on the screen you’ll note that in front
of the two camels there’s a fellow and
we have him with us in this embodied
form Paul are you here I am indeed about
your surroundings right now both
immediate and the larger ones please
I’ve been walking up through the radiant
Peninsula for about thirteen or fourteen
hundred miles they honestly don’t know
in the pursuit of this idea that I think
all of us on stage are after which is
how to tell a better more original story
especially in the age of the Internet
when you think about whom you are
writing to and what you want them to see
how do you make that decision Paul you
know I don’t have a audience in mind we
are wired in mainly almost to to detect
quality and storytelling we know a good
story at a party we know a good story
an anecdote shared on the subway there
just something that that sets off
certain neurons about great story and I
don’t try to overanalyze it I just moved
through the landscape to human to
poverty walk these folks through the
glimmer of a crazy idea to the actual
writing assigning and writing of the
story as quickly as you can so they get
the process once there is the green
light given to a particular project
that’s when the real work really starts
and I think one of the things that’s
different about working as an editor at
National Geographic compared to other
places that I’ve been an editor is
there’s a lot of upfront planning and so
right away you are working with a story
team a group of people who
you have the text editor you have the
writer you have a photo editor you have
a photographer you have a graphics
editor there’s a whole host of people
who are involved with thinking very much
upfront about how are we going to carry
this story out well let’s give it let’s
put it on the ground and give an example
I sent qua Minh an email about two
months ago and he wrote back right away
and said I have kind of a spotty
internet connection right now because
I’m on a Russian ship in the Arctic let
me see if I can get back to you since
most of us including myself have never
been sent by our bosses to go hang
around on a Russian ship in the Arctic
for a month how does that come to pass
in the case of the Russian Arctic this
was an expedition to a place called
Franz Josef land it was put together by
a wonderful scientist named Enrico Sala
who runs an organization called pristine
seas and he decided that his latest
pristine seas expedition would be to
this very very remote archipelago in the
Russian Arctic the northernmost land
masses of Eurasia filled with polar
bears and walruses and seabirds and ice
and rock and very little else
and this man Olli asked me back in and I
don’t know March April any interest in
going to the Russian Arctic on this
expedition
my wife Betsy said as your friend I tell
you you should do it as your wife I tell
you I don’t like the idea of you being
away for six and a half weeks and if
they had offered it to me I would have
already said yes
so I went but and I’m not I’m not saying
it’s easy for there for the writer but
under the best case or the easiest case
scenario unlike Paul’s the writer jumps
on a plane with with this plus a ziploc
bag to put this in when it rains well
that’s a kind of National Geographic
story that involves one particular set
of tremendously adventurous feelings and
so on there’s another kind which Alma is
especially good at which we also get
which is the big vague we know there’s
something cool here you figure out what
it is kind of assignment how do you
think about what kinds of stories are
the ones that you want to tell and why
tell these stories as a writer actually
I like most of us here I think I’m
particularly indebted at National
Geographic to my editor because I think
that Ollie is very good at just putting
a word in my head he said I have just
one word to say to you Alma and I said
yeah Ollie he said
Tongo and I said right he figures out a
word that will set off something in my
imagination because he’s familiar I
guess with the way my mind works but
that also will set off reflexes in the
imagination of the readership you know
this is really what it’s all about
because it’s all about you
we’re all trying to seduce you non-stop
and that that I think is what I try to
do when I say – Ollie yes Don go I can
immediately imagine first of all it is
the most seductive of all dance forms
but I can also sense what it is that you
won’t know as readers about this thing
you have some jazzy notion moons
see yes tango ooh hot blackness but I
want to take you further than that you
know I want to say it’s all of that now
let me explain let me explain where the
foot goes and let me explain what the
music sounds like and how incredibly
hard it is to do this particular dance
and let me show you who’s dancing it old
people old people who remember the days
of Argentina’s triumphs with fantastic
nostalgia I kind of want to put that
dream in your eyes so it’s all about you
know taking the fantasy that we have as
