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The First Amendment and a free people. A weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The program is produced cooperatively by WGBH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University the host of the program is the institute's director Dr. Bernard Rubin. The World paper is one of the most innovative newspapers produced recently and I'm absolutely delighted to have the publisher of this global community newspaper with us today. He's Crocker's know who. Before he joined the World paper as one of its creators a few years ago was for 10 years with the Boston Globe as assistant managing editor and chief foreign correspondent and as assistant to the publisher. Before that he worked right for this particular organization w GBH in Boston as a foreign correspondent correspondent in Germany and prior to that adventure worked with
Newsweek was a graduate of Harvard University got an Emmy in foreign diplomacy public diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and began this rather fabulous career at the age of 17 as one of the first journalists to go into the Soviet Union and published his work with the Boston Globe. Welcome Crocker snow. Let me just read a little bit about the World paper for our for our listeners. It is a publication for the global community written by associate editors from their respective regions of the world. It's a forum for the voice of the world to speak for themselves on subjects of worldwide interest. It is a bi monthly now and has a circulation of more than one million. It varies in terms of its distributions but it has been as many as 60 newspapers very single issue as a special section of the host newspapers on
five continents Its headquarters are right here in Boston Massachusetts. Its an independent profit making enterprise started in 1900 to foster a global perspective Crocker's know how's the World paper getting on. That's the biggest and the smallest question. If one were exhausted to were excited and three the future looks quite bright. We've been publishing for one year. Scuse me we've started out as a quarterly publication. We have now accelerated to a bi monthly schedule. We have between 12 and 15 host papers we call them host papers on as you mention five different continents carrying simultaneously the same section. We prepared here in Boston in complete form and send out the film negatives to the different papers proportional to their sizes and they print it and produce it as a special section in
their papers. We're now doing this in three languages English Spanish and German. And the future looks frightening and bright frightening I say because it's so ambitious and unprecedented where virtually every problem we're encountering the solution requires reinventing the word the wheel. But the fact is that we're ahead of schedule and ahead of our own projections in terms of total circulation numbers of newspapers and some of the other important ingredients that will in the long run determine whether World paper makes it. Now I want to concentrate a little bit on this is associate editor scheme. What you have is a number of associate editors and you you say this is what we are going to do in the next issue this is the subject and you encourage articles from them on various subtopics Is this the way it works. And then from Rumania mainland China. Friends in the United States Peru
any place we have an Associate Editor these people respond with whatever they think is the proper answer to the subject. It's not quite that simple we exercise slightly more control in that we have as you mentioned this board of associate editor is one for each geographic region of the world as one from North America one from South America one from northeast Asia one from Southeast Asia and they were selected as top independent international journalists in those regions. The unique thing about them is that they are not yet another Western correspondent who has a good grasp of Asia. The writing from Asia always comes from an Asian and that is critical to our that's one of the key characteristics of the thing to an American audience I make the comparison that there really the Bill Moyers of their parts of the world for the most part and indeed they are. They form our editorial board. We meet
collectively twice a year to determine what the major international subjects that World paper should be treating are and then we in Boston decide on the different assignments that these different individuals want to take. Let's take your next issue which is going to be on the Afghanistan replications moralize where the working title is superpowers go home. And it involves the the nucleus is the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan represents around the world that's right. If I would I'd correct you a little bit Bernie it's not the repr questions around the world so much as trying to put this episode into a larger context than just the Soviets marching into the Khyber Pass. We're trying to say that this is part of a process of superpower dynamics over the last 30 years. I say that with a view to the fact that we are not treating news events per se. We're dealing with the process of human affairs
more than the events themselves because we feel that that's what is often ignored. Now in this particular issue to get to a concrete case we have two general essays written for it one by our Associate Editor in Kenya who is a brilliant journalist by the name of Hillary and Way know who has the unique distinction of having been educated both at Harvard and Moscow University and is himself a third world person obviously. He is writing a general essay which is his thought and it basically says A pox on both your houses that there's no great difference between the Soviet activity in Afghanistan and the U.S. activity in Vietnam. We also have a piece a general piece by a fellow called Peter Calvert Caressa who is the new Arnold Toynbee of Britain. Then we have some very specific pieces we went to the Soviet Union who have cooperated with us in every issue to date. And we asked them for an
