Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>>PRESIDENT KINGTON: Quick question, how to do you deal with the huge variation in base
line education that women come from [inaudible]
>>CRISTI HEGRANES: That's a great question. So the program is obviously open to women
with this huge diversification in skills. Women with less basic skills and less literacy
levels, things like that coming in, they're just producing less. They're not actually
earning any less money because they're paid for their time and training and in the editorial
process, they're also producing a lot of stories that are just not being showcased
on the global level. So most of the stories you see on the GPI newswire are people who
have been with the program for at least 6 months to a year, but we try to make it so
that the older reporters or the reporters with better skills actually become mentors,
and they really work together so it really just boils down to they produce less work
for the formal global newswire, but not at the expense of income, that's a really important
piece of the program.
>>STUDENT: Could you explain more about the translation process between the local language
and English? Who does, how does it happen, how do you check how do you check it for facts?
>>CRISTI: Yeah, that's a great question. One of the main reasons GPI doesn't do breaking
news is because our editorial process is quite long. In fact late last year, part of our
development team at Third Plateau did an impact analysis of the organization and its, like,
the most hilarious graphic you've ever seen when they actually traced our editorial structure,
and how things are like, there's an arrow this way and this way and then its sort of
over there. It is a very complex editorial structure.
The translators in these desks are all local people and they are directly accountable to
the country editor and so they are trained in fact checking and they're trained in
all of these things. It becomes tricky sometimes when translations of direct quotes for example
has someone speaking in poor grammar or something that, you know, so a lot of times there's
back and forth on things like that to make sure that we're representing people's
words as accurately as possible both in local language and in English. And its time consuming,
it's very time consuming especially because GPI's focus is on the long form feature.
Alright so most GPI stories are longer than 1,000 words, so it is a time consuming process,
but it all happens locally and then once the local version is complete, the translation
is complete, it gets sent to headquarters in San Francisco and then that draft is edited
for any changes, its re-fact checked. A lot of times what happens at that point is that
the story is "globalized" as we say. So, because these are local people sometimes they're
writing about local customs or local descriptions that people in a mainstream audience, we get
about 160 countries per month, people from them reading our news. So we just try to add
explanations and things like that and then that version gets sent back and the translations
are matched and at that point they go out to their different distribution chains.
So it's a bit of a process, but its absolutely necessary because when you think about what
English means, in these communities it means something pretty deep, which is that these
are people who have not had access to formal education, which means they are likely of
a much different economic status and have a variety of other different social and cultural
hardships so I always look at language like its my problem for not speaking their language,
and so we try to make it as easy for them as possible, but yeah it's a good question and it's
a time consuming but very necessary part of the process.
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: So you mentioned one of the most important parts of being a social
entrepreneur is finding revenue streams that fit with your mission and make your organization
sustainable. Can you talk a little bit about the process of different revenue models that
you've gone through and that new exciting one you mentioned.
>>CRISTI: Yeah, definitely. So up until this point, fundraising has been 100 percent of
our revenue model, but even just in that, it happens all of the time that people offer
funding or foundations offer funding that don't match our mission. You know, we had
a corporate foundation offer us funding right at the very beginning for what was for us
at the time an extraordinary amount of money but they wanted prior review over content
on issues that were controversial for the foundation. So that's a deal breaker, right
that's totally a deal breaker. And stuff like that happens, it's not common, but
it definitely does happen. So you know looking at...like money's the ultimate corruptor
right? We all know that or it at least has the potential to be, so looking at the money
you're bringing in to your organization as needing to be as on-mission as humanly
possible is super, super important.
Another example of how looking at revenue models has to match your mission, recently
our team who's working on the research and development of the syndication platform came
to me and said, there's a huge money making opportunity out there that you're not taking
advantage of: Getty Images and these other online stock image databases. Because GPI reporters
take their own photographs, sometimes they're extraordinarily amazing and there's a huge
market for those and they're really expensive. The problem is when you put a photo on Getty
Images, it's for sale, anyone can buy it.
So for example, last month we celebrated International Day of the Girl at Global Press Institute
by producing a huge series of stories about girls from all over the world with a ton of
photography. The photography was amazing, but if we put it on Getty Images, there is
absolutely nothing in the world that would prevent someone building a site dedicated
to child *** from using our images, and once that happened, I would have no recourse
because I made that deal with Getty Images that they could sell our photos. So a deal
like that with Getty Images or many others would fast forward our sustainability process,
but at a huge cost to our mission and our values. So it is difficult and the contract
process to, you know, actually work with mainstream media to make sure they're not editing or
changing our stories and things like is pretty time consuming, but it's definitely worth
it because it's serving a global good but also an organizational good as well.