storytellers it’s the same I think and
just putting that fantasy in your eyes
and one of the things that I personally
adore about the geographic is that it’s
Reach is not only enormous what’s the
current circulation it’s like by the
time you add in the international
edition it’s about seven million
worldwide indicating 39 local language
so I mean you can’t I can’t even process
that 7 million people conceivably
glancing at your article that is beyond
my range but the wide reach and the
enormity of different kinds of people
who look at the geographic is pretty
thrilling for us I think and different
absolutely with every sentence with
every paragraph I think about audio
particularly because you read about
science so your job is always trying to
translate out of another length and
bringing people along through material
that’s technical and complicated I asked
myself after every sentence after every
paragraph is he still with me is she
still with me I don’t think about
audience in the sense that we’re all
here and we six happened to be sitting
up here and you 300 or sitting down
there I don’t think about you 300 I
think about you or you or you
and I I ask myself after each paragraph
okay just you just did a paragraph on
molecular phylogenetics you better tell
a joke and hurry
are you gonna lose her David Bradley I
want to ask you something about research
you were the head of research you know
the research intimately so every
magazine is supposed to have a
fact-checking department at National
Geographic the researchers are like PhD
people compared to this so what I want
to do is ask you about the lives of the
researchers I mean they must know more
than any other individual I can think of
simply because of the way that they are
obliged to work what is the deal over
there
everybody who works as a fact checker is
incredibly passionate about accuracy
because we know that where we’re backing
up all the writers here we’re backing up
the tradition of the geographic and we
know that if we get it wrong we’re not
just hurting our writer but we’re
hurting our brand and and that trust
that we have with with our audience
I know Alma’s had some wonderful
experiences so I was doing a story a few
years back about nautical cultura
generally but it was a story really
about how young people in the drug world
surround themselves with beliefs that
help them get through their lives and I
got into a prison in Sinaloa and the
director of the jail said oh you want to
do a story about a killer and a drug
smuggler and a drug addict okay hmm all
right
and he introduced me to this into this
open fenced space with hundreds of men
milling around he said okay there they
are
goodbye and he left and we had actually
what was a fascinating conversation and
then I went back and I wrote my story
turned my copy over the fact-checker the
fact checker gets to work and eventually
she calls me back and she says I have
so-and-so the prison
who was supposed to be the killer who
was the killer in fact the multiple
killer I have him on the phone somehow
somehow or other she had persuaded the
jail director to go back to say okay you
can talk to this person to bring him out
of that cage and to get on the prison
phone and to verify all the information
they are absolutely amazing they are now
lest we sound too much like we’re
Tooting our own horn let’s talk about
some of the days that are that are not
so much to be celebrated in terms of the
national Geographics writing well there
there are some black marks actually
which are better forgotten than
explained but I am a ski writer write in
February 1937 we did a story of 47 page
story entitled emerging Berlin written
by Douglas Chandler and there were many
many pictures of banners with swastikas
and very youthful looking people being
no fit and that kind of thing and
Douglas Chandler was very likely in the
pay of Joseph Goebbels the minister of
propaganda for Hitler from 1935 onwards
he was actually after World War two
sentenced to life for treason when you
came back to the America from Germany so
that was one story that story was
followed the month after in March of
1937 by the very wonderful sounding
Imperial Rome reborn and that was a 57
page story and it so happens that I’m
going to read you the lead story
here’s the lead as we lunched informally
with Buchi in a little trattoria
restaurant I learned upon what meat this
modern Caesar feeds Mussolini taught son
listened most and smiled often above one
clothes clipped iron-gray temple a large
mole added homely character to his
nearly bald head tucking a napkin
protectively beneath his black collar he
act with quick nervous motions bread
noodles cheese pork and peas and orange
and drank a little frascati wine but
more seriously later in that story the
author made this observation quote
ambitious and forward-looking other
works of fascism so also for some years
there was no the words I read in one of
the histories of the geographic I mean
