17
transmitted facsimiles over telephone lines.
A few weeks later, the foreign editor of the
Times
looked
at this new technology and decreed that the paper would
authorize the purchase of fax machines at the rate of two
foreign bureaus a year.
Digital capabilities have transformed the economics of
journalism and further changed our work. When I was a
freelancer in Brazil in the early 1980s, I would report news
features, type up the stories on
onion-skin paper, select two
black-and-white photos, take a
bus to Rio’s central post office,
and then mail the news to
The
Washington Post
and
The
Miami Herald
.
When I was in West Africa in
the late 1980s, I would go for
three weeks at a time without
talking to an editor in New York.
They trusted me to cover my
region and not ask for hand-
holding. In 1986, in response to
a telex from the
Times
Foreign
Desk, I made the first known
direct dial call from Equatorial
Guinea to New York. It was the
foreign editor asking me if I
would like to move to Rio to
cover Brazil. (Yes!)
In 2001, when I moved to
Tokyo to cover Japan and Korea
for
The New York Times
, I arrived
working for one newspaper with
one deadline. Five years later,
when I completed the assignment,
I was writing for three outlets,
including the
Times
, the
Inter-
national Herald Tribune
, and
Times Digital
, and coping with
round-the-clock deadlines. I
found myself filing at midnight,
then updating the same story at
7 a.m., while still in bed.
On the family financial side, I
was lucky to catch the tail end
of new print’s golden era.
Before I even wrote one story,
the
Times
was paying $250,000
a year to maintain the Brooke family – $10,000 a month
for an apartment in an expat building, $90,000 a year for
our three sons to go to the American School of Japan,
plus assorted perks like flights home, straightening the
teeth of three teenage boys, etc. That is all history, since
digital wiped out paper and ink advertising.
In 2007, when I was angling to escape my job as Bloom-
berg Moscow bureau chief, I interviewed at
Time
magazine
for their Moscow job. The interviews went better and
better as I moved to bigger and bigger offices in the
Time-Life building on Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue. Finally,
the interviewing process took me to the managing editor’s
glassy corner office. There, I let slip that I had three sons,
all in boarding school or college. A fatal chill swept through
the sunny office. It was conveyed to me that they were
looking for a no frills, “laptop” correspondent, not a dad.
A few years later, I recounted that story to the man who
got the job. Supremely qualified – fluent Russian, Stanford
degree, and wonderful writer – he confessed that, work-
ing for
Time
magazine in 2012,
there was no way he could afford
to get married and have a child.
Journalism will evolve. News
ultimately will be delivered
through screens, not paper.
Economic models are being
developed to allow newsgath-
ering once again to pay for itself.
The New York Times
coverage
and website are stronger than
when I left 10 years ago. Through
the Internet, more news is de-
livered to more people than
ever before.
For people who want news,
the Internet has erased geo-
graphical and income barriers,
providing a truly democratic
access to information. Forty
years ago, 25 pounds of
New
York Times
were delivered to
the Schoolhouse at SPS. After a
lifetime of change, my belief is
unshaken in the value of
straight, accurate, independent
information.
On the premise that busi-
ness people pay for business
news, I plan to launch in
September the
Ukraine Busi-
ness Journal
. This will be an
English language weekly
financial newspaper that will
celebrate entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurship in all cor-
ners of Ukraine, a nation
larger than California.
The paper and ink version
will basically serve as a calling card. The digital version
will be locked behind a pay wall. It is designed to serve
as a practical tool for local and foreign investors, giving
them the information and confidence to create more
jobs and to build Ukraine’s market economy. Through
this venture I am reaping one of the rewards of life as a
correspondent; I’m evolving.
Above: Brooke reports from barricades in central Kyiv during
Ukraine’s winter 2013-14 pro-Europe Revolution of Dignity
“I would . . . type up
the stories on
onion-skin paper,
select two black-
and-white photos,
take a bus to Rio’s
central post office,
and then mail
the news. . . ”
COURTESY JIM BROOKE ’73
