The Wall Street Journal‘s Bangkok-based correspondent Patrick S. Barta talks about getting started, new media, the best and worst things about working for a major news organization overseas, and what happens when two-plus billion people in China begin to eat as much beef as Americans.
Can you tell us about yourself and your position at The Wall Street Journal? How long have you been there? Where is home?
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I’m 36 years old, born in Dallas, Texas. I attended the University of Texas at Austin for my B.A., then spent some time working as a freelancer in Costa Rica. Later I got a Master’s in journalism at Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1997. I then got an internship in WSJ‘s Houston bureau working for the paper’s “Texas Journal” section — a now-defunct, four-page section focusing on Texas news. After three months, I was promoted to staff reporter (which remains my current job title), and I covered real estate, agriculture and the environment across Texas. Two years later I moved to the national edition in NY covering housing and the U.S. economy. Much of my work in that period focused on the emergence of a nationwide real estate bubble and accounting scandals at Freddie Mac, the large government-sponsored company. In early 2004, I moved to Bangkok to be a regional natural resources reporter, focusing on the growth of China and India and their impact on the world’s natural resources. My stories have focused on the search for oil to feed China; the rebirth of the world’s mining sector; the current strains on world food supplies; the race to create new alternative energies; the growing scarcity of water; and the environmental implications of China’s and India’s rise.
Home for me is still Dallas, where my parents live.
Why Bangkok? What unique challenges do you face reporting in Thailand vs. other parts of the world? Did you select Bangkok as a base, or did the WSJ send you there?
My bosses and I decided upon Bangkok together. The idea was that we wanted a central location that would serve as an easy hub for traveling across the region. As a crossroads in the middle of Asia, it’s ideal for bouncing to places like India, China, Indonesia, Australia, etc. It’s also a very interesting and culturally rich city — in other words, just a more interesting place to live than some of the alternatives. WSJ has two other full-time correspondents there. One covers Thailand itself, including local political, economic and corporate news stories. The other is a regional correspondent, like me, writing mostly about travel and leisure across Asia for our Weekend sections. As for unique challenges, Thailand is generally a very easy country to operate in. Communications infrastructure is generally good, though we do have some phone and internet problems from time to time, and as noted, the air transport links are generally quite good. It’s a relatively cheap city, though that’s changing somewhat, especially as the U.S. dollar declines. It’s hard for me to say [whether it’s hard or easy to report from Thailand] — I don’t actually do much “Thai” reporting. Most of my time in Thailand is either spent writing or setting up trips and reporting in other countries.
What is the hot story in Asia right now? What sort of stories do you usually cover?
With regards to my beat, the big story simply is that China and India are booming, and their emergence as major economies is going to totally transform the world economy. What happens when two-plus billion people suddenly start entering the middle class and demanding the same conveniences and luxuries common in the U.S. and Europe? Can the world survive if they all get cars? Or air conditioning? Where will we get the oil? How will we contain the carbon emissions? And what will happen when everyone in China eats as much beef or corn as Americans? How will we provide those foods? What environmental implications must be considered, especially since growing more crops requires more water, more chemicals, more land? What problems are being created? What opportunities — for new investment in “green” technologies, for instance — are being created? I feel like I’m right in the center of one of the biggest transformations in history — the emergence of China and India — and it’s incredibly exciting. It also involves travel to fantastic places, because WSJ believes strongly in sending its reporters out into the field. In my case, editors want to know how the growth of China and India is affecting not just people who live in those two countries, but also across the world, from the small-time miner in Africa who is producing copper for some Chinese factory to the Australian outback entrepreneur who’s looking to profit. Over the past four years I’ve traveled to 20 or more countries, including Mongolia, Congo, Brunei, Laos, and Sri Lanka.
How did you get your foot in the door? What was your first story for WSJ?