>>STUDENT: So you mentioned that lobbying process that happens in each country, so I'm
wondering from my experience, I'm from Turkey, there are some great laws that prevent so
really bad [inaudible] but they're very much not implemented like [inaudible]. So
people go to prisons, they get tortured and it's against the law but these things happens
all of the time. So I was wondering, these laws how much of them do you actually implemented
and how do you even measure that?
>>CRISTI: Sure, that's a great question. And measuring impact... measuring the impact
of story is one of the hardest things you can do, right? Because a story, we look at
it like an endless ripple effect. Story can change so much or nothing at all and it's
very difficult to put a data point on it, or put, you know, a really specific indicator
on it. The best answer I can give as to yes, in our seven year history, almost seven year
history, we have two laws, two law changes to our credit. By sustaining a free, fair,
ethical investigative news organization in those countries, we don't ensure that the
law will be implemented to its fullest, but we ensure that those who do not implement
it will continue to be called to action. So, we use the power of story to get those laws
changed, and we will continue to get...to use the power of story to ensure that people's
human rights are being valued and respected and local law makers who actually went through
the process of changing this law are held accountable for their actions.
>>STUDENT: Great talk. I have a question about censorship and self-censorship. Of course
you're, you know, not in countries where media can operate freely, but I mention there
are also sometimes tendencies towards censorship, a lot of countries have laws that put restrictions
on the media for example for writing stories of government officials that are critical
and that sort of thing and also I was interested in self-censorship because of the potential that even though you
watch out for the women and not put them in danger, there may be some kinds of stories
that can put them in danger and I'm just wondering how you handle both those kinds
>>CRISTI: Both excellent questions. With regard to self-censorship, we do a pretty robust
what we call story coaching process at the beginning. So when someone pitches a story,
they're working with a GPI editor to actually sus-out any potential dangers ahead of time.
Sometimes though, dangers come up in the course of reporting a story, and what happens more
often is not self-censorship but Cristi censorship. I've pulled a handful of stories off the
wire in our history, which actually is very difficult decision because the journalist
in me wants those stories out there so badly but never at the expense of one of our reporters.
That definitely has come up, and we have three stories right now that we're holding: one
from Sri Lanka, which is a really up and down media environment that we've been holding
for a while just trying to see what the environment will turn to and will look like, but I always
will err on the side of safety for our reporters. With regard to... Brad turn off the live stream,
I'm just kidding... with regard to countries and censorship, it's an interesting issue.
We hear a lot about countries like China and their very robust online censorship. The truth
is that a lot of the countries where we operate, censor print and radio deliberately and all
of the time, but just frankly don't have the capacity to censor online content. So
for example in Zimbabwe, which is one of the most difficult media environments where we
work, we don't distribute a lot of our news there, so our news in Zimbabwe mostly goes
out to a global audiene.
At the end of last year 2011, yeah last year, we produced an incredible story about political
***, one of the most violent, vulgar and terrible stories you will ever read in your
life about how women campaigning for the opposition party in the previous election were systematically
*** in some of the most violent ways I've ever heard described. Gertrude, our reporter,
won the Reuters Foundation Kirk Shirk Award for Excellence in International Reporting and they invited
both Gertrude and myself to London for what I'm sure would have been a lovely event.
Accepting an award like that would have been extraordinarily dangerous for Gertrude and
for the other GPI reporters and luckily the folks at the Reuters Foundation were very
graceful and also a little bit crafty in the way they said that we were not accepting the
award, but they were giving it to us anyway.
So it does come up all the time. I spent half my summer in Ethiopia, you know, trying to
work out the logistics of getting our new radio show on the Ethiopia Radio and Television
Agency and it's a big win for us that we have this show that we're working on in
partnership with the Nike Foundation but, all final shows are still going to have to
go through what is essentially a Censorship Board in Ethiopia because their censorship
restrictions are just huge and insane. And in countries like that, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia,
we want to do the best we can for as many people as we possibly can. It's not ideal,
but it's what we can do, and it's what we feel comfortable doing for the safety of
our journalists.
>>STUDENT: My question is on culture. How do you handle cultural discontent, or like
rejection from local culture. Obviously a lot of the people from the San Francisco office
don't know about these cultures is there also rejection from men. How do you handle
men stopping women or wives or sisters from working and how do you handle that? Because,
I mean, not only the language barrier but also just understanding of the country when
you're not living there, how do you handle that?
>>CRISTI: Sure, both great questions. First and foremost, one of the things I learned
right away as a foreign correspondent is that while I was in Nepal reporting, editors from
10,000+ miles away were often telling what me to what to write about. I was telling them
what I'm seeing and they were saying, "That's great. Please write about this." And so
at GPI, everything is derived from the local community. So by employing 100 percent local
people in these desks, we don't, we rely on them to negotiate issues of culture in
terms of the reporting.
