In recent years J-Source has covered the retreat of foreign reporting,
including the closure of the Globe and
Mail’s Moscow bureau, the loss of some leading CBC foreign
correspondents.  Internationally, we lost the Far Eastern
Economic Review and there was a sharp
downturn in U.S. international reporting. But is there new hope for
the international beat?

The
global south has been expanding and deepening its international
coverage with services like Al Jazeera, which arrived on the scene with a
commitment to “slow

journalism.”

Canadians have an appetite for international news that isn’t
being met, according to Al Jazeera English’s managing
director, Tony Burman. Speaking at the 30th

Annual Minifie Lecture
last week, Burman predicted AJE’s imminent arrival in Canada
will spur increased international coverage in other Canadian media
outlets. The

beancounters have missed an important boat, Burman argues. In
today’s multi-cultural, interdependent global mash-up,
there’s a need for the frontline coverage of the past, like
the
fall of the Berlin Wall,
and for eye-witness correspondents in the tradition of
Canada’s Brian

Stewart.
The New York Time’s Anand Giridharadas agrees:
foreign correspondence is not so foreign in a shrinking world. Today we
have all the advantages of the

digital age,
a concept that was never lost on a host of unpaid bloggers. The
question is: are our owners and managers ready to join the world?