The Foreign Desk in Transition

There are still legacy foreign desks with traditional foreign correspondents at some major U.S. media. But the legacy newsrooms are also adapting to the digital era. Anup Kaphle, digital foreign editor at the Washington Post, describes experiments like WorldViews, his paper’s international blog, which relies on dispatches from correspondents abroad, as well as pieces by two in-house journalists who never leave Washington to report.

Kaphle also looks at digitally native sites like BuzzFeed, which are opening bureaus in foreign capitals. Their commitment to international news is brand new, but like the legacy foreign desks, they are also grappling with how to shape the foreign desk of the future.