While in graduate school, I basically sent my resume to anyone who would look at it. I was just trying to get a summer internship that would, I hoped, serve as a foot in the door for something bigger later. Two newspapers offered [me] internships: the Miami Herald and WSJ. Both, I presume, liked my Latin America freelancing experience. Although my bosses at WSJ never told me this, I think they thought it showed initiative and the paper at the time (as now) was very interested in the Latin American economy. I think freelancing overseas is a great move for young journalists, especially given how competitive newspapers can be, because it can help set you apart from other candidates who have been slogging away at small dailies. Working for a small daily can be a great move, too, since it gives you good, practical experience. But by going overseas, you set yourself apart as someone who’s willing to take risks, and you get a very wide field to roam. If something big happens — a coup, or an economic meltdown, or even just an election — you can be the lead reporter, especially in places where there isn’t much competition from other freelancers.
In any event, I selected the WSJ internship because it was closer to home, and I liked that WSJ stories were deeper and more analytical. I also liked that WSJ had more overseas jobs — even back then I knew I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. I never thought I’d actually get a full-time offer from WSJ, of course; my plan, at the time, was to knock out some good stories during my three-month internship, get some good clips, and then hopefully use them at some later date to get a good job with a reputable paper. I thought a lot about going back overseas as a freelancer, armed with WSJ clips to help me get good freelance assignments. But then WSJ offered me a full-time job, to my surprise. There was a bit of luck involved. At the time, the Internet was just emerging as a new force, and many WSJ staffers were leaving the paper to take jobs (and stock options) providing content for new Web sites. It was one of the only times in recent years (indeed, perhaps decades) when there were lots of job openings at major papers, all because so many senior people were bowing out. Two months into my internship, WSJ offered me a full-time job, and I took it. I quickly wondered if I had made the right move: working as an intern was one thing, but as a staff reporter, the pressure went up about 10 notches. WSJ is intense and the amount of reporting we do for stories is enormous. If we aren’t 100 percent certain about something, we don’t write around it — we write more.
Although I don’t recall my first story, precisely, I do recall having my editors cut my stories to shreds as they found all the reporting holes, etc. It was incredibly hard work and it took me a very long time to start to feel comfortable; even today I find some stories to be a struggle, and our editors are no less demanding today than they were back then.
The one key lesson I learned in terms of getting the job is that you basically just want to get your foot in the door with a major news organization any way you can, whether it’s an internship, or answering phones, or whatever. Once you’re inside, you’re a known quantity, and a known quantity is always better than an unknown quantity. WSJ had a number of jobs to fill in those days, and it could have picked from a wealth of great reporters; for my first job, for instance, they could have gone with any number of experienced veterans from the many great newspapers in Texas, including the Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle, or others from outside Texas. They picked me, not because I was any better than those folks — quite the contrary. They picked me because they were already getting to know my personality, strengths and weaknesses, and as an intern I was already learning their system. That made me a known quantity, and therefore less of a risk to them than bringing in a more experienced outsider. Bottom line: Just get in the door somehow.
I’m picturing lots of late nights and rounds of beers at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand with other Bangkok-based correspondents. Do you know, or collaborate at all with, the writers from other news organizations?
Yes, we’re known to put back a beer or two at the FCCT. One of the great things about Bangkok is that it’s a hub for “regional” correspondents, for all the reasons I picked the city — it’s cheap, has good infrastructure, and is a good jumping-off point for other locales. There are a lot of folks in Bangkok who come and go from really interesting places — Vietnam, Indonesia, even Iraq. So there are always people coming back from fascinating trips, and it’s great to have a central place to meet and swap stories. I regularly run into correspondents from The Economist, Newsweek, The New York Times, and the Financial Times. We don’t collaborate much on local stories — I don’t cover Thailand, anyway — and as always, there’s a bit of competition. We don’t want NYT to pick up one of our ideas, for example. That said, I think there’s less competition and more collegiality when you’re working overseas, because the field of operations is big and we’re all working on very different stuff a lot of the time. We’re not all competing for some little scrap of news — often, we’re off chasing stories that fit our own particular reporting responsibilities, which often don’t overlap. It’s great then to come back to Bangkok to swap tales, and that’s one of the great things about being a foreign correspondent. There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over the supposed demise of the foreign correspondent — and yes, newspapers have indeed cut staff overseas. But in the case of Asia, the institution is alive and well. Global interest in our part of the world is big, and there are lots of great journalists roaming the region, writing fantastic stories.