exclusive piece justifying their action in Afghanistan and so you asked them who did you ask in this who we we work now through Novosti directly and the Soviet Embassy in Washington. But we've developed a direct working relationship. We got such a piece which included some fail unique charges. We then went to the US State Department and got a response from Marshall showmen who is the Cyrus Vance the Special Assistant on Soviet affairs and he responded directly to the Soviet charges and we went to the Chinese with whom we have also developed a relationship and they joined the ping pong game themselves. So we have these three very direct and quite newsy pieces from three different superpower capitals on how Afghanistan seems from the key actors involved. Now Crocker from the point of view of getting cooperation from these various elements from the so-called Three Worlds First Second and Third World. Yet I
note. Correct me if I'm wrong that your distribution remains essentially in the third world developing countries and in the West and Japan with no distribution yet. Am I correct in what in a second or communist world what's the prognosis on that. It's hard to say we've had one. We've made a pass at the Soviets and have gotten expressions of interest but nothing more. The Chinese seem more interested the major paper in Shanghai has inquired about it. The Chinese now you may be aware of the fact that the People's Daily is planning to start an English language edition next year. I wasn't aware of that and World paper could fit into that. But the fact is that every country presents a different problem in terms of carrying World paper there are legal restrictions and some in some countries. In some of the ones that you would think about right away were World paper does not now
appear. The problem is is very basic for it. For example in Egypt the papers there are mass circulation papers are generally quite small size in terms of number of pages newsprint is at a premium and World paper if they ran it would Worf their own papers the same thing and in Japan major papers there are six million circulation there normally of 24 pages. TAB TAB size ours is 20 to 24 pages tab size as well. So every country has a sort of a different construct of problems. You asked me about what the prognosis is in the socialist world for distribution of World paper and. I know it's hard to judge my sense is that if we if we stick to the course that China that Chinese readers will be reading World paper before too very long. I was also wondering World paper seems to me especially appropriate
for the university students around the world. Off the beaten track of normal newspaper distribution Have you given much thought to that because some of your issues are wonderful for classroom use by graduate and undergraduate students on national development. You have a projected issue on cities and their problems. You had issues that deal with hunger and communication and so on. Well we don't have to you're entirely right in your instinct. Excuse me again but the real problem is that we have got our plate is already very very full for eight people in Boston to put together a project like this and or a publication like this. We have had a lot of inquiries from universities. The National Council of Community Colleges in this country and others and basically we respond when we can if the energy comes from the universities and a sufficient amount of money to cover our producing however many copies they need we're more than enthusiastic. We also feel that the most natural
outlets for us in this country that being the U.S. may well be the metropolitan papers in university towns such as the New Haven Register or the paper in Madison or the paper in Berkeley. In the long run that those may be the most natural carriers of World paper in this country because the major papers that you and I think about are so large that their production costs of World paper are over powering for them. Particularly in a world where newsprint is a very hard commodity to come you're also offering something a little different. It's almost like inserting the Atlantic into a daily newspaper. You're asking for people to sit down and not to raise through a page right to consider the reason answers from different people to consider the fact that you're getting the general responses and specific responses from parts of the world that are not used to this climate right.
That's how they can change their views and so on. That's absolutely right and one of the one of the real challenges journalistically in the whole enterprise is the the challenge of creating a compelling publication that is a political and a cultural. If you think that through because we don't take a point of view ourselves our editorial page in each issue of World paper is called world views and what we do is ask a question whether it's the energy crisis or the impact of television on politics whatever it is to each one of our associate editors representing these 10 different nationalities and we ask each of them to write 250 words on it. So the editorial in effect is a mosaic of views from around the world on one subject. But it's you're entirely right that it's a it's a serious undertaking it requires some real attention on the part of the readers. It's not a quick trip and the response from readers all over the world
has been very very positive. As a longtime journalist it reaffirms my impression that we often as editors talk down to our readers because we have had very few people write to us and say this thing's over my head and cut it cut it out. Quite the opposite the reader response generally has been boy is it refreshing to see something that gives me a new slant and a different view on a serious subject and I'm interested in you know a thought just occurred to me and I'm not offering suggestions and I have no knowledge of what you should do in the Will paper but the national news Council has its reports reprinted in the I believe the Columbia Journalism Review. And it would seem to me using the illustration of a famous magazine that goes to a serious audience that the World paper as an issue ought to be printed as a supplement of something that has a general national intellectual circulation coming out in a magazine format.
