not much stuff

How to go about being a foreign correspondent with not much stuff. Notes from a presentation by Graham Holliday, Frontline Club, May 31, 2011.

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the 38 word version

If you’ve got the drive, you’re reasonably talented, you go somewhere odd, meet lots of people, get to know your patch, keep a blog, tweet a bit too, then - at least in my experience - stuff comes your way. link

And here's the somewhat longer presentation with original notes - which I didn't end up using.

Frontline club - solo foreign correspondent

View more documents from Graham Holliday

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Building Kigaliwire

Publishing Kigali Wire

View more presentations from Graham Holliday

The slideshow above will give you a bit more on the background of building kigaliwire and also some of the key tools I use to publish, distribute and collaborate online.

I jot notes and thoughts in the kigaliwire roughbook. And I outline the process and all the tools I use, or have used, on the kigali backwire.

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This is mostly how I make a living. I use this site as a very simple billboard to advertise my training and consultancy work, mention who I've worked for and what they've said about my work.

Please note: the site is a super simple one page blog. Word of mouth is the best method of getting media training and consultancy work.

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This is the back story to how one story unfolded on one day in Rwanda, what tools I used and how I used them.

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Reporters going solo

I've come across a number of reporters who do things in a similar way to me.

Take a look at video journalist Deborah Bonello and her Mexico Reporter site. There's an interesting interview with Deborah over here.

Christian Payne is a bit of a mulitmedia whizz. He seems to earn his cash - like me - mostly from training and consulting. He uses the cash he earns to do stuff he wants to do, under the guise of Documentally.

The photojournalist Tomas van Houtryve crowdsources funding for some projects and is one of the first photographers to use the Emphas.is model of funding projects.

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“Tools for helping journalists create content, ensure their content is relevant and reflects changing audience behaviour.” Created and curated by helpingmedia.

A wide range of tools on offer here. It's well worth exploring this list, noting down those you want to experiment with and think of ways in which you could use them in your work.

Here are some additional thoughts I added to the BBC College of Journalism blog about essential online tools for journalists. However, by it's very nature, this is a list which changes regularly.

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Lastly... if it all goes tits up, author and journalist Eric Weiner lists the 10 options left for the outta luck, outta work foreign correspondent.