 back this is Dave Vellante and we're here at the EIC it's the MIT event the workshop on cybersecurity and governance and really the gap between international relations and advancements in cyber cyberspace I'm here with Charlie Senate of the Global Post and Jeff Kelly Charlie I want to start with you a founding editor of the Global Post it's how many years in now five years five years to the day January right it was early early in the year I remember that so first of all congratulations thanks it's just absolutely amazing property that you guys have have developed I mean the vision when I first talked to you about the global post you basically said we are gonna basically cover like BBC covers except from a US perspective but around the globe right and that's what you've successfully done I remember you were traveling like crazy you still travel like crazy but you basically signed up correspondence in how many countries we we had about 50 correspondents approximately when we started out we now have 70 correspondents in 50 countries not all of them full-time only only about 18 or full-time but we have basically tried to develop a network sort of confederacy of the great correspondents who are out there who are all underemployed and in many cases before us were unemployed from the old news organizations that have cut down on their foreign coverage we've been really fortunate to pick up a lot of great young talent even some some real veteran correspondence and build a great team and our editors in Boston are also great we really have an impressive team so what's happening in in your business I mean you're talking about the large media properties cutting down on their foreign coverage I mean obviously we all know well what's happening in in that business and advertising revenues and so forth is just there wasn't the appetite for for international coverage I mean you guys are aren't you proving that that's not the case I don't know if we're proving that's not the case because we have a much more stealth model of coverage so we can afford to put these correspondents all over the world the old model of the great newspapers like the one I work for the Boston Globe New York Times the Washington Post the idea that they would fund correspondence would be some of their most senior reporters to live overseas and then do a parachute model you have one regional correspondent and that correspondent would fly into each country where a crisis was happening or an earthquake interesting diplomatic event or whatever that model was really expensive so we we we recognize that I did that for years I was lucky enough to get to do that was a lot of fun no but then what happened was the internet came along it really challenged traditional media in a lot of ways commercially you know as we all know the newspapers had they really saw the internet come in and eat their lunch I mean it took away classified ads it changed the model presented great economic challenges for the old school news organizations newspapers first now network television I think is undergoing some of the similar strains and as a result what they did is they really scaled back on their foreign operations we saw that as an opportunity when the Boston Globe New York Newsday Baltimore Sun Chicago Tribune all these great old newspapers shut down their foreign bureaus including my alma mater Boston Globe we thought well wow let's start a new digital news organization fully online and we'll build a team of correspondents around the world so that's what we've done we've been at it for five years we've been recognized in the industry we've won the poke award the Peabody award we've won the overseas press club awards and we've we've shown I think that we can punch above our weight class just by having great correspondents who live in the countries they cover that's the key so no more parachuting in these are correspondents who live there typically who speak the language or at least we really look for that you know we're trying to just just change the model well you're you're a rockstar Charlie and you're very modest about this week you always talk about tech athletes right Jeff on the QB you're like a geopolitical I mean you've been I mean with really bad legs that are going but you know you got shoulder problems but Afghanistan Iraq now the cool thing is with Global Post you do some really interesting projects I mean you were essentially you know just did Egypt frontline yeah that was an amazing program I mean I watched my jaw open you did a stint in Burma I want you to talk about that yeah nonprofit model that you have going you just got back from Nigeria yeah right so let's let's actually let's start with the whole sort of nonprofit thing that you have going and what you did in yeah well so for five years Global Post has been out there we're a for-profit company we've really tried to develop revenue streams the primary one being online advertising we have some other streams including syndication that are important but basically we've tried to come at this as we want to be self-sustaining we want to be profitable about two years ago I began to also add a different kind of approach to sustaining our coverage which is to go after foundation support so I went after some money from the Ford Foundation from the Loose Foundation from the Kaiser Foundation and they were very receptive to us because they see a news organization that's trying to be self-sustaining so therefore won't have our handout forever and that this would be something to fund and get behind so much like Ford Foundation would fund National Public Radio they saw no conflict in funding a startup that is not yet profitable that's trying to get there and that's we're well on our way but we really want to have greater ambitions than what we could afford where we are right now in the business so we were able to raise this money and and that has allowed us to do a lot of in-depth reporting investigative reporting that we otherwise couldn't afford and a lot of reporting on important social justice issues that are not classically the kinds of things that you know corporate advertising wants to get behind these are these are the toughest issues of the day that we can go at and a secondary and really important part of this is we get to have fellowships and train the next generation of foreign correspondence so we've gotten some funding to really do that that's what took us to Burma that's what took us to Egypt first when we did the big fellowship there and we're doing a sort of not unlike the Cube we're trying to do these pop-up newsrooms all around the world where we go into a really complicated story we put a lot of talented young people on the ground we surround them with mentors editors you know video editors photo editors writing editors and then we try to get them to work together so we had ten Burmese correspondents and ten American correspondents interested in Burma working together covering Burma also several several weeks yeah culminating with Ansan Suchi coming and speaking to the group and we did a sit-down interview with her which was excellent and really exciting to be in a country that's so much in the news such an important country to understand well you talk about this you know undercovered this whole notion of cyber security in the governance gap it's it's really not covered I know in our industry and certainly not yours it's an interesting intersection it is love to figure out a way to to collaborate here and John Ferrier you know launched the Silicon Academy with that sort of vision in mind you've got you know your thing going and it's just