Life as a Foreign Correspondent – Nick Louth

Nick is currently a freelance writer but back in the ‘80s, he worked for Reuters, the international news agency with a strong reputation for reliability, accuracy, speed and exclusivity. After working in London, he was transferred to the Amsterdam office however, the Netherlands is not a country renown for being a hot bed of political extremism, social intolerance, military unrest or religious persecution nevertheless, he divulged several amusing anecdotes of events which occurred on his ‘watch’ whilst over there.
He was very keen to emphasise the need for a journalist to be prepared at all times and, take advantage of every situation that arises including attempting to predict every possible eventuality. An example of this was the upholding of records on more elderly prominent statesmen, luminaries and VIPs and, on the premise that they would eventually die, each person would have an obituary file at the ready which was regularly updated.
It is apparently common for a professional journalist to prewrite two stories on a particular subject so both sides of an argument are represented. The eventual story released is based on the outcome or final result, so for example, the Brexit referendum would have had a winning story and a losing story already prepared. Nick also stressed the need to ensure that all facts were accurate and truthful as some ‘breaking news’ can have major implications on the rise or fall of the commodity/stock market.
Competition to be the first to break the news is immense so, opportunism and being resourceful are necessary traits and Nick obviously has them in abundance. During his twelve years as a foreign correspondent, he interviewed some very powerful executives and gained their trust including the likes of Bill Gates. The world’s newspapers regularly published his articles and his reputation spread far and wide. He is quick to affirm however, that journalism is not just all about having long, lazy, boozy lunches; sometimes it involves deliberately putting yourself in dangerous situations and travelling around the world in order to be in the right place at the right time. Neither of these make it easy to maintain a stable home life so, he eventually gave it all up, settled in Lincolnshire and is now a best-selling and critically acclaimed writer of thrillers.