At GlobalPost, we’re proud of the coverage we provided this year particularly in Afghanistan. Our team has done stellar work there and we are thankful to them for it. We’ve had some notable successes in other areas of our reporting, which I have tried to highlight albeit sporadically here in this blog. But we also recognize that we at GlobalPost have much work to do in 2011. We are poised for a year of change and growth, a pivotal year where we will launch a redesign of the site and where we will take on more ambitious , in-depth reporting. I would like to keep you involved in the conversation of how we’re evolving as a news organizations. I’ve tried to do that through the blog, but haven’t always succeeded as the demands of the daily news operation have been relentless in our two years since launch. (One of my New Year’s resolutions is to try to do better tending to this blog! )  In the spirit of  starting fresh and living up to resolutions,  I thought I’d copy you in on a New Year memo I just sent to our correspondents in the field and a link to our new 2011 Field Guide for Correspondents. It’s hot off the presses and dated 1/1/11, which as one of my sons just joked will be a one-derful year! We ask that you not reprint the Field Guide without our permission,  but we invite you to take a look as it contains our news organization’s core values and it also includes our correction policy as well as nine essays written by seven of our correspondents in the field and from our editor-at-large Sebastian Junger as well as the BBC Washington Bureau Chief Simon Wilson. Here it is:

To all correspondents in the field,

BOSTON – Wishing you all the best in 2011. Thinking particularly of those of you in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places in the field where you might be far from family and friends. No matter where you are, I trust you are all resourceful enough foreign correspondents to find a glass of cheer. So, here’s to you.
Happy New Year!

Here’s the 2011 edition of GlobalPost’s Field Guide for Correspondents. This year you will see I have updated some chapters and included nine essays from correspondents in the field which we’ve collected over the last two years. I’ve also made an addendum which includes a tip sheet on social networking and our policy for corrections, which was first sent out to you at the beginning of last year. You can quickly retrieve the full 33-page Field Guide for Correspondents at this link. (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8465435/globalpost/field%20guide/2011_fieldGuide3.pdf) (Lower resolution pdf files of the Field Guide are also included as an attachment, but it takes some time to open.)

We hope you will download and save the Field Guide and maybe even be old school enough to print it out. We want you to know it and refer to it when needed. We will have some bound copies here for those of you who might be passing through Boston.

The expectations, standards and policies that are written in the Field Guide shape the core of our relationship with those of you in the field. They have put us in very good stead in the last two years as we’ve worked together to build a news organization which has earned a solid reputation for accuracy and integrity.  That has come through the skill and vigilance of our editing team here in Boston and the solid, balanced reporting you correspondents do every day in the field. Thanks to everyone for all the hard work.

The New Year is shaping up as a very exciting one for GlobalPost with a lot of good changes in the air. We are looking forward to the pending launch of our redesign which looks great. We are also looking forward to the transition in our editorial team as Editor Thomas Mucha takes the reins of daily news operations and I turn my focus to Special Reports and a new initiative for in-depth reporting through non-profit funding. It’s a pivotal year for GlobalPost and Tom and I are both looking forward to working together with you to step up our coverage on all fronts.

We are pleased to share the news with you that we have secured two significant grants for 2011, one for reporting on global health and the other for reporting on human rights. I will soon provide more details about those and other grants and how you can be part of these reporting projects. As previously stated, it is my hope that you will be sending along ground-breaking project ideas and that we might have a chance to work together on these Special Reports. I am looking forward to getting back in the field myself in the coming year. Hope to see you out there.

All best in 2011!

Cheers,
Charlie

Charles M. Sennott
Executive Editor and co-founder

The 60^th IPI World Congress brought together some 500 journalists, editors and publishers from around the globe for a conference titled “Thinking the Unthinkable: Are We Losing the News? Media Freedom in the New Media Landscape.”

Candidly, sometimes conferences like this are less than worthwhile. But this one was different. Here there was a kinetic exchange of ideas from journalists from every corner of the world. They hailed from historic centers of global power like the BBC, to new centers of power such as Google and to the quieter efforts of noble teams like Radio Okapi, the small but very important radio station that is reporting on the issues that matter in the Congo. GlobalPost was proud to be among those invited and to share in the panel discussion on the future of media.

