When Are You Going To Get A Proper Job?: Sixty Years In Journalism, The World Was My Oyster – New Book

"When Are You Going To Get A Proper Job?: Sixty Years In Journalism, The World Was My Oyster," by Jonathan Power

 July 6, 2024  

By IDN

Journalist Jonathan Power has a new book, scheduled for release in October. A foreign affairs journalist for 60 years, Jonathan Power is a renowned journalist, filmmaker, and broadcaster, best known for his weekly column and commentary on foreign affairs that appeared in the International Herald Tribune (now The New York Times) for 17 years.

Power has probably been published on the opinion pages of the principal US newspapers more than any other European. With a global following, his column is syndicated to newspapers worldwide. He is also the author of eight books on foreign affairs, including “Like Water on Stone: The Story of Amnesty International”, published by Penguin.

He has travelled all over the world, writing, besides his column in the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times, long articles for Encounter and Prospect magazines, eight books on foreign affairs and many TV and radio documentaries, mainly for the BBC, one of which won the silver medal at the Venice Film Festival.

He has interviewed over 70 of the world’s most famous and influential presidents, prime ministers, and political and literary icons including Ignacio Lula da Silva, Indira Gandhi, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Georgi Arbatov, Sonia Gandhi, Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, Olusegun Obasanjo, Julius Nyerere, James Baldwin, Andy Young, Jesse Jackson, Manmohan Singh and Paul McCartney.

Notably, Power was the first journalist to report at length in English on the trafficking of African migrants across the Sahara and into France. This inspired his first novel, “The Human Flow”—a love story set against the backdrop of the migrant flow from West Africa to Paris and London.

In addition to his writing, Power has consulted for organizations such as the Aspen Institute, the International Red Cross, the World Council of Churches, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, UNICEF, and the Catholic Church’s Commission for Justice and Peace in England and Wales.

Prior to earning his Master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin, Power worked in Tanzania, where he provided advice to peasant farmers while living in a local village. He later joined the staff of Martin Luther King, living in the West Side ghetto, working with Jesse Jackson in the “End the Slums” campaign in Chicago. Notably, Power was the first journalist to report at length in English on the trafficking of African migrants across the Sahara and into France. [IDN-InDepthNews]

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