there's a real I think need for coverage here I completely agree this has been an incredibly eye-opening day one to watch Wikibon and the Cube in action and you I got to say I've been on a lot of television shows you really have it you have that ability to engage get people talking so I really you know I mean that you know I'd give you a hard time if I could but I think that seriously this model is sort of stealth model of coming in and covering conferences where these really big ideas are being discussed is exciting I think it's a lot like what we're trying to do on a news organization side of things specifically at this conference as an editor I'm stunned how little we know about this like we are not following cyber security closely enough think how many resources we put behind covering national security without having someone is really looking at cyber security which is increasingly the whole ballgame so I think I've learned a lot here today I've learned that we've got to pay a lot more attention to this topic I think there's a lot of potential to do good in-depth reporting around the world on this issue of governance and who owns the internet who's going to control it who's going to be the policeman Google now I know you got to go but so you got a story I want you to share about you guys got hit for you coverage covering Syria with critical eye so what happened look Syria is probably the most dangerous assignment in my lifetime I've covered Iraq that's a lot your lifetime I you know I reported in Lebanon I've reported the two Intifadas I reported in Medellin Columbia the troubles in Northern Ireland Iraq Afghanistan Syria is really a black hole as you know we have a correspondent still missing Jim Foley is still missing over there we've taken big risks a lot of courageous reporting to be in Syria as a result we've done some very good reporting and as a result we became a target so once you start punching in that way class where you're actually breaking some news about the regime and human rights abuses and chemical weapons use they start to come at you and we experienced this so the Syrian electronic army targeted global post I guess you could take it as a strange badge of honor they went after the New York Times as well and you know they had some effect we're a small news organization and I think we all would say collectively that we weren't paying enough attention to our own security so I've also learned a lot here today about sort of how even little guys like us small news organizations how we need to be much more attentive and I think we learned that the hard way our team recovered beautifully I've got to say they really were on it we quickly had to take care of we quickly instituted a multi-step security process to try to prevent that from ever happening again but lesson learned and we have a I'm sure we have a lot more lessons to learn okay but you would largely we're on your own right I mean it's not like you could go to some government agency or some police force and say hey well I think you can call in government agencies you know and and many news organizations including ours do you identify you do notify sure what happens you don't really know well you're sort of when you're walking down but I think they offered some practical advice I do think there was some practical advice that's what I'm curious over your long career yeah obviously we cover technology here enterprise tech but just in general not just enterprise but consumer tech technology of all sorts how is that impacted foreign journalism both as a topic to cover and also as how you do your job well I mean it's changed the game completely because now the barrier for entry to own your own news organization is lower than it's ever been in the history of man right I mean you don't have to own a printing press you don't have to own a network you can build a constellation of really talented correspondence and you can then go out and get a URL and you can go online and you can have your team and you can be up and running funding has been the great challenge that the the hardest thing in with all the technology advances is how do we find the right business model to sustain in-depth coverage of the caliber that we want to have that's something we're thinking through every day and we've we've sort of veered as Dave pointed out we've veered a little bit towards this hybrid model where we're going for online advertising but we're also looking at foundation support we want to be a very nimble we want to think about this from as many angles as we can I think you know more practically speaking from the field it's incredible what what you can do now in terms of being wired into a story while you're on the story so I used to have to do you know like the old-fashioned exercise of going down into the library of the Boston Globe what they called the morgue where they kept the clips remember when people would be down there cutting clips they had a whole team physically clipping and I used to have to photocopy all the clips and then jump on a plane with a big fat stack of paper and go try to figure it out and I I can remember very very memorably in 1993 not that long ago covering the first World Trade Center bombing and doing all those clips and then leaving for the Sudan where some of the attackers in the first World Trade Center bombing were from without realizing we were on to nascent al-Qaeda but having a little tiny photocopy of a clip that mentioned that there was a scion of a construction company named Osama bin Laden who may have financed this operation but that's impossible to clip one on to say because he was with the CIA working with the Mujahideen in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan so the good guys yeah the idea of clips is so recent I can still feel them in my hand what I do now in the field is I'm in touch with a Twitter feed for example you compare my early days of reporting on what became known as al-Qaeda to the Arab Spring where I was on the ground in Egypt a lot I was there for most almost the entire revolution in Egypt in Tahrir Square and I could be on a live Twitter feed with this phone and I'm tapped into you know 50 60 excellent bloggers citizen journalists inside Tahrir Square watching what they're discussing and pinging around and these were the people who made this revolution happen these were the Thomas Paynes if you will of their revolution and all of that available on a phone all of it available just by going you know straight online hijacking some wireless or going 3G and running up my data bill but getting getting the feeds right that's amazing to take it even further I can do a video with this photo audio recordings we can put them up right under an FTP and we're off to the races in terms of multimedia so technology advances are so breathless these days that I think most news organizations including ours we can't really even keep up with them they're literally changing every month so smaller news organizations may have a benefit in this foot race because we're not wedded to one big fat technology like broadcast television or the printed product and I think in the long run we're gonna do well in this race because we can be nimble we can shift but we're gonna have to remember to keep doing that I think there might be an algae here with startups that can now get on well and start a company because of you know AWS or the cloud they don't need to last rock fights Charlie so accomplished it's really been a pleasure working today great coming on all right the planes are backing up here we're live at MIT right back after this word this is the cube