How accessible is Thailand and southeast Asia to foreign journalists? Are sources at all hesitant to give information to foreign journalists vs. local journalists? Do you work with a fixer?
It all depends on where you are. Thailand itself is quite accessible. There are some hurdles you have to jump through to get a press visa or work permit, but for the most part Thailand is open to foreign journalists. Some other countries are also very easy, including Australia. But generally speaking, it’s much harder to get information in Asia than in the U.S, and it takes longer. Large institutions — companies, government offices — aren’t as accustomed to dealing with the press, and they’re often suspicious of Western journalists. Many of the countries in the region don’t have a free press and respect for reporters is low, so some high-ranking officials and corporate executives don’t feel any need to interact with the media. In the U.S., a public official or CEO may try to avoid a question or duck a reporter for a while, but sooner or later, they know they are accountable to the public and have to engage the media. In Asia, often, it’s not that way. Some higher-ups feel that newspapers exist only to reprint their press releases, and so they’re taken aback when reporters actually ask tough questions. It’s not good form to question authority in some areas. So you have to be more persistent and you sometimes have to wait a lot longer to get stories done.
Language can also be a barrier. Although English is commonly spoken in some areas, it’s not used everywhere, and so I often must hire a fixer/translator. They do more than translate, though. Good fixers can help cut through red tape, or figure out who to call, or basically just explain why certain things work the way they do. Sometimes I hire fixers even if language isn’t an issue. It’s like hiring a local expert to travel with you, pointing out things you might not have noticed, encouraging you to ask questions you wouldn’t have thought of. They’re also key when you leave major urban areas, as I often do, to get to know people in small villages affected by the big global trends we’re writing about. Interestingly, for all the difficulties in pinning down CEOs, politicians and other “important” people in Asia, I find that everyday citizens are actually more open there than in the U.S. They’re less familiar with the media – and perhaps less cynical about it– so they’re less guarded, and in places where politicians and other wealthy people sometimes pay very little attention to their needs, they’re pleased that someone from the press is actually taking the time to get their say. My trips to rural areas are often the most rewarding part of my job.
How has your job changed, for better or worse, with the adaptation of new media, such as podcasts and online video? Are certain types of stories best presented in a certain format?
The job has gotten better. There’s a bit more work, yes, but the results are very satisfying. At WSJ, we regularly do online video presentations, audio clips, photo slideshows, and I feel that it makes my stories far richer and more interesting than before. Although I’ve always loved print, a short video clip or photo selection can really make a story come alive, and it allows you to use material that might have fallen on the cutting room floor before. I now carry a small video camera and ordinary digital camera with me everywhere I go on assignment, and it’s great fun thinking up good ideas of things to shoot. Often I’ll plan an extra half-day of reporting to roam around a region getting more visual elements. For example, for a story about a mining project in New Caledonia, an island in the South Pacific, I spent four or five hours roaming around both the mine site as well as the main city to get snapshots to show readers. The main city wasn’t really an element in the story, but I thought it would be interesting to the reader to get a sense of what this odd place was like, since few if any WSJ readers ever get a chance to go to New Caledonia. In other words, if WSJ is paying me to go to a place and be a reader’s eyes and ears, I want to make the most of it. And the photo slideshow was indeed very popular.
Sometimes shooting video and photos can be a hassle — you’re trying to interview someone, notepad in hand, and then you have to fiddle with the camera to make sure they’re on tape. Some interviewees stiffen up when a camera is turned on. But that just means I have to discipline myself to shut the cameras off when I really need to be focusing on making sure I have the basic story — the print story — which is still the most important piece of the puzzle. I can go back to Bangkok with holes in my video reporting, but not in my overall print story. I find that even if key elements are missing in the video, whatever I provide to WSJ.com is still interesting.
