- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
That is so interesting! Who were you working for?
Thanks for asking about it! Actually, I was a freelancer who worked for several different groups. The areas of focus, more or less integrated depending on the project, are generally infrastructure (presses, radio/TV stations, network development, technical acquisition and training), professionalization (journalism training, business/management training, forming journo associations), business development (putting the sector together, distribution, etc) and media law.
One of the things I did was fundraising, so I would raise the money for one group then go work in the field on those projects (the business or technical aspects, managing the project, doing independent assessments and evaluations, organizing training), then work on other proposals while there, etc.
The groups who do this kind of thing are pretty diverse. Some are non-profit NGOs. Internews is an 'network organization' that includes a US 'hub' and a semi-autonomous node (Internews Europe)that raises it's own money and pursues its own projects. Other country 'nodes' are affiliates of these two. The International Center for Journalists is an American NGO that runs the Knight International Media Fellows program, sort of a Peace Corps for journalists, and does some longer projects. IREX is the 600-pound gorilla in the space, but they are a for-profit outfit. There are smaller NGOs who are not as well-funded and tend to focus on particular countries. I've done work for pretty much all of them, plus a British charity I refuse to name because even seeing their initials on the screen will cause my hands to shake.
As more money has flowed into these projects, the 'Beltway Bandits' have moved in. Creative Associates, Chemonics, guys like that. I haven't done any direct work for them, but have helped develop joint proposals they did with NGOs (another long story).
Who pays for all this? Govt aid organizations (USAID, British DFID, German GTz, EU), the UN, Soros, private foundations (McCarthur, Ford, smaller players), and occasional odds and sods like some local JayCees or Chambers of Commerce.
Finally ... a link to the website of Pajhwok, the Afghan news agency I mentioned, at my sig. They supply every newspaper and radio station in the country, plus the non-state owned TV. Reuters, BBC, AP and others shamelessly steal from Pajhwok; 'Pajhwok' means 'echo' and/or 'reflection' in both Dari and Pashtu, Afghanistan's two major languages. They publish in five languages (sometimes the English is a little rough, and produces amusing results).