Now in terms of the actual journalists coming into the program, male buy-in, family buy-in,
those things are so, so important. We do things at our news desks like, the desks are open
so that families can use the Internet for free during the weekends so, you know, husbands
or fathers or brothers don't get the sense that the GPI office is like this deep, dark
place where we are, like, brain-washing their women, right? At the same time, part of the
recruitment interview process, the questions are designed to filter out or to ascertain
information about a women's home life. It happens actually in almost every single recruitment
period that somebody will say, "I'm so excited about this. I snuck out of my house.
My husband would kill me if he knew that I was here, but I'm so excited to be here."
It's heartbreaking, but that person cannot join our program. It would put her in direct
risk on a very regular basis. So it's difficult, it's definitely difficult. The global editors
of GPI who are working in the headquarters are all very well traveled which helps, but just
as in my experience as a foreign correspondent, it's no substitute for knowing, so reporters
and local editors drive 110 percent of the editorial process and that's really the
only way that we think it should or really could function.
>>SARAH PURCELL: George Drake gets the last question.
>>GEORGE DRAKE: Actually, she asked it. I was wondering how the men respond to women
having these opportunities. Are a lot of your women un-married, you partly answered it there,
but...
>>SARAH: We're going to have now just one more question but you can answer first.
>>CRISTI: You know it's no coincidence that two of the best GPI reporters have two of
the most amazing husbands. I will tell you that that is not at all a coincidence. It
can be difficult, but we are seeing changes. I would say about 60 percent of GPI reporters
are married with children. It can be difficult, but we're seeing it change, even in a place
like Nepal where 5 years ago people just straight out would not talk to Tara or some of the
other reporters there. Where now, she can walk into their office and say, "we need
to talk right now" and they are like, "Sure. Welcome. Would you like tea?"
So we're seeing it change over time, it's absolutely still a barrier though, it's
still a barrier and as GPI is planning our expansion and development in the future, we
are looking to heavily invest in Middle Eastern countries and North Africa where the gender
roles, gender barriers, and access are going to, just, become more difficult. That's
one of the main reasons when people always say "When I look at the map of GPI, there's
a big blank spot in the Middle East and North Africa." And frankly its because we haven't
in the past had the means to ensure their safety. You know when, as a non-profit organization,
you have 3 grand in the bank, that's not the time that you want to start taking risks
with other people's lives, but as we grow and are able to sustain, we do intend on making
a very deep and direct impact in that region. But not without an extraordinary amount of
research in terms of making sure that we launch the program in exactly the right place and
it's always going to be a challenge.
You know over the last seven years, GPI has a 93 percent retention rate, 93 percent of
all of the women we've ever trained are still employed by GPI today. Some of, most
of, the women who are no longer with the program are no longer with the program because they
were single when they started GPI and they got married and their husbands didn't like
it or they moved because their husband's job moved or something like that. We're
very conscious of the... of the tension, but it's so important to say again that GPI,
yes we train and employ women, but this is not politics, it's good sense. So by no
means do we want to exclude men from our process, right? My right hand person day-to-day is
Mike Birkowitz. 60 percent of our board of directors are men. Our NGO partners around
the world most are lead by men, and we absolutely recognize that for gender barriers to decrease,
it has to be a unified effort. So we work to... we strive for that both in our news
coverage but also in the way that we operate.
>>STUDENT: Hi, so you somewhat just spoke to this, but you talked about how you evaluate
countries for their safety for your reporters, but then also how your goal is to make the
greatest impact possible. I'm wondering, its seems to me like in the countries that
the greatest impact... the greatest change is needed is where it is most dangerous for
your reporters and I'm wondering if that just seems like a vicious cycle because if
for your reporters, so I'm wondering how in the future you are looking to move into
>>CRISTI: No, I think that's a really smart question. I think the answer is two parts.
First and foremost, I absolutely get the thinking that the places where it's the hardest are
the places where the impact is the greatest, but I'm not sure I entirely agree with that
because our world knows so little about the reality of places like Zambia and Botswana
and rural Chile and all of these places where we're operating, that I think it can definitely
be argued that it doesn't have to be super dangerous in order for there to be an extraordinary
impact. But I would also say that... you know you're absolutely right, we do want to move
into these more challenging environments and the journalist in me wants to be, wants GPI
to be in Syria right now. I want to be in Jordan covering the protests as they happen,
telling those extended stories, but Global Press Institute is built for long term change.
50 years from now, you and I can have a conversation where, you know, we can talk about if we waited
too long or if we went too soon into certain places. In 2007 when I met one of our board
members, Sibyl Masquelier, she still remembers this. We had just met and she asked me, "So
GPI is in one country." At the time we were just in one country. "How many do you want
to be in?" And I said, "all of them." So, we're still working towards that goal
and right now it's just, it's really a matter of strategic priorities and looking
at where we can do the most good for the least harm.