Structures of foreign reporting relate to the human resources and infrastructure necessary to maintain a system of foreign reporting. In general, upholding structures of foreign reporting is deemed costly, especially when compared to the investment necessary for domestic news.
Foreign correspondents, which are based abroad permanently, play an important role within these structures. However, many outlets have been facing shrinking budgets for news bureaus abroad, meaning that only a few organizations can afford to maintain large networks of stationed correspondents, especially if these are permanent employees sent abroad for longer periods of time.
Freelance correspondents serving several media outlets at a time partly fill this gap. Moreover, major news agencies play an important role in the dissemination of international news. These have news bureaus in many countries and include Western agencies such as the Associated Press (AP), Reuters, and Agence France Presse (AFP), but also the Chinese agency Xinhua. Agencies are particularly important when it comes to reports on countries and regions which are at the margins of geographies of news. Moreover, they are dominant sources of foreign reporting in countries where newsrooms cannot afford to hire their own correspondents, whether permanently employed or freelance.
Reporters who are temporarily deployed to a certain area are another crucial element within the structures of foreign reporting. Such “special envoys” may typically cover war and conflict zones, but also travel to report on natural disasters or major political events such as global summits, elections abroad, or protest movements. This type of foreign reporting is sometimes referred to as “parachute journalism”. The reporters conducting it are, in a slightly pejorative sense, called “parachutists”, as they presumably travel to a foreign country lacking knowledge of the situation on the ground and are badly prepared, relying on local fixers and reproducing bias and stereotypes rather than adding to a more nuanced international coverage.
This assumption has met with criticism, as such reporters may have travelled to a given country or world region several times before, and can also have significant expertise in a certain world region. Another argument goes that parachute journalism is indeed better than no on the ground coverage at all.
Yet, the collaboration with local journalists, e.g. through cross-border journalism,is regarded as a means to supplement or even replace the work conducted by “parachutists”. The role played by fixers within the human resource structures of international reporting has gained increasing attention in recent years.
However, a considerable share of foreign reporting is conducted by editors based in domestic newsrooms. Arguably, recent technological innovations have facilitated this model of foreign reporting, as a great deal of information from both domestic and international sources is instantly available through the Internet. This may include information made available by citizens on social media, for instance, turning amateur reports into another element of foreign reporting structures. All in all, a diverse set of journalists and contributors in different roles make up systems of foreign reporting.
