On Saturday, 8 November 2003 at 5:00 p.m., a meeting with Ryszard Kapuściński took place in the Agnieszka Osiecka Concert Studio. The hostess and moderator was Barbara Marcinik.

The guests gathered in the studio had a unique opportunity to discuss with the master of Polish reportage his latest book, published by the Znak publishing house. Ryszard Kapuściński on himself, on the secrets of his own profession, and on the world of contemporary media. The book was created from excerpts of several dozen selected conversations and lectures by Kapuściński.

Barbara Marcinik: Does the fact that you are in Warsaw mean you have decided to stay for a while, or is this another stopover?

Ryszard Kapuściński: No. With me it always divides into moments of writing and moments of travel. The two are closely linked, because my writing comes from travel. But on the other hand, when travelling I don’t write. Travel is a kind of battery-charging. Travel means acquiring experiences, acquiring knowledge, gathering material, and so on. And writing is writing already in Warsaw. So I bring the material back and then write some next book or reportage. The division is therefore this: if I am in Warsaw, it means I am writing something. And indeed, I am writing a book now.

BM: The occasion for today’s meeting is the book A Portrait of the Reporter. It is a selection from 1,100 pages. The author of this selection is Mrs Krystyna Strączek. What gave you the courage to undertake that effort?

Krystyna Strączek: I admit that I would not have dared venture on such a risk myself. It happened that I was fortunate enough to meet Mr Ryszard Kapuściński. Initially this was to be a slightly different book — a kind of journalism course, a conversation about journalism based on a certain Italian publication. Later, when on the one hand I began reading the stacks of interviews I received from Mr Ryszard, and on the other we began to examine that book carefully at the publishing house, it turned out that we had in our hands material for something different, perhaps more interesting for the Polish reader. Not only a kind of ABC of journalism, but a very personal account by Mr Ryszard about himself: as journalist, traveller, and writer.

RK: A monothematic volume. It is partly a book about me, partly about reportage. Partly about the world of media in which we live, from which we draw, but without which we can no longer exist. It is a book by one of the labourers of this media front who practises reportage. And it wants to share its experiences, its lived experiences, and also its opinions about what the media are, what they mean for me and for all of us users of this great sphere of life.

BM: Who can be a partner; with whom are you speaking in this book? You are simultaneously speaking with many journalists, but is there some particular Someone with whom you would like to address these matters?

RK: A good question. A certain excellent English writer said that a book is good when the writer is aware for whom he is writing it, who will be its reader. This book is written for young journalists, for all those people in Poland and in the world who are thinking about becoming journalists. They do not yet quite know what their work will involve, but it fascinates them and they want to do it. The community of journalists is currently growing enormously. The journalistic milieu on a world scale is several times larger now than, say, 20 years ago. It is a mass. Once, 30 years ago, when one arrived in Sweden, Stockholm had one newspaper, one radio station, one television station. This milieu keeps growing. I was recently in Madrid and in that one European city there are 32,000 students enrolled in journalism courses. Over the course of 20–30 years two factors converged: the end of the Cold War, which opened the world and began the process of globalisation; and the second factor simultaneously: the technological revolution in the field of communications, which greatly facilitated communication. There is also a third factor making journalists transform into a new social class. Capital discovered that money can be made from information. Previously information was the domain of political parties and politicians. Newspapers were organs of parties. Such cases still exist today, but the media are expanding because large capital has discovered that good money can be made here. These changes have meant that journalism has grown into a social class, previously relatively not so large. It is a worldwide phenomenon. The media will play an ever greater role in our lives; we are increasingly surrounded by information, information weighs ever more heavily in our lives. The journalistic milieu is being entered by masses of young people, young generations who want to learn the profession. They seek guidance, sources. Because it is a somewhat feudal profession, in which there is apprenticeship — one must learn for a long time, practise for a long time. An older person is needed to teach a younger one. It is important for young people that experienced journalists share their experience with them. And that is why this book is an attempt to share, an attempt to enter into dialogue.

BM: Your diagnosis suggests that contemporary journalism is not in the best shape. The reader leaves the book slightly dejected that nothing can be done about it now.

RK: This book is not a textbook in the strict sense. It is a kind of unburdening; it does not objectively describe what a journalist should be like. I don’t deal with that. I believe that journalism should be practised by people who are by nature good, because journalism is a very difficult profession. And this profession cannot be practised if one does not have a certain sense that one is doing something socially important. A person wants to do something useful, something that will help other people; he becomes engaged in something, cares about something. It is a profession for good people — for those who understand that at the beginning of this profession one does not earn large sums. This profession, practised honestly and meaningfully, requires a certain emotional engagement and a certain responsibility towards oneself and others. Is this book idealistic in that sense? It is! Because it is very important that we be idealists. It is needed in social life and in our own. One must set the bar high if one wants to get anywhere. Of course, not everyone will get there, otherwise it would become a mass profession. The point is the best people, those who set the tone, who establish the patterns. So that those people take care that this profession commands social respect and inspires it.