One other thing I really like is the viral nature of these online offerings. Before, I’d mention to my friends that I had a big story in the paper and some would read it, while some would forget. Once the day’s paper was gone, the opportunity was lost. Not so with our online offerings. Friends or sources now email my stories to other friends or sources who then share them with other people and so on and so on, giving a story a much longer shelf life and wider distribution. I still get emails from people who stumble upon on one of my stories months after publication. That never happened before.
Do you pitch ideas to WSJ or take assignments? Or both? If pitching, how do you get ideas for your stories?
Most of the stories I write are stories that I come up with and then pitch to my editors. This is just the nature of my particular assignment. Other jobs at WSJ are far more news-driven and involve more reactive stories. For example, if you cover Google, you can’t exactly escape writing up a story if Google announces a big acquisition. My job is driven less by day-to-day news and is more about trying to identify longer-term issues that matter to our readers, and then finding ways to show them in stories. In some ways Bangkok isn’t ideal for generating ideas — none of my sources live there, and few ever come through. But there are ways around that — it just means you have to be resourceful. I get some of my ideas chatting on the phone with economists, analysts, and academics. I attend a handful of conferences each year, which also allows me to interact with key people. Then I read the competition carefully, with an eye on what they may be missing. I read NYT, Financial Times, and The Economist, and often you can come up with interesting ideas by simply concentrating on what other journalists didn’t ask, or by connecting dots that they might not have connected in their own stories, or just by asking a few more questions that then lead to a new conclusion that takes you beyond what the other guy wrote. But by far the biggest way I get stories is simply by getting on the road. Typically I’ll start off with one main story idea in a place — say, Australia– and then pitch it to my bosses from Bangkok. They’ll say yes, and then I’ll go. When I’m there, I keep my eyes open for everything, and just being in a place inevitably leads to new ideas. You’re running into random people you might not have talked to before; you’re reading local publications you never dealt with before. I usually come back from trips with more ideas than when I started.
How can a new writer, without any contacts at the WSJ, get an editor’s attention? Which “rookie mistakes” will send a pitch straight to the rejection pile? And is there a certain type of story, or section that’s more accessible to new writers?
It’s a cliché, but anything that’s bold and different is good. WSJ shies away from anything that looks or smells like something the competition is writing. Stories need a new twist, or you need to be taking the editor to some place he/she has never been to before. I did a page one story last year about how the Maldives, the resort island destination, was building a new island to save itself from rising sea tides. It was topical, given all the concerns about climate change. But most importantly, it just seemed like something new, something they didn’t know about, in a place reporters rarely go to. While it helps to read other publications to get ideas, it doesn’t help much if you simply copy what they’re writing — those ideas go nowhere. You have to push the ball further. I think that anything that shows initiative and originality gets rewarded. That said, WSJ does not use a tremendous amount of freelance copy; in fact, it uses very little, and close to none in its normal news pages. We do use some in some of our lifestyle sections, like the Weekend edition, but it tends to be well-established writers who have standing relationships with the editors. If you’re just getting your feet wet, local daily papers are probably the best way to go.
What’s the best thing about your job? The worst?
I have tremendous freedom to roam the world, writing about big issues, and WSJ is willing to spend what’s required to make sure its reporters truly understand what they’re writing about. I’ve been to incredible places and seen things I could never have seen in the U.S., from the small villages of India to the nomadic steppes of Mongolia to the diamond mines of Botswana. I sometimes can’t believe I get paid to do this job. I also like the day-to-day flexibility; I mostly make my own hours, and I decide how, when and where I want to work. Sometimes it’s from home. Sometimes it’s by the pool. Sometimes it’s in a suit, sometimes it’s in shorts.
