A Dwindling Army of Overseas Journalists

Nobody sees the world like foreign correspondents. The biggest international stories often are the most devastating ones, so they travel all over the world to report back on events more wrenching than anything their readers are likely to encounter in their own lives. Tina Susman has covered sub-Saharan Africa for over a decade, as well as the Asian tsunami, the London Metro bombings, Darfur, and, most recently, the earthquake in Haiti. From 2007 to 2009, she served as the Baghdad bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.

Now the job of a foreign correspondent is getting even harder. "There are fewer of us to do more work than ever," Susman tells Gelf. With the loss of editors, research assistants, technicians, even travel secretaries, she says, "we have lost the support staff crucial to our work."