Well it may be that will develop in that direction. The problem in this country is very different from any other country. Generally World paper is exclusively distributed by one newspaper and that's part of my salesmanship. When I'm travelling you have it nobody else has. Yes and in Hong Kong it is one paper in Hong Kong and no it's one paper in Australia it's one paper. This country obviously from a commercial point of view that doesn't make any sense. They're the only quasi national papers The New York Times and their pride of authorship is such that they would never consider something going through a journal or the Wall Street Journal but it's the pride of authorship factor that's inhibiting there. So we don't know quite how to cut it in this country right now we have on a sort of experimental basis both large and small U.S. papers carrying this. But in every other country it's one paper per country. Generally speaking it is the most. Elitist and I don't like the word particularly but in a demographic sense
elitist papers with a serious minded audiences that are the most attuned to this we have the Melbourne Age in Australia which is probably the best paper there The Business Times in Singapore the Buenos Aires Herald in Mexico City News Daily Journal in Caracas those types of newspapers and that kind of a network makes a lot of sense because these are newspapers who are reaching internationally oriented audiences in key international gateway cities who are reading the first couple of issues in late 78 and early 79. I was a little worried because I said well this is an idea that I would favor I think it's a terrific idea. We believe in the First Amendment getting ideas out is the prime Russia now of the IDC So I would favor this. But I said it didn't have a theme and yet I've noticed almost a complete metamorphosis into a sophisticated newspaper with thematic editions
very hard hitting material not filling up space. That is such a massive jump to take in such a short time to go from the experimental blocking out of the idea and getting it out. There must have been something dramatic that happened at a certain point you must've gone for broke and said we'll do it this way. Things dramatic happen things very dramatic happen almost daily. And the most dramatic is that we have it's a giant experiment based on individual support of individual investors. We have no nest egg behind us. No government no foundation no company no corporation and as an end result if we don't show growth and promise at every two to four we juncture we're out of business. I'm quite sure that if we had tried to put this together with the kind of money that most publications start with We'd probably still be sitting under rotating fans in Bangkok talking about it and we simply have raised money as we've gone
along. You may have. Gathered are not Bernie but the ownership of this is designed to be as truly international as the paper itself. And we are seeking individual owners and have a network now of twenty from four different countries most of them are American but we want to have a 50/50 break in the final analysis. And it is sort of the imperatives of the marketplace as much as anything else that have caused the kind of transparent transformation that you've probably seen. There's no time to be leisurely and there's no room to make very many mistakes. Well the last time you were in the in the on this program the catbird seat you were with The Globe and as I recall it you you were busy every moment the moment before the program you were answering you have to call as you race to the telephone afterwards. And I I had the mental impression of a man who's committed to daily newspapers was enormous and yet I see a
different man I see a man who went ahead into a new field because of a basic commitment. If it is not being personal and I don't want to get into why you move from one thing to another that's not my point. But what was there about this new concept when you developed it or heard about it I don't know how that worked out. I don't know that I grabbed you. Well I'm glad you asked the question is as the saying goes. I've been a foreign correspondent and I've devoted a fair amount of my professional life to reporting on how other people see and do things and trying to make the bridge for a domestic American audience. And I have found in the course of doing this that the bridge is made the best when you can take a subject in Asia and paint it in local terms so people here can identify more easily with it instead of writing about the geisha girls in the Macy cards and the Kabuki Theater per se in isolation if you can make that connection to the local
audiences in the process of all that and you've mentioned some of my foreign experiences. I just was gradually overwhelmed with the sense of how in adequately an audience in any part of the world see these events and episodes and developments in other parts of the world. I was also gradually impressed with the fact that the basic fundamental human problem is virtues verities whatever are really the same that culturally there are differences politically there are differences economically. But the fundamentals in most cases remain much the same and that therefore there is a great communication need for drawing these lines together. And it is really simply nothing more than that being a perhaps a bit philosophical but that is what moved me to leave the globe in what was a very very happy career there to undertake this. My feeling was that the time had
come for a single publication to address global concerns because were aware of the fact that there is obviously an ever more interdependent world. We are aware of the fact that in the third world this tremendous frustration with the imbalance of News and World paper may just be something that can capitalize on those two twin and somewhat contradictory impulses. And it was really nothing more than that. It struck me as an opportunity that one gets once in a lifetime if at all. And that it just deserved a shot. Well it is a very good shot and a very good product to change just a little blankly. You are dealing with people who have different comprehensions of the role of news especially in the second world of the communist countries. I presume that you realize or perhaps you will argue this point that when you get a response from from a journalist in
Romania or the Soviet Union that they have certain stipulations upon their work and in effect you are getting the considered opinion not only of the journalist but perhaps of the government. Absolutely. Does this bother you in any way or do you see this as opening another forum for governments and peoples to talk to one another more the latter than the former in terms of your question. Clearly I cannot and would be foolish to suggest that the writing coming from China or from the Soviet Union or indeed even from our So should editor in Romania is as clear an individual and uninhibited as that coming from London or Paris or Tokyo and. But first my contention is that for international global issues and concerns to be properly ventilated we've got to hear the views from all sides and that is all too infrequently happens today. There is a very great difference between
Rick Smith for the New York Times writing from Moscow with the Moscow Dateline that this is what the Soviets have to say about Afghanistan. With all of the cultural bias that he is bringing to that and the Soviets themselves writing the same thing and whether or not it is done with the same ground rules that are journalists right. It is and ately interesting and important to give them a forum for saying it their way. It's been very very interesting and instructive to me that since the first issues the Chinese participation in this has changed dramatically and we don't just run what they say verbatim. If the thing is just so much poppycock we don't run it we kick it back to them we've sent several pieces back to the Chinese and said they were patronising and the sophistication of their articles now is a far far different from just a year ago when they had to learn what the editorial is.