let’s be clear this information came to
me from geographic produced histories
that the words segregation lynching KKK
civil rights movement never appeared in
the pages of the geographic until the
late 1970s and we still make some of our
traditional readers quite angry when we
write about contamination pollution
human slavery to human trafficking and
slavery that made a lot of old-fashioned
Geographic readers angry so evolution
right so insofar as you can talk about
the guiding principles for what we
should write about now what motivates
the editorial view at this point well I
think it’s it’s always a balance Chris
Jones the editor is very he’s anxious
that we portray some of the aspects of
environmental damage very frankly and
clearly the magazine has ceased to
entertain any argument about whether
climate change is real no right we’ve to
stop the write for a decade at least on
this
no question but what he’s beginning to
do is to encourage a form of
investigative journalism especially on
the environment which we have never
engaged in and in fact last October we
put out a story that many of you may
have read by Brian Christie about blood
ivory ivory worship in which he really
revealed for the first time the extent
to which devotional use of ivory is
fueling the illegal trade and and this
was in a way a turning point for us in
our modern era because we’ve never done
such a deep investigative breaking a
story kind of report that I know of to
that degree David correct me if I’m
wrong and and it’s had a very very
significant effect in the countries
where it was reported in the Philippines
the laws have been changed a pedophile
priest who was revealed to have been
involved in the illegal trade was
defrocked I mean just in Rome one of the
shops in Vatican Square was raided by
the police I mean these things of these
is a good affects from our journalism we
are moving in a direction that gives us
a great deal of credibility in the
investigative sphere which is I think a
good development
I think the tough stories that we’re
doing though we’re still doing them in a
different way from the way they’d be
covered in other journalistic vehicles
and it’s because we really take our
mission as geography magazine very
seriously we’re connecting the dots
between limited natural resources and
water and land and the aspirations of
people who want to improve their lives
and so are migrating we really the
things that you would learn in a
geography class are very much the prisms
through which we report on conflict and
an environmental degradation so I think
that the reason that we in some weird
way by
being tougher and kind of I think a lot
more relevant it’s almost like we’re
going back to our roots of really being
a geography magazine where we’re able to
shine a light on issues that you read in
the headlines and but in a very
different way I agree and I think that
makes even our conflict reporting better
because we get at the ultimate causes of
human strife as opposed to the more
superficial ones and for anybody who’s
covered Africa that’s always a challenge
because over the past generation there
has been so much conflict there if the
story gets repetitive and the general
public starts writing off the continent
at the basket case which is just that’s
a testament to bad reporting that’s not
a testament to Africa and I think the
geographic by getting at the roots of
conflict whether it’s resource
allocation or the flow of weaponry or
even you know if I mentor boundaries
like the Sahel where different cultures
clang together I do a much better job we
have to think harder be smarter let’s
have the microphones come down for
anybody who wants to ask questions well
they’re coming down I’m gonna grab
randomly bowtie person here in the front
you’ve talked about the process of how
to get a story into the magazine but
could you speak about how you actually
write like any tips that you’d give on
how to write or what do you do when
you’re actually writing and are taking
notes or whatever you need to do to be
able to write so well you mean after
we’ve cleaned all of our closets and
we’re the letters to relatives we
haven’t heard from and cursed our fate
and felt sorry for ourselves after that
part yes yeah if it makes you feel any
better we all do that still after all
this time you want to grab that one I
put paper I go through all my notebooks
and I put paper clips on anything that’s
interesting or important without regard
to whether I see it fitting together
into a structures post-its
I use post-its sometimes and then but
I’m mostly interested in what is in
these notebooks that’s interesting and
then I do not make an outline I I wait
until a first sentence comes into my
head I keep sort of researching and
rummaging and going over the material
until the first sentence comes into my
head and then I push it away and when
the first sentence is there then I start
to write and I do my best to take all
the things that are interesting from the
