By
Jessica Weiss
Each month, IJNet features an
international journalist who exemplifies the profession and has used the site
to further his or her career. If you would like to be featured, email a short
bio and a paragraph about how you have used IJNet here.
This month we feature digital
journalist Leigh Cuen, a co-organizer
of ONA Jerusalem, the only
peer-led group for Israeli, Palestinian and international journalists in the
Middle East.
Cuen, who is originally from California
and based in Tel Aviv, has contributed to outlets including Al Jazeera English,
Salon.com, The Jerusalem Post, Yedioth Ahronoth (Ynet), Culture Magazine, San
Francisco Public Press and World Literature Today. Her creative writing has
appeared in the International Museum of Women, Poetica Magazine, Dagda
Publishing and War, Literature & the Arts.
Cuen talked with IJNet about why it's
critical for freelance journalists to build a professional network, her
perspectives on coverage of the Middle East and how literary writing informs
her work as a journalist.
How have you used IJNet?
I’ve used IJNet to find opportunities
around the globe to meet and exchange skills with fellow journalists. Through
the IJNet website, I discovered the Media in Conflict Seminar 2013 in Israel.
That seminar proved to be an invaluable opportunity to meet diverse young
journalists. I collaborated with several of those colleagues in later reportage
for both local and international organizations.
Through IJNet, I also learned about
opportunities at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy. That
conference widened my circle of professional contacts and gave me a fresh
perspective on the challenges young journalists face in the digital landscape.
The most crucial part of surviving as a
freelancer is finding a way to develop professional relationships without
working in the same office. Freelancers need mentors and co-workers in order to
grow their skills and access. Especially if you are a traveling journalist,
it’s crucial to be a part of a global network like IJNet.
What are you the most proud of so far
in your career as a journalist?
I’m most proud of an investigative
report I wrote on revolutionary Syrian poetry for Al
Jazeera English for two reasons: the content itself and the way I
discovered this story.
I contacted one of the Syrian writers
as a fellow poet and a fan, oblivious to her political work. We talked about
poetry and identity. She mentioned some recent work by other Syrian poets. I
started making phone calls, Skyping with Syrian writers in hiding and in exile.
I didn’t know what I was looking for. I just asked questions and listened. I
didn’t set out to write news, political analysis or a human-interest article. I
just let the evidence guide me to the heart of the story. I fact-checked
everyone’s narratives, but I never tried to define them. It's time-consuming
but for me, organic storytelling is the most rewarding.
What advice would you give to aspiring
journalists?
Don't wait for approval or validation.
Don’t wait until someone offers professional work for a fair price. If you want
to be a journalist, do your research. Then go out and start asking questions.
Make sure to check all your facts. If no one will publish what you write, start
a blog.
Don't try to match other people's
expectations. Don't write about fashion if you want to write about sports.
Don't let anyone else tell you what "real journalism" is. Learn how
to recognize propaganda and always critique yourself. You decide how credible
your work will be. So put in that extra time.
Every story has a weakness. Be aware of
yours. The best way to handle personal bias is to name it. Admit when you don’t
have all the information, when you were involved in a story or when one side
refused to comment. If you are upfront about what you don’t know, readers can
trust you.
Don't accept labels that writing about
rape is a “women’s issue” or that war is only a political topic. If an editor
thinks your story isn’t relevant to him, go back to the drawing board. You need
to make your reader feel the story. That is the only way he’ll make the effort
to understand it. Read, listen, study, ask questions and define success for
yourself. Take control of your own career.
Especially in this historic moment of
tension, how does creative writing contribute to your perspective of the
conflict in Israel/Palestine?
In my personal experience, working as a
foreign correspondent can become dangerously exploitative. Literary writing can
break free of these pitfalls through ruthless intimacy.
When I wrote for the Palestinian News
Network in Bethlehem, I couch-surfed and stayed with Palestinian families
instead of staying with fixers in hotels. These experiences humbled me.
Later, I was lucky enough to live with
an Israeli family for a few months. This forced me to see my work through their
eyes.
I realized how sometimes Palestinians
and Israelis both feel like animals in a zoo. Foreign reporters traipse through
their lives and hold up their moments of pain to illustrate a political point.
Hundreds of foreign journalists flocked to Israel and Gaza this past week to
document the atrocities. Meanwhile, UNRWA reports say 45.2 percent of
working-age Gazans are unemployed. One man turned to me and said: “They make a
good living off of our deaths.”
I can see how Israelis and Palestinians
feel objectified by our media industry, which only cares about them when
they’re fighting and even then doesn’t trust them to report their own stories.
What I’m saying here isn’t new or
unique. Last week, Anjan Sundaram wrote a piece for The New York Times
critiquing the "Western" media's coverage of complex events.
Award-winning journalist Simcha Jacobovici also wrote a blog post, blaming
international media for the escalation on the ground. I disagree with his
unabashed bias against Hamas. He’s still right about one thing: in
Israel/Palestine, we’ve learned that media spectacle is a crucial weapon. On
both sides, this war is performed for a global audience.
How can a journalist deal with her own
complicity? For me, literary writing is a way to unzip my skin and leave my own
motives behind. I try to become someone else, see the world through his eyes.
Earlier this year, I wrote a poem based on what an Israeli grandmother told
me about her wedding in 1948. We sat in her kitchen. She served me compote (a
chilled fruit soup). Fleshy chunks of apple slipped past my tongue. She told me
about a wedding present from her friend in Gaza, an apple farmer. She said he
risked his life to give her a wedding present. Then she risked her life to
search for him after the war. But she never found him. She wondered if he is
still alive in Gaza. She felt helpless in the wake of his absence.
If I wrote this story as a journalist,
I would report what experts say happened to many Palestinian farmers. Then I
would list how many people from Gaza used to commute every day to work in Tel
Aviv. This cute little grandma once served in the Haganah, a Jewish militia.
Maybe I would use a few of her quotes in an article about how people love each
other in the midst of conflict.
That headline could read: “People are
still human, despite crazy situation.”
The journalistic inclination towards
analysis serves a very important purpose. Journalism needs to present
solutions. But sometimes, especially in Israel and Palestine, it undermines the
narrative to categorize right and wrong, illegal versus legal. Trying to
moralize the story would’ve put me back in my own shoes, the observer, the
all-knowing journalist who uses facts and numbers to pretend everything makes
sense. Journalistic detachment would have drained the truth from these words.
Literary perspective helps me
understand the complex situation by defusing my urge to write as an omniscient
narrator. In creative writing, I can just be the character. I can feel, even if
I don’t understand. Sometimes, the story needs to be about a memory. Maybe it’s
a memory someone is reluctant to publish under his own name. Maybe it’s a
memory that could cause loved ones pain if he set it free.
As Maya Angelou once said, “there is no
greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Literary writing gives
voice to the stories that people are too afraid to report.
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