Sean Ryan, the foreign editor of the Sunday Times, visited City yesterday to talk to everyone on the Newspaper Journalism course. It was incredibly generous of him to do so and he gave lots of practical advice on the perils of attempting to become a foreign correspondent, something that a lot of us seem interested in.
One of the most interesting aspects was his invitation to apply to the Tom Walker Trust, a charity for young journalists for which he is a trustee. It offers financial support to one budding foreign correspondent so they can pursue a story they have suggested. It was quite telling that Ryan dismissed last year’s winner’s pitch as less than perfect. The defining factor in the journalist’s success were his qualities of persistence and enthusiasm, apparently prized as highly as everything else.
Ryan highlighted that foreign reporting still holds a prestige that attracts many to visions of adventure and excitement. However he stressed the work is seldom so romantic, usually just difficult and dangerous. Several anecdotes involving armed kidnapping, bomb blasts and terrorist seiges managed to drive this point home.
More practically Ryan spelt out that establishing yourself in the saturated markets of the US or Canada would be an extremely difficult – if not impossible – task. I harbour dreams of reporting from North America, but am now even more aware they are likely to remain just that.
After the talk I briefly researched Tom Walker and read his obituary. He appears to have been an excellent journalist with a fantastic sense of humour. The Times noted: With his unerring eye for a quirky angle, Walker reported during Nato’s bombardment of Belgrade that Serb peasants had jumped up and down on the wing of a downed stealth fighter, chanting: “Sorry, we didn’t know it was invisible.”
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