notebooks and put them into a story that
has a beginning a middle and an end
the same thing that makes working for
the geographic fabulous is also the
thing that makes you want to shoot
yourself when you’re working on one of
these stories which is that there is no
publication that I’m aware of certainly
in the United States possibly in the
world that gives its reporters as well
as its photographers so much support to
do as much research as possible during
child brides I actually had this is a
true story I had an argument with
Barbara in which I said please do not
send me to a third comment because I
can’t you know I already have way too
much just out of India and she said and
I swear this is true she said well we
just thought that if you went to a third
continent you’d have a better sort of
broad understanding of the issue and so
the amount of stuff that you’ve got to
go through before you’re trying to
figure out what a story is in all this
can be astonishing let’s have yes on the
Isle there please I’m curious as to what
each of you has had as the toughest
experience on an assignment while you
were searching say and finding out about
things well I’ll start with that one I
would say probably for me
the single toughest experience was as I
mean I wrote about it in in the piece I
did on child marriage watching a
five-year-old get married at two o’clock
in the morning to a boy that she’d never
seen before and knowing that there was
absolutely nothing I could do about it
except document it the latter part was
harder than the first part as a reporter
you are trained to look at things that
are very distressing it’s what we do
it’s probably why we do it to be honest
about it but to look at something like
that and and know I mean I made a there
was a line in the article that I wrote
about
your first impulse wanting to be to
punch everybody in the head and grab the
kid and run and you can’t and that was
somehow for me the most visceral and
specific embodiment of that overall
journalistic lament that I’ve ever
encountered I think we should get Paul
to answer this absolutely true Paul
Salopek small you’ve got a slightly
difficult story or two don’t you what
you see does bruise you and you plaid to
be careful what you see this is a less
than heartless and learned all that
you’re experienced I think a lot of
young reporters who go into war
reporting don’t quite recognize that
fact not seeing people killed and it’s a
difficult thing to rationalize why
you’re there when that happens and I
think at a certain point you have to
make a decision as a writer an honest
decision if your presence there is truly
required as a witness to history or as a
as a believer of effecting positive
change to maybe halt war and I would I
would argue to them show me a photograph
or indeed a story that has stopped a war
right so it’s a really complicated thing
we have a other question up here thank
you the old National Geographic was
purportedly at least impartial and now
since the seventies that has changed do
you want a writer who takes a strong
stance who’s passionately involved with
us or if not if you want a more balanced
detached view some subjectivity has to
create this we we get the facts right
and so we we we are we try to engage
different people so if they’re if it’s a
very controversial subject we try to
tell the whole story and not just one
side and so will engage with you know
somebody on the left and maybe someone
on the right and try to come somewhere
in the middle but ultimately we leave it
up to our writers to tell that story and
the voice and we trust we hire our
writers for their voice for their
expertise and for their ability to get
the story and and they tell it right and
we help them tell it right
in the end I want to add something and
maybe diverge from what David said by 45
or 90 degrees we’re not a newspaper
we’re a magazine we go out some of us
maybe many of us are feature writers and
essayists for you know in you know
wearing various different hats I run
into this people say sometimes when I’m
talking to sources well you have to be
objective don’t you you’re a journalist
and I say excuse me you should know
right now that I’m not a daily reporter
I have no obligation whatsoever to be
objective I have an obligation to be
accurate and to be fair to get the facts
right and to be thorough and to listen
to a lot of different voices but I have
no obligation to present those voices as
though they have equal value on the
subject of climate change or on the
subject of child brides mm-hmm get the
facts right and then and then say
something worth saying before we say
goodnight to all of you I have a special
favor of you to ask which is that you
say good night to Salopek who probably
hasn’t had more than a couple people
from home to say goodnight to him in a
long time get some sleep and safe
travels ala Peck thanks a lot thanks to
all who was here and thanks to all of
you for joining us
you