There were inspiring speeches. They were presented by the well-known such as the former Sunday Times editor Sir Harold Evans, who delivered a kind of journalistic call to arms that was as inspiring as the St. Crispin’s Day speech in Henry V. And they were delivered by the less well known, such as Joseph Guyler C. Delva, an investigative reporter from Haiti, who enlightened the conference on the need for a strong media to watch over his country as it struggles to emerge from the devastating earthquake.

It was also a time of solidarity for the journalists who are risking their lives around the world, and a time to recognize the many who’ve been murdered. IPI Director Alison Bethel McKenzie, a former colleague of mine from The Boston Globe, presented a grim report on 52 journalists who’ve been killed on the job so far this year.

“Journalists continue to systematically lose their lives to conflict, militants, paid thugs, governments, drug dealers, corrupt politicians, unscrupulous security officers and others,” she said.

In the end of the day, Vienna may be a bit rich for the journalist crowd. But there was no question that the dramatic elegance of Vienna’s historic City Hall seemed the right setting to honor true heroes of the craft of journalism on Monday, September 13. Up on stage were the likes of May Chidiac, the Lebanese TV journalist who lost her leg and her arm in a car bomb attack in retaliation for her aggressive reporting in Lebanon. There was Akbar Ganji, the Iranian journalist and dissident who has worked tirelessly defending freedom of speech in Iran and spent time in prison for his efforts. And there were the posthumous awards, such as the one accepted on behalf of Lasantha Wickrematunge, the brave editor of the Sri Lankan daily newspaper, The Sunday Leader, who was murdered in 2009. For the full list of World Press Freedom heroes awarded this year and the 60 who’ve been awarded in all, you can visit the IPI website.

Thanks and talk soon,

Ben

She loved everything about reporting –  the crackling sound of police radios and the breathless calls from reporters out hustling a big story somewhere in the city back in the day long before cell phones and texting. She listened to those who would call in to drop a dime on a corrupt politician, to complain about a story or to sing the praises of something they’d read. She knew names and kept phone numbers and always had an idea about how to pursue a story.

In my case, I was usually calling in to the switchboard from the Middle East. Rose would pick up the line when I was  calling in on a satphone from Iraq or Gaza with all hell breaking loose in the background and the connection going in and out. She would dispatch someone to go pull the editors out of a meeting or find them in the cafeteria. And she’d stay with me on the line, catching me up on all that was going on in the newsroom and she’d ask about what was going where I was and then like punctuation at the end of a sentence she’d ask me the same question every time:  “Hey, have you called your wife?”

She was always reminding those of us in the field about what’s important.

“When’s the last time you read a story to your kids?” she’d ask with an accent sharpened in her native South Boston.

Rose was the daughter of a an Irish cleaning woman, or “scrubby,” as they were known who mopped the floors of the Globe. Her father was a Longshoreman. Her parents were both immigrants from Ireland and Rose was fiercely proud of her ancestry and just as proud of her hometown of “Southie.” She loved to sing the old Irish songs and she knew every word to every one of them. She and her sister Barbara, who was also an operator at the Globe, were inseparable. She was  a loving mother and a doting grandmother. And she was the kind of friend who always had time to listen and offer a quick bit of advice whether you wanted it or not. Before I went overseas for the Globe, we’d share laughs and cigarettes in the small, windowless office of  columnist Mike Barnicle. They were good days when newspapers still had confidence and swagger and great characters and a great value for GroundTruth.

Here’s how Barnicle described Rose in the Globe obituary:

“She was absolutely the heart and soul of The Boston Globe. Rose knew everyone she looked out at, sitting in the newsroom. She knew something about their lives, she knew things about their families, a child’s illness, a daughter getting into college, a marriage breaking up. She also happened to be one of the finest reporters I’ve ever met. She had a sense of what news was, what stories people wanted to read, and what people would read.’’

Fittingly enough Rose’s wake was held on St. Patrick’s Day. A funeral Mass was held the day after.  And today she was laid to rest.  She was 73.

See below for Brian’s audio slideshow, featuring the photographer’s own narration of the project.

In the Enterprise category we won for our in-depth series “World of Trouble” on the global economic recession. GlobalPost’s Managing Editor Thomas Mucha led the coverage by 20 correspondents in 20 countries who provided what we call “groundtruth.” That is reporting that focuses on how this sprawling crisis affects real people, their lives, jobs and living standards. Not the kind of coverage that relies on talking heads and analysts on Wall Street, but gritty, down-to-earth reporting in the field by correspondents who live in the countries about which they are writing.

