Redefining Foreign Correspondence

Abstract

Along with American journalism generally, foreign correspondence has evolved in the last 250 years so that it scarcely resembles its colonial origins. Not the least of these differences is that it never occurred to colonial printers to have a newsroom, let alone pay anyone to report from abroad. Colonial printers published travelers’ letters and unabashedly lifted stories from European publications because they were free and tended to be non-controversial. Today, in contrast, the foreign correspondent for traditional news media enjoys prestige among professional peers and is a figure to be reckoned with by public policy makers.

At the same time, paradoxically, establishment news media have de-emphasized foreign news. Critics have described the trend in Darwinian terms. The international news hole -- the space and time devoted to foreign affairs – is an “endangered species,” journalism historian Michael Emery lamented in the late 1980s. “Where there are still correspondents based abroad,” former diplomatic correspondent and media critic Marvin Kalb noted, “the genre known as ‘foreign correspondent’ is becoming extinct.”