"Foreign journalists provide a fresh viewpoint"
Michael Conniff
Michael Conniff graduated from Harvard with honors in History and won a summer fellowship at the Harvard Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He was the first Harvard writing instructor to use word processing as a teaching tool and is considered a pioneer in the online world. He is co-founder of the Isaacson School for New Media in Aspen—selected Faculty of the Year by students—and founded the Digital Story Lab at Colorado Mountain College. He was also the first person hired full-time in new media at NBC. In addition, he is a Mentor at NewChip Accelerator in Austin, Texas; an Advisor at Holt Accelerator in Montreal, Canada; a Strategic Leadership Advisor at the Pace University Lubin School of Business; a Board Member of the Foreign Press Correspondents Association; and Editor-at-Large at SKI TV. His novel, Book of O’Kells: Mother Nature, reached the Amazon Top Ten list for Historical Fiction.
Considering the year 2022, how would you describe the current state of journalism?
Journalism is always vulnerable to the powers-that-be but the new threat is the so-called relativity of truth. This is a new kind of pressure because it undermines the knowledge that is the soul of journalism. The need to establish an inarguable set of facts has never been more important—or more distant. Technology is the opposite of a panacea but we are also very much in the midst of a digital journalism revolution that means more voices will be heard by an order of magnitude—and that's a very good thing, particularly in the real world of facts.
Can you share with us a moment in your career when you learned a valuable lesson?
Early in my career, I turned down a big job as a spokesperson for a politician in Massachusetts because I thought once I crossed the line into public relations I could never go back. I was completely wrong and consider that as my biggest career mistake. Not only could I have gone back into journalism, but my reputation, in that case, would have been enhanced by my experience in government. You can go back and forth without penalty to the benefit of your journalism career. Now they tell me!
In what ways are you concerned about press freedom in the US and around the world?
Like other journalists, I've always been concerned but my real worry today is that our constant state of outrage seems to do no good whatsoever. We need a mechanism to hold governments to account when they start to chip away or even strip the press of Fourth Estate freedoms.
How do you view the role foreign journalists play today?
Journalists should always be outsiders looking in—and that provides foreign journalists with the enormous advantage of a fresh viewpoint. Because they don't have to be part of the establishment they can ply their trade in entirely different ways, depending on their assignments and countries of origin.
What does it take to be a good journalist?
I'm tempted to say all it takes is a pencil and as much courage as you can muster. The heart of journalism has been and always will be an individual unafraid to ask questions that demand answers. That will never change.
When it comes to becoming foreign correspondents, what skills do you encourage the next generation of journalists to acquire?
Reading and writing. I would urge every journalist, regardless of the medium, to practice print—writing, in other words—especially in a multimedia world. But now you also need a full set of audio, video, photography, and editing skills to build upon the writing in service of storytelling, the essence of our trade. Also, in the 21st Century, the more entrepreneurial you can be about your career the better.
You are known for being a great mentor to many journalists. If you had to give advice to working reporters and correspondents, what would it be?
The most important thing is to know what you want in journalism (and in life for that matter). And it really helps if you can do what you love with people who love what you do. Figure out what you want and the rest is pretty easy; fail to do so and you risk losing decades in secondary pursuits.
