* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
I had an interesting conversation the other day with someone from a humanitarian organisation strategising about where to locate media people around the world. I thought it might be useful to ask his question to readers here on AlertNet to canvass some wider opinion.
Like many aid providers and development agencies, his group wants to better demonstrate and promote the good work they do, both to audiences in countries where most of their individual donations come from and in places where they are actually doing the work. With this move to shift resources to regional hubs, creating almost a kind of mini-news agency, we see again how many NGOs are filling some of the roles foreign correspondents used to have before they became an endangered species.
The group is aiming to have eight or ten people around the world who would cover the aid/development issues in defined regions and the work the organisation is doing in its diverse humanitarian efforts there. Clearly, these media people will have to be able to create a variety of products -- text, audio, video, maybe even Flash presentations -- and they will have to walk a fine line between journalistic reporting and promotion of the organisation.
The question is: where should these people be based?
Assume this organisation has worldwide operations in both disaster relief and long-term development projects. (It does.) Of course, they are not starting with an absolutely clean slate, and this is not about multiplying staff but shifting communications resources, so it's more of an evolutionary issue for them rather than something that's going to happen instantly. Still, putting aside those complicating factors for a moment and just engaging in a bit of longer-term strategising: what are the best locations for such media staff?
There are clearly a number of trade-offs to consider. First, people have to be based in a city with a decent infrastructure and quick transport connections to their region of concern, yet they have to be close to disaster zones and underdeveloped parts of the world. Do you cover West Africa from Dakar or from Abuja, for example?
Second, to reach the mainstream media serving contributors and potential contributors in the North, it might be best to locate media people where foreign correspondents (even foreign editors) congregate. On the other hand, foreign correspondents beyond news agencies are a dying breed, and they tend to be located in places useful for political and geo-strategic reporting back home as opposed to where the aid and development action is. Do you put a person in Moscow, for example, or would Baku or Almaty be better for Central Asia and the Caucasus?
Third, how do you deal with regions having several natural media centres. For the Arabic-speaking world, for instance, do you opt for Beirut, Cairo, Doha or Dubai?
Fourth, how do you divide up the regions themselves? Can you cover all of Latin America from Mexico City or Bogot', or would it be better to split the region into two parts?
There are probably other considerations as well, but at this point, I'd like to leave it to AlertNet readers to jump in with comments. How would you ideally locate eight people to cover an NGO's global relief and development operations?