GlobalPost also won two awards in the Special Projects category: for our series “Living in the Shadows” about migrant workers in China, reported by correspondents Kathleen McLaughlin, Sharron Lovell and Josh Chin, and by Mucha; and for “Silicon Sweatshops”, a five-part investigation of the supply chains that produce many of the world’s most popular technology products, reported by correspondents Jonathan Adams and Kathleen McLaughlin. And finally we won in Columns, again our Thomas Mucha, for his excellent and insightful columns on global business issues.

From Greece to China and Argentina to India, GlobalPost plans to stay on the story of the swirling economic crisis and the ways in which it affects us all. Stay tuned!

Here is a first anniversary memo that I sent out today to our team of more than 70 correspondents in 50 countries. In the spirit of transparency and pride over what we have accomplished, I thought I’d share it here:

To all GlobalPost correspondents, columnists and editors,

Thank you for all the great work that made our first year at GlobalPost a spectacular success.

On this day one year ago, we set out on a journey to create a new voice in international news for the digital age. And now one year after launch we’ve achieved that. In fact, we have surpassed all of our goals on the editorial side by making an impact in the field of foreign reporting and in building an audience.

We’ve achieved what many said was impossible: drawing millions of actively engaged readers to our site by offering quality, in-depth coverage of international affairs. We’ve built the foundation of a GlobalPost community that understands that the challenges we face – terrorism, climate change, economic crisis — are global, and therefore require a news organization that is global in reach.

We’ve broken news and been recognized for coverage that takes readers beyond the daily headlines and into virtually every corner of the world. All of you make up a fantastic team of writers, photographers, videographers and editors who’ve provided rigorous journalism and riveting storytelling. To put it simply, we owe our success in this first year to you, our team in the field.

Cheers!

We have many challenges ahead this year. And in many ways 2010 will be the pivotal year for this bold attempt in online journalism. We will need to build on our success and at the same work to protect our brand. We have to keep our standards for quality journalism at the highest level. In that spirit, I am once again attaching our field guide for correspondents and a new correction policy. Please read them both.

We must continue to develop our GlobalPost brand that uniquely blends old-school reporting and a digital-age desire to break new ground in multimedia. We have to continue to seek out “ground truth,” the facts on the ground gotten only by living where you report and analyze. We have to continue to produce special projects, and I invite you to propose ideas through your editor.

In short, we must continue while stepping up our game even more. We need to break news and find stories that matter and get noticed. Along these lines, we welcome any and all ideas for high-impact reports from the field.

We’re now able to amplify this kind of outstanding work by our editorial team through carefully cultivated partnerships. As many of you know, we’ve established key editorial partnerships with CBS News and PBS’ NewsHour. Your reporting and a special series of reports titled “On Location” are regularly featured on these broadcasts.

We’ve established syndication partnerships with some 25 newspapers, including the Newark Star Ledger, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the New York Daily News, the Cambodia Daily News, the Khaleej Times, the South China Morning Post and others around the United States and around the world. Your work is appearing in the pages of these newspapers and being read by a growing and loyal audience who are starting to recognize the brand, GlobalPost.

We’ve developed linking agreements with big players on the web, including the Huffington Post, NewsMax, Reuters, AOL and others. In these agreements, we offer stories from the field so that they can reach a wider audience. In exchange, we receive links back to our site, which has proven to be a steady driver of traffic.

Our audience growth has been outstanding and has far surpassed goals we set last year. We had originally hoped to achieve 600,000 unique visitors per month in our first year. We surged past 500,000 in October, and by November achieved 750,000 unique visitors in a month. That pace of growth has allowed us to feel confident that we can close in on our goal this year of 1 million unique visitors per month.

The 1 million threshold puts us in league with many large news gathering sites and will be critically important for advertisers and our ability to become a self-sustaining enterprise.

As we have built the brand and the audience, we have gathered the support of several national advertising accounts. These sponsors include Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Liberty Mutual and Siemens. With the solid editorial team we have built, the reputation we have earned as a serious news organization, and a rapidly growing and increasingly engaged audience, we feel we are now poised in 2010 to make great strides on the business side. For a detailed picture of where we are in the business plan, please read CEO Phil Balboni’s year-end message.

We are well into this journey now, but we still have a long way to go. I look forward to hearing from all you about your ideas and your feedback on how best to navigate the way forward.

Respectfully,

Charles M. Sennott

Executive Editor and Co-Founder

The Pilot House, Lewis Wharf

Boston, MA

The New York Times reported this on its front page Monday as a follow to the story of the Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a chemical bomb. The chemical detonator failed and passengers jumped him, preventing the attack from taking down the airliner.

