“Citizen Foreign Correspondence”

One result of the economic crisis facing newspapers and most other media outlets is that the number of foreign correspondents is plummeting. Here at The New York Times, we still have all of our foreign bureaus — partly because our strategy is to compete for readers who seek international news and analysis — but most newspapers and TV networks have been pulling back. Only four American newspapers now have foreign desks. And for a network, it’s very expensive to base a correspondent in London or Tokyo, and so much easier to film two people yelling at each other in a studio. More…