of the two camels there’s a fellow and
we have him with us in this embodied
form Paul are you here I am indeed about
your surroundings right now both
immediate and the larger ones please
I’ve been walking up through the radiant
Peninsula for about thirteen or fourteen
hundred miles they honestly don’t know
in the pursuit of this idea that I think
all of us on stage are after which is
how to tell a better more original story
especially in the age of the Internet
when you think about whom you are
writing to and what you want them to see
how do you make that decision Paul you
know I don’t have a audience in mind we
are wired in mainly almost to to detect
quality and storytelling we know a good
story at a party we know a good story
an anecdote shared on the subway there
just something that that sets off
certain neurons about great story and I
don’t try to overanalyze it I just moved
through the landscape to human to
poverty walk these folks through the
glimmer of a crazy idea to the actual
writing assigning and writing of the
story as quickly as you can so they get
the process once there is the green
light given to a particular project
that’s when the real work really starts
and I think one of the things that’s
different about working as an editor at
National Geographic compared to other
places that I’ve been an editor is
there’s a lot of upfront planning and so
right away you are working with a story
team a group of people who
you have the text editor you have the
writer you have a photo editor you have
a photographer you have a graphics
editor there’s a whole host of people
who are involved with thinking very much
upfront about how are we going to carry
this story out well let’s give it let’s
put it on the ground and give an example
I sent qua Minh an email about two
months ago and he wrote back right away
and said I have kind of a spotty
internet connection right now because
I’m on a Russian ship in the Arctic let
me see if I can get back to you since
most of us including myself have never
been sent by our bosses to go hang
around on a Russian ship in the Arctic
for a month how does that come to pass
in the case of the Russian Arctic this
was an expedition to a place called
Franz Josef land it was put together by
a wonderful scientist named Enrico Sala
who runs an organization called pristine
seas and he decided that his latest
pristine seas expedition would be to
this very very remote archipelago in the
Russian Arctic the northernmost land
masses of Eurasia filled with polar
bears and walruses and seabirds and ice
and rock and very little else
and this man Olli asked me back in and I
don’t know March April any interest in
going to the Russian Arctic on this
expedition
my wife Betsy said as your friend I tell
you you should do it as your wife I tell
you I don’t like the idea of you being
away for six and a half weeks and if
they had offered it to me I would have
already said yes
so I went but and I’m not I’m not saying
it’s easy for there for the writer but
under the best case or the easiest case
scenario unlike Paul’s the writer jumps
on a plane with with this plus a ziploc
bag to put this in when it rains well
that’s a kind of National Geographic
story that involves one particular set
of tremendously adventurous feelings and
so on there’s another kind which Alma is
especially good at which we also get
which is the big vague we know there’s
something cool here you figure out what
it is kind of assignment how do you
think about what kinds of stories are
the ones that you want to tell and why
tell these stories as a writer actually
I like most of us here I think I’m
particularly indebted at National
Geographic to my editor because I think
that Ollie is very good at just putting
a word in my head he said I have just
one word to say to you Alma and I said
yeah Ollie he said
Tongo and I said right he figures out a
word that will set off something in my
imagination because he’s familiar I
guess with the way my mind works but
that also will set off reflexes in the
imagination of the readership you know
this is really what it’s all about
because it’s all about you
we’re all trying to seduce you non-stop
and that that I think is what I try to
do when I say – Ollie yes Don go I can
immediately imagine first of all it is
the most seductive of all dance forms
but I can also sense what it is that you
won’t know as readers about this thing
you have some jazzy notion moons
see yes tango ooh hot blackness but I
want to take you further than that you
know I want to say it’s all of that now
let me explain let me explain where the
foot goes and let me explain what the
music sounds like and how incredibly
hard it is to do this particular dance
and let me show you who’s dancing it old
people old people who remember the days
of Argentina’s triumphs with fantastic
nostalgia I kind of want to put that
dream in your eyes so it’s all about you
know taking the fantasy that we have as
storytellers it’s the same I think and