The New York Times’ Eric Schmitt and Robert F. Worth had some interesting facts about how the CIA began a program a year ago to send top field operatives in Yemen. They also revealed that the Pentagon is spending $70 million over the next 18 months and using teams of special forces to work with the Yemeni military in counter-terrorism

At GlobalPost and here on this blog, we first reported the US expanding its counter-terrorism initiative to Yemen and around the Horn of Africa back in September. It looks like we were on to something and we will continue to follow the story.

When President Obama announced Tuesday night that he will “finish the job” in Afghanistan and the White House began its hard sell to the media on the idea of a troop increase of approximately 30,000, there is one looming question that rises above all others.

What does “finish the job” mean?

There is a desperate need to clarify the mission in Afghanistan that far exceeds any consideration of troop size in Afghanistan.

When Obama delivers his national address on Tuesday and announces the most consequential foreign policy decision of his presidency, he will have to sell the troop increase with a contradictory mix of resolve and exit strategy in a war that is entering its ninth year.

It will be a hard sell to an increasingly skeptical American public, an over-stretched military, a faltering international coalition, wary Afghan neighbors such as Pakistan and Russia and a Democrat-controlled congress that might for the first time resist getting in line with a popular president. It will even be a hard sell to the military brass and political hard-liners who will see it a halting, half step toward what is needed for success.

But as he tries to close a fateful deal, the thing to look for is not whether it is 20,000 or 25,000 or 30,000 or even 40,000 troops, but whether he has succeeded in clarifying the mission and clearly explaining what he means by “finish the job.”

Is this a comprehensive and classic counter-insurgency campaign intended to deliver a death blow to Al Qaeda as well as the Taliban? Or is this a more focused counter-terrorism strategy that will cripple Al Qaeda and contain the Taliban by bringing into the fold moderate elements and chasing from the cities the more militant factions?

If it is indeed a broad counter-insurgency campaign as President Obama’s rhetoric in recent weeks and the leaks from General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and others would suggest then the math doesn’t add up and the administration’s proposed troop increase is a perilous miscalculation.

Here’s why.

Al Qaeda has fewer than 100 fighters who live and die by the ideology of Osama bin Laden, according to the military’s own assessment. The Taliban is a multi-layered, multi-factional, cross-border ethnic, social and religious armed movement with wide support and deep roots in Afghanistan, particularly in its most remote regions. The many elements of the Taliban live and die and are in fact bound together by an enduring commitment to resisting corruption among Afghan leaders who control Kabul and resist any empire that should try to occupy its land.

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A fight against the ragtag remnants of Al Qaeda does not require any more troops, it requires instead better, more focused tactics and much better intelligence, particularly from neighboring Pakistan. A fight against the Taliban is never going to have sufficient troops levels even with the the 100,000 U.S. troops that will be in country if and when the 30,000 troop increase takes effect. Just ask the British military historians and the retired generals of the former Soviet Union who still remember their humiliating retreat from Afghanistan like so many empires before them.

This calculation of doom is based not only on the lessons of history, but also on what is known as “battlefield geometry,” the laws of which are very clearly spelled out in the U.S. military’s own field manual for counter insurgency.

That manual was co-authored by one of the world’s greatest military minds on counter insurgency, General David Petraeus, and in the document he calls for troop ratios that would far exceed — by at least a factor of two — what the U.S. and its withering coalition partners would have on the ground with this proposed increase.

Furthermore, a troop increase of tens of thousands more U.S. soldiers could significantly hinder an effective counter-terrorism strategy by alienating the Pashtun villages where the Taliban is strongest, according to many leading counter-insurgency experts from Washington to Helmand.

Troops that are thrown into Afghanistan without a deep understanding of its history and its tribal structure will inevitably make serious mistakes and likely be seen as an occupying force. So a bungled troop increase could, in effect, inflame the Taliban and make it stronger.

This is a critical decision by President Obama with enormous import for our country, for military families who will pay the price and for Afghanistan. No one should fault the president for careful deliberation, which the far right’s commentators prefer to call “dithering.” But it is fair and important to challenge the president on this proposed troop increase and to press him hard with an eye toward history and to ask whether his “finish the job” comment will years down the road ring just as hollow in Afghanistan as the “mission accomplished” sign came to signify the failures of the president before him in Iraq.