How NGOs Should NOT Work with Journalists: A Cautionary Tale

This guest post was written by Glenna Gordon, a freelance photographer and journalist based in Monrovia, Liberia. She blogs as the Scarlett Lion. She's usually broke.

I met a young woman in Monrovia who was incredibly charismatic, engaging, and involved in a lot of different activities. Though I met her while reporting on one thing, our conversation drifted and she ended up telling me about an innovative radio show she’s on where she and other young people discuss health issues.

Sounded like a great story. I arranged to come by the next time her group was recording. The show is sponsored by an NGO, we’ll call then NQED. I didn’t call NQED to ask before showing up. Technically, I should have done this but I figured it wasn’t a big deal. Actually, I think I didn’t even think about it. This wasn’t high security or high profile or anything like that – just about a cool radio show and some great young people.

When I showed up, the director of NQED was there. I didn’t introduce myself because I didn’t know him. Instead, I talked to the young woman I knew. The director came over to me and introduced himself. I needed to write a letter requesting permission to be there, he said. An email would suffice, but I couldn’t stay on that day.

Here’s the catch though: I’m a freelance journalist. Though I do all right for myself, I usually have to pay all of my costs out of pocket. That means I paid for my transportation to get to the show that day, and I’d have to pay that again another day.

Not a big deal. Yet.

I went the next time the director told me they were recording, but when I showed up, the session had been cancelled.  He could have called me to tell he this ahead of time, but he didn’t. Just like I didn’t ask ahead of time.

But, now I’d spent money on transportation twice, and to do the story I’d have to spend the money a third time.

It’s more than the cost of transportation though: it’s about my time, and my responsibility to my editors to hand in work when I say I will. Every time I encounter this kind of delay, the amount of money I make on the story drops because of how much time I spend on it. I don’t have a fellowship or a steady gig, so this matters at the end of the month. A lot.

When the week after that rolled around, I got called away on an assignment. The director of NQED called me a few weeks later to ask if I intended to come by another time, but at that point it was already too late. I’d already cut my losses and written the story off as a time sink that would never happen.

What got lost in this shuffle was some cool young Liberians and a great radio show.

It would have been great if the first time around I could have just done some reporting. It would have been great for the young Liberians on the show, and good for NQED too.

I know it’s not the director of NQED’s job to make my job easier, but if he had made it a little less difficult, there’d have been some good coverage for him.

LESSON: Journalists are busy. Most of us are freelance. Most of us are perpetually broke. Sometimes, rules are meant to be broken.

For more information on what journalists want from NGO-folk, see here.

[Photo by Glenna Gordon]