“I really had never seen anything in the world…and I thought I should.”
Despite manifest generational differences, developments in technology and the general overhaul of news reporting, this sentiment is just as relevant and vital to young reporters today as it was in the 70s.
At 29, Hank Klibanoff watched a friendly game of backgammon become a plan to travel the world.
“Amsterdam?” A chip slid across the board.
“No.” It slid back.
“London?” Another chip. “Yes.”
Klibanoff would go on to The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, but first he would spend 11 months traveling abroad. He would learn self-sufficiency, survival instincts, how to live without much money, and other, less predictable, lessons.
In Egypt, he traveled with friends from pyramid to pyramid. By donkey. The next day, his travel party couldn’t even leave the room.
“Do not take the donkey,” he warned.
Much has changed since Hank Klibanoff was a young graduate, trying to forge a career in journalism. Today journalists face a failing economy, a flailing industry, and an audience with precious little faith in the work they do.
In conditions such as these, there’s little to hold on to. As novices struggle to know what exactly they should be learning and how exactly they should be preparing to bring the news to the world, at least they know that the best thing they can do to get ready for the job is to bring a view of the world to the news.