just putting that fantasy in your eyes
and one of the things that I personally
adore about the geographic is that it’s
Reach is not only enormous what’s the
current circulation it’s like by the
time you add in the international
edition it’s about seven million
worldwide indicating 39 local language
so I mean you can’t I can’t even process
that 7 million people conceivably
glancing at your article that is beyond
my range but the wide reach and the
enormity of different kinds of people
who look at the geographic is pretty
thrilling for us I think and different
absolutely with every sentence with
every paragraph I think about audio
particularly because you read about
science so your job is always trying to
translate out of another length and
bringing people along through material
that’s technical and complicated I asked
myself after every sentence after every
paragraph is he still with me is she
still with me I don’t think about
audience in the sense that we’re all
here and we six happened to be sitting
up here and you 300 or sitting down
there I don’t think about you 300 I
think about you or you or you
and I I ask myself after each paragraph
okay just you just did a paragraph on
molecular phylogenetics you better tell
a joke and hurry
are you gonna lose her David Bradley I
want to ask you something about research
you were the head of research you know
the research intimately so every
magazine is supposed to have a
fact-checking department at National
Geographic the researchers are like PhD
people compared to this so what I want
to do is ask you about the lives of the
researchers I mean they must know more
than any other individual I can think of
simply because of the way that they are
obliged to work what is the deal over
there
everybody who works as a fact checker is
incredibly passionate about accuracy
because we know that where we’re backing
up all the writers here we’re backing up
the tradition of the geographic and we
know that if we get it wrong we’re not
just hurting our writer but we’re
hurting our brand and and that trust
that we have with with our audience
I know Alma’s had some wonderful
experiences so I was doing a story a few
years back about nautical cultura
generally but it was a story really
about how young people in the drug world
surround themselves with beliefs that
help them get through their lives and I
got into a prison in Sinaloa and the
director of the jail said oh you want to
do a story about a killer and a drug
smuggler and a drug addict okay hmm all
right
and he introduced me to this into this
open fenced space with hundreds of men
milling around he said okay there they
are
goodbye and he left and we had actually
what was a fascinating conversation and
then I went back and I wrote my story
turned my copy over the fact-checker the
fact checker gets to work and eventually
she calls me back and she says I have
so-and-so the prison
who was supposed to be the killer who
was the killer in fact the multiple
killer I have him on the phone somehow
somehow or other she had persuaded the
jail director to go back to say okay you
can talk to this person to bring him out
of that cage and to get on the prison
phone and to verify all the information
they are absolutely amazing they are now
lest we sound too much like we’re
Tooting our own horn let’s talk about
some of the days that are that are not
so much to be celebrated in terms of the
national Geographics writing well there
there are some black marks actually
which are better forgotten than
explained but I am a ski writer write in
February 1937 we did a story of 47 page
story entitled emerging Berlin written
by Douglas Chandler and there were many
many pictures of banners with swastikas
and very youthful looking people being
no fit and that kind of thing and
Douglas Chandler was very likely in the
pay of Joseph Goebbels the minister of
propaganda for Hitler from 1935 onwards
he was actually after World War two
sentenced to life for treason when you
came back to the America from Germany so
that was one story that story was
followed the month after in March of
1937 by the very wonderful sounding
Imperial Rome reborn and that was a 57
page story and it so happens that I’m
going to read you the lead story
here’s the lead as we lunched informally
with Buchi in a little trattoria
restaurant I learned upon what meat this
modern Caesar feeds Mussolini taught son
listened most and smiled often above one
clothes clipped iron-gray temple a large
mole added homely character to his
nearly bald head tucking a napkin
protectively beneath his black collar he
act with quick nervous motions bread
noodles cheese pork and peas and orange
and drank a little frascati wine but
more seriously later in that story the
author made this observation quote
ambitious and forward-looking other
works of fascism so also for some years
there was no the words I read in one of
the histories of the geographic I mean
let’s be clear this information came to