With that freedom comes pressure and lots of challenges. I work extremely long hours, and it seems like I never get to totally shut down. I interview sources in all time zones — Asia, the U.S., Europe, and if the source can only call me at 8 p.m. while I’m having dinner with a friend who I haven’t seen in two years and is visiting from the U.S., I have to take the call. Sometimes, I’ll work until 8 in the morning handling questions from editors in the U.S. who are working on New York time. And while the travel is extremely fun and exciting, it’s also tough — physically and mentally. I can go several weeks living out of hotels in strange countries, far away from my friends and relatives. Technology is often a problem on these trips — my laptop breaks down, or I can’t get a phone connection on deadline, whatever. It’s very exhausting — but satisfying.
Describe your typical day, if there is one. How many hours per week would you say you work, if you can even quantify that?
I more or less always work — the line between work and play is very thin in my job. When I’m in Bangkok, I get up around 7 a.m. and spend a couple of hours going through emails that came in overnight and reading the day’s papers. I usually head to the office (though sometimes I work from home) around 10 and begin making calls for whatever stories I’m working on. What happens from there depends on what I’m working on. If I have to interview someone in the U.S. — as I do often do — I’ll schedule that for 9 p.m. or so; in those cases, I might take a bit of time out during the day to take care of personal things. The schedule depends very much on what I’m working on, and when the work needs to happen. Sometimes I’ll be on a boat on the main river in central Bangkok heading to a dinner, but doing a work call as we go. I don’t work the entire weekend, but I almost always do some work during the weekend. When I’m on the road, it’s more or less the same. I try to maximize my time in a location, so I don’t really take a lot of down time — I basically report straight through. I’ll get up early, try to log on somehow to find out what’s going on in the world, and then I’m off chasing meetings. The one exception is that if I’m going somewhere particularly interesting or exotic, I usually try to take a day or two off — usually on the weekend — to see some sights.
Bangkok is your home base, but you don’t seem to be there often. How often are you traveling?
It depends on what I’m working on. Sometimes I’ll be in Bangkok for a month at a time; then, I’ll be away four of the next five weeks. I’ve probably spent about four weeks in Bangkok over the past three months. Sometimes, I’m there more. On average, I spend about 60 percent of my time in Bangkok and 40 percent on the road. In Bangkok, I’m either writing or making phone calls to set up more stories and trips; that can be done from home or the office, though I try to do a lot from the office just to be around other people. On the road, I’m working from wherever I can — the car, the hotel, the office lobby, wherever. Roaming mobile phones and Blackberries make my job a lot easier than it would have been ten years ago.
Any advice for aspiring journalists?
Try to think up stories that no one else is covering, or angles that no one else is thinking of. Originality stands out. Even on stories that everyone else is doing, look for a different angle, or an unusual person to interview, or whatever — just show you’re curious and thinking of different ways to look at the world. Often, just setting foot in a place is half the battle, because so few reporters actually take the time and expense to go places. You always see and learn things you would not have thought of back at the office. If you’re debating whether to reach out to that one additional source or to go that site that’s a pain to get to, that means you should probably just do it. As for building your career, always look for ways into the door at big institutions — big papers, big TV stations, whatever. There’s absolutely no dishonor in covering the local school board for a tiny daily newspaper — it’s great experience. But I’d always trade that kind of job for a low-level gig at a major paper, because you’ll be rubbing shoulders with top talent and you’ll become a known quantity to them.
What’s next?
More stories.
How to Get Started:
Just do it: “Often, just setting foot in a place is half the battle. If you’re debating whether to reach out to that one additional source or to go that site that’s a pain to get to, that means you should probably just do it.”
Become a known quantity: “Get your foot in the door with a major news organization any way you can. Once you’re inside, you’re a known quantity, and a known quantity is always better than an unknown quantity.”
Think differently: “Try to think up stories that no one else is covering, or angles that no one else is thinking of. Originality stands out. Show you’re curious and thinking of different ways to look at the world.”
Set yourself apart: “I think freelancing overseas is a great move for young journalists, especially given how competitive newspapers can be. By going overseas, you set yourself apart as someone who’s willing to take risks, and you get a very wide field to roam.”
Jen Swanson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Transitions Abroad, Weissmann Travel Reports, and Star Service Online.
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