good inkling of what you’re going to be letting yourself in for - Just go.


Read everything - local press, translations of local news wires, books, blogs, twitter lists. 6 months of reading just about where you’re going will stand you in very good stead. And don’t stop reading. Ever.

2. Read. Read loads. Before you write anything. Read.


Read everything - local press, translations of local news wires, books, blogs, twitter lists. 6 months of reading just about where you’re going will stand you in very good stead. And don’t stop reading. Ever.

Photo of Rob Crilly in SudanTuesday, 31 May 2011

3. Have someone interesting to talk to, somewhere interesting to go, something interesting to write about, record, shoot, film, link to & an outlet to file to, every day”

Photo of Rob Crilly in SudanTuesday, 31 May 2011


OK. You’ve got your laptop, your blog, you’ve set up your twitter account. You’re ready to go... OK. Stop right there. We need to think this through. To really think this through.

!!STOP!!Tuesday, 31 May 2011

OK. You’ve got your laptop, your blog, you’ve set up your twitter account. You’re ready to go... OK. Stop right there. We need to think this through. To really think this through.


What is it about this place you want to go and live in and work. What’s really driving you? And will it keep you there? Keep you interested?

The whole online end of things has to be really thought out. Calling you blog Dick in Delhi might sound good now, but what about when Dick moves to Rio De Janeiro? Likewise, do you want a twitter account to be country or city specific? You will move on one day - probably - what happens to all that you publish. Maybe you’ll create a viable online publishing outlet - maybe you’ll be in a position to sell it. Think about your goals, be clear and be realistic.

OK. so you know what you want to do. What tools do you want to use? What tools do people use where you are going? Where do people congregate online to discuss the place you are going to. It might not be all twitter and facebook. Research. Be thorough.

• Why do you want to go there?






• What do you want to do online?






• What do you want to do online?

• How are you going to do it?





Plan your arse off


plan your arse off. Oh yes...


And don’t limit planning to sitting in front of a computer screen. Sometimes pen and paper work better - especially if, like me, you really don’t have the time or inclination to learn a computer programme that can help you create a diagram like this. What’s the point? Get the paper and pens out.

5 secrets of doing journalism abroad



1. What’s the business model? I guarantee that’s always the first question I get asked whenever I deliver a lecture to journalism students about social media, blogs and publishing kigaliwire.Simple answer is, I don’t have one. At least not one you can easily plan for/quantify/stick in an excel sheet and say X + Y = $$$$. I don’t work that way. It’s more about transparency, visibility, connections and being reasonably good at what you do.Since I moved to Rwanda, and as a direct result of Kigaliwire, I have had been offered a lot of work. From editing NGO newsletters, to University lectures, photographic commissions, radio slots and more.

In a nutshell, If you’ve got the drive, you’re reasonably talented, you go somewhere odd, meet lots of people, get to know your patch, keep a blog, tweet a bit too, then - at least in my experience - opportunities will come your way.


2. The second question about kigaliwire, which ordinarily follows the first question, is how much traffic does the site get?Having blogged since 2002, I strongly believe this is completely misguided question. There are very good reasons, for an independent journalist, having relatively low traffic, with the occasional spike is far more desirable than having thousands or millions of visitors per day, week or month.Using a tool like statcounter, you quickly get to know who is really interested in your site. This is far more difficult if your site gets thousands and thousands of hits.

For example, I know which governments visit my site every day. And, of those, I know which departments of which governments visit my site every day. I also know which universities, news organisations, investment companies, NGO’s, defence agencies and consultancy groups stop by every day.

I’d go as far as to say, for the solo, wannabe, foreign correspondent, less blog traffic is better than floods of folk. That’s not to say, the occasional spike is not desirable. Just, don’t let that second question you always give me in my lectures drive what you do and how you do it.


3. Here’s a little secret that never gets discussed. All big media really wants is to work like a blogger. Big media has speed limits. Bloggers do not.

It takes a blogger one second to decide whether they want to put a ‘facebook like’ button on their posts, it takes them a further 30 seconds to implement the button. No way is this possible for big, old media - you’re looking at weeks of meetings, proposals, policy directives, reviews and design issues.

You. Can change on a dime.

And Big media would SO like to be like you. But it can’t. It’s too big. You’re light, flexible and independent. You test the boundaries, and if you’re any good, you’ll get noticed and big, old, slow media will offer you work. Not just because you’re good, but they want to attach their big old media name to a little bit of your coolness. SO DON”T SELL IT CHEAP.


The fourth big secret about being the hipster foreign correspondent with the sack full of digital goodies, stuck out in Lima or Lagos, is that - Back in London, New York or Paris you’re a nobody. You’re only useful and interesting because you’re the nutter who lives out there. You’re special - in the eyes of big, old media - because of where you are, not necessarily because of who you are. Remember that. It’ll help keep your feet on the ground.

[email protected] || @noodlepie


5. Finally, realise that if you’re new toa country you’ll be naive. People don’t like to admit this, but we’re all naive abroad, at least for a while, especially early. Accept it, revel in it, you’ll learn from it, you’ll see stuff the jaded old grumpy hacks will never see. You’ll become jaded and grumpy before too long too, so enjoy the naivety while it lasts.

With all that in mind, dive in, the water’s lovely, things will go wrong, but they’ll go interestingly wrong. You might not get rich, but it’s a great way to live.

Thanks again for coming. Note down the link there for more information on how I built kigaliwire. Obviously, I can’t take questions in person, but feel free to email me, or follow me on twitter if you have any queries. Thanks and I hope you have a good evening.

Image credits:

Portait of me - Hereward Holland, Reuters CorrespondentHoward Beatty - Ann AlthouseFishing rod reel - CanolaisTwo people Business meeting - MyDigitalSLREmma reading the newspaper - dsevillaRob Crilly interviewing in Sudan - Rob Crilly’s blogLate Night - selvaOpportunity Center - {Guerrilla Futures | Jason Tester}tube - pfig

Everything else by me


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Frontline club - solo foreign correspondent

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