me from geographic produced histories
that the words segregation lynching KKK
civil rights movement never appeared in
the pages of the geographic until the
late 1970s and we still make some of our
traditional readers quite angry when we
write about contamination pollution
human slavery to human trafficking and
slavery that made a lot of old-fashioned
Geographic readers angry so evolution
right so insofar as you can talk about
the guiding principles for what we
should write about now what motivates
the editorial view at this point well I
think it’s it’s always a balance Chris
Jones the editor is very he’s anxious
that we portray some of the aspects of
environmental damage very frankly and
clearly the magazine has ceased to
entertain any argument about whether
climate change is real no right we’ve to
stop the write for a decade at least on
this
no question but what he’s beginning to
do is to encourage a form of
investigative journalism especially on
the environment which we have never
engaged in and in fact last October we
put out a story that many of you may
have read by Brian Christie about blood
ivory ivory worship in which he really
revealed for the first time the extent
to which devotional use of ivory is
fueling the illegal trade and and this
was in a way a turning point for us in
our modern era because we’ve never done
such a deep investigative breaking a
story kind of report that I know of to
that degree David correct me if I’m
wrong and and it’s had a very very
significant effect in the countries
where it was reported in the Philippines
the laws have been changed a pedophile
priest who was revealed to have been
involved in the illegal trade was
defrocked I mean just in Rome one of the
shops in Vatican Square was raided by
the police I mean these things of these
is a good affects from our journalism we
are moving in a direction that gives us
a great deal of credibility in the
investigative sphere which is I think a
good development
I think the tough stories that we’re
doing though we’re still doing them in a
different way from the way they’d be
covered in other journalistic vehicles
and it’s because we really take our
mission as geography magazine very
seriously we’re connecting the dots
between limited natural resources and
water and land and the aspirations of
people who want to improve their lives
and so are migrating we really the
things that you would learn in a
geography class are very much the prisms
through which we report on conflict and
an environmental degradation so I think
that the reason that we in some weird
way by
being tougher and kind of I think a lot
more relevant it’s almost like we’re
going back to our roots of really being
a geography magazine where we’re able to
shine a light on issues that you read in
the headlines and but in a very
different way I agree and I think that
makes even our conflict reporting better
because we get at the ultimate causes of
human strife as opposed to the more
superficial ones and for anybody who’s
covered Africa that’s always a challenge
because over the past generation there
has been so much conflict there if the
story gets repetitive and the general
public starts writing off the continent
at the basket case which is just that’s
a testament to bad reporting that’s not
a testament to Africa and I think the
geographic by getting at the roots of
conflict whether it’s resource
allocation or the flow of weaponry or
even you know if I mentor boundaries
like the Sahel where different cultures
clang together I do a much better job we
have to think harder be smarter let’s
have the microphones come down for
anybody who wants to ask questions well
they’re coming down I’m gonna grab
randomly bowtie person here in the front
you’ve talked about the process of how
to get a story into the magazine but
could you speak about how you actually
write like any tips that you’d give on
how to write or what do you do when
you’re actually writing and are taking
notes or whatever you need to do to be
able to write so well you mean after
we’ve cleaned all of our closets and
we’re the letters to relatives we
haven’t heard from and cursed our fate
and felt sorry for ourselves after that
part yes yeah if it makes you feel any
better we all do that still after all
this time you want to grab that one I
put paper I go through all my notebooks
and I put paper clips on anything that’s
interesting or important without regard
to whether I see it fitting together
into a structures post-its
I use post-its sometimes and then but
I’m mostly interested in what is in
these notebooks that’s interesting and
then I do not make an outline I I wait
until a first sentence comes into my
head I keep sort of researching and
rummaging and going over the material
until the first sentence comes into my
head and then I push it away and when
the first sentence is there then I start
to write and I do my best to take all
the things that are interesting from the
notebooks and put them into a story that