Sure. But you're entirely right that is there are a lot of contradictions in World paper the nature of the writers we have the nature of the outlets that are having them and every. It's one of the big hurdles that you have to go overcome in the beginning for a paper to agree to give editorial control on serious subjects to a guy from Boston is not an easy sale. The reason they do is that we have one a network a very distinguished associate editors to whom they usually don't have access to and to because we're treating subjects that are broad enough that they're not threatening to the particular policy line of that paper in a particular country. Now you told me Crocker snow that not only do you have these semiannual meetings with your associate editors but to keep in touch and to develop your own commercial contacts and to get a feel for different environments that you have been around the world three or four times in the last 14 months. Yeah. Apart from the physical having done some of that not
many in any comparison having done some of that it's exhausting physically how is it mentally to to keep on the dead heading for Braniff arrow flow to God knows what. Well it's a funny. Funny thing I used to travel an awful lot as a correspondent and I would dig into a country now when I travel it's for a very concrete purpose of five or six or eight meetings. And in that sense it's very frustrating personally. On the other hand I it's a funny sort of a technical answer to a question but there is so much required of our small staff here and so many decisions to be made constantly that it's almost a relief to get on the plane where the phone can't ring and where the stuff that's accumulated can be considered at least in a six hour unbroken stretch. It's also clearly mind blowing to go as I did just last week to get on a point in Bangkok where there are refugees from Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam all over the airport. And it is
it is the hapless refugee seen to get on a Swiss airplane and get off in Zurich for a meeting with the Aga Khan the next day where everybody is walking around in Chesterfield coats. And it's one of the one of the. I guess peculiarities of the jet age. Well I had the same experience going from Bangkok to Frankfurt Germany from the reality of Bangkok which is one reality is trying to get from the airport into the center of Bangkok and right and the second reality is to fly out will say to another city a European city into the plastic bubble I would call Frankfurt Germany's airport just one giant toothpaste tube and they're both on real. Just being in airports is enough to disillusion me on any occasions where I get to the center of town and see some of the things that are going on in the last moment that we have left.
What's your next hope for the World paper aside from increased circulation. Well we've got to stick to our guns now. I think we have we have gotten to the type of editorial product that can work. We've got to do it more frequently and better. And then we've got to begin to expand the readership into all of the various international cities that will help make this viable commercially. I think the Soviets will never permit you to distribute. Well they have reprinted one piece of ours not the piece that they prepared. We've had reprints we have a lot of a lot of queries about reprints we discourage that right now. But I don't think it's totally beyond the pale to think in those terms. Well I like to end on that hopeful note and say it's been absolutely a delight chatting with you about I again one of the most innovative things that I've had to deal with as an observer the World paper a global community newspaper which is now only two years old from its inception its concepts and so much good luck with it. Crocker is no publisher of the World paper.
Thank you for this edition Bernard Reuben. The First Amendment and a free people a weekly examination of civil liberties and the media in the United States and around the world. The engineer for this broadcast was Margo Garrison. The program is produced by Greg Fitzgerald. This broadcast is produced cooperatively by that of you GDH Boston and the Institute for democratic communication at Boston University which are solely responsible for its content. This is the station program exchange.
Series
The First Amendment
Episode
Crocker Snow: The World Paper
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-62s4n87x
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Description
Series Description
"The First Amendment is a weekly talk show hosted by Dr. Bernard Rubin, the director of the Institute for Democratic Communication at Boston University. Each episode features a conversation that examines civil liberties in the media in the 1970s. "
Created Date
1980-03-02
Genres
Talk Show
Topics
Social Issues
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:08
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Credits
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Unit: Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 80-0165-04-30-001 (WGBH Item ID)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Master
Duration: 00:28:45
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Citations
Chicago: “The First Amendment; Crocker Snow: The World Paper,” 1980-03-02, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-62s4n87x.
MLA: “The First Amendment; Crocker Snow: The World Paper.” 1980-03-02. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-62s4n87x>.
APA: The First Amendment; Crocker Snow: The World Paper. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-62s4n87x