has a beginning a middle and an end
the same thing that makes working for
the geographic fabulous is also the
thing that makes you want to shoot
yourself when you’re working on one of
these stories which is that there is no
publication that I’m aware of certainly
in the United States possibly in the
world that gives its reporters as well
as its photographers so much support to
do as much research as possible during
child brides I actually had this is a
true story I had an argument with
Barbara in which I said please do not
send me to a third comment because I
can’t you know I already have way too
much just out of India and she said and
I swear this is true she said well we
just thought that if you went to a third
continent you’d have a better sort of
broad understanding of the issue and so
the amount of stuff that you’ve got to
go through before you’re trying to
figure out what a story is in all this
can be astonishing let’s have yes on the
Isle there please I’m curious as to what
each of you has had as the toughest
experience on an assignment while you
were searching say and finding out about
things well I’ll start with that one I
would say probably for me
the single toughest experience was as I
mean I wrote about it in in the piece I
did on child marriage watching a
five-year-old get married at two o’clock
in the morning to a boy that she’d never
seen before and knowing that there was
absolutely nothing I could do about it
except document it the latter part was
harder than the first part as a reporter
you are trained to look at things that
are very distressing it’s what we do
it’s probably why we do it to be honest
about it but to look at something like
that and and know I mean I made a there
was a line in the article that I wrote
about
your first impulse wanting to be to
punch everybody in the head and grab the
kid and run and you can’t and that was
somehow for me the most visceral and
specific embodiment of that overall
journalistic lament that I’ve ever
encountered I think we should get Paul
to answer this absolutely true Paul
Salopek small you’ve got a slightly
difficult story or two don’t you what
you see does bruise you and you plaid to
be careful what you see this is a less
than heartless and learned all that
you’re experienced I think a lot of
young reporters who go into war
reporting don’t quite recognize that
fact not seeing people killed and it’s a
difficult thing to rationalize why
you’re there when that happens and I
think at a certain point you have to
make a decision as a writer an honest
decision if your presence there is truly
required as a witness to history or as a
as a believer of effecting positive
change to maybe halt war and I would I
would argue to them show me a photograph
or indeed a story that has stopped a war
right so it’s a really complicated thing
we have a other question up here thank
you the old National Geographic was
purportedly at least impartial and now
since the seventies that has changed do
you want a writer who takes a strong
stance who’s passionately involved with
us or if not if you want a more balanced
detached view some subjectivity has to
create this we we get the facts right
and so we we we are we try to engage
different people so if they’re if it’s a
very controversial subject we try to
tell the whole story and not just one
side and so will engage with you know
somebody on the left and maybe someone
on the right and try to come somewhere
in the middle but ultimately we leave it
up to our writers to tell that story and
the voice and we trust we hire our
writers for their voice for their
expertise and for their ability to get
the story and and they tell it right and
we help them tell it right
in the end I want to add something and
maybe diverge from what David said by 45
or 90 degrees we’re not a newspaper
we’re a magazine we go out some of us
maybe many of us are feature writers and
essayists for you know in you know
wearing various different hats I run
into this people say sometimes when I’m
talking to sources well you have to be
objective don’t you you’re a journalist
and I say excuse me you should know
right now that I’m not a daily reporter
I have no obligation whatsoever to be
objective I have an obligation to be
accurate and to be fair to get the facts
right and to be thorough and to listen
to a lot of different voices but I have
no obligation to present those voices as
though they have equal value on the
subject of climate change or on the
subject of child brides mm-hmm get the
facts right and then and then say
something worth saying before we say
goodnight to all of you I have a special
favor of you to ask which is that you
say good night to Salopek who probably
hasn’t had more than a couple people
from home to say goodnight to him in a
long time get some sleep and safe
travels ala Peck thanks a lot thanks to
all who was here and thanks to all of
you for joining us
you
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