Jerzy Ilg: It seems to me that this book is idealistic, even utopian, but not naive. It contains a very penetrating diagnosis of the contemporary world of media — about how information has become a commodity that must be sold as well as possible. The book that was our impulse bears the title “This Is Not a Job for Cynics” (the Italian and Spanish edition).

JI: I would like to quote a statement by the writer’s friend, Kiel Albin Abrahamson, who said: “What delights me about Kapuściński is the fact that after 30 years of watching wars and revolutions he has not become a cynic.” How does one protect oneself from that, when one constantly stands before evil, violence, and brutality?

RK: There are two criteria which, psychologically speaking, are indispensable to do this work. The first criterion is: not to be indifferent. The second: to preserve curiosity about the world. The criterion of curiosity about the world is in general the criterion of being or not being a journalist. Someone who has a natural curiosity about the world, who genuinely wants to know, who wants to get to the bottom of something, who cares about something — as long as he retains that natural curiosity about the world, he can practise this profession. When he feels that curiosity burning out within him, when he begins to think: “Oh, I already know all this, I’ve already seen all this, all this has happened before” — when he begins to have that kind of attitude, he must leave this profession, he can no longer practise it.

KS: Let us emphasise that this is a book for journalists, but in some strange way Ryszard Kapuściński’s statements about journalism reach directly to such people as myself, who are not journalists. And I sometimes wonder whether this model of reporting is not really (let us say it grandiosely) a kind of model of humanity? That is, when you say that being a reporter is a way of life, a matter of character — I then wonder whether this is not really a call not only to journalists but to everyone to whom you speak. A call to openness, goodwill, interest in the world.

RK: We are all reporters when we ask about something, when something interests us, when something seems important to us. Then only a part of those people writes it down and tries to put together some text. These are professional reporters. But in terms of nature, in terms of character, I think there are very many reporters. And I think that today, in the age of the development of the internet, a whole new class of reporters is being born — people who set up their own internet newspapers. These are spontaneous reporters who do not necessarily have to develop into professionals. I think very many good reporters will emerge from this. The problem is that not everyone lasts long in this profession, but very large numbers begin. This profession consists not only of the technical side of its practice; it consists of many elements. It is not a profession in which at a certain moment one receives a diploma and then practises for one’s whole life what one has learned. In our profession a person who wants to remain in the profession learns for his whole life. It is a profession that requires working on oneself for one’s whole life. There is no end here, there is no diploma. That is the difficult side of this profession. And what is more, we must learn ever more. This is very difficult, because the average level of reading is ever higher, the average level of intelligence is ever higher. And the level of knowledge that a person acquires even without completing university studies is ever higher, because he is surrounded by information all the time. Therefore, to be accepted by that reader or that listener or television viewer, one must constantly work on oneself. One must bear in mind that one is addressing people who are very intelligent, and one wants to make contact with them. A journalist cannot be more stupid than his reader or listener, because the reader will reject him — will not want to talk with him. Self-education in our profession is therefore a process that has virtually no end for as long as one practises this work — and practically for as long as one lives.

BM: On receiving the Prince of Asturias Award you mentioned that your running workshops jointly with Márquez for young Latin American writers and reporters had a great influence on you.

RK: These are workshops for young writers and reporters. I stress: writers and reporters, because in the Latin American tradition there is no distinction between them, as there is, for instance, in the Polish tradition. There all writers are journalists and many journalists are writers. It is a group of 15, which changes each year, selected from more than 200 candidates from all countries of Latin America, except Brazil, because a different language is spoken there. These young people present their work — often reportages published in the press, some already have a book to their name. These are discussed; everyone participates in the conversation. Latin Americans love conversation and discussion; everyone speaks up. It is also for them a way of getting to know one another. These are people from a continent that is unique, because one speaks the same language there. In other parts of the world one cannot run such workshops, because the problem of language arises immediately. Slowly a family of our workshop participants is growing — people who know each other and correspond with one another. I have had to postpone this December’s trip, because I must finish the book.

JI: You said before entering the studio that at that ceremony in Spain 1,200 journalists were accredited, which gives an idea of the scale of the phenomenon. And also that in the course of 4 days you gave 31 interviews.

RK: Because it is not only Spain, not only some countries of West Africa, but the whole of Latin America, the whole of the Caribbean. And it is an ever larger part of the United States. As estimates have it, in 20 years Spanish will be the second language in the USA. Already now the southern states of the US are bilingual. The Spanish language is becoming a very important global language, alongside English.

BM: Is a synthesis building up within you about your Latin American experiences?

RK: I would like to write a trilogy. Heban would be the first volume; the second would be a kind of Heban but set in Latin America; the third set only in Asia. But when and whether I will write it, I do not want to say, because one then writes a completely different book from what one intended. I spent many years in Latin America as a correspondent. I arrived in America just after the death of Che Guevara — it was November 1967. The last time I was there was a few months ago, so I have very long contact with that continent. I have far more material than I have written; such is the Latin American fate. Since I write very slowly, my output is not very extensive.

JI: And there is still a book to write about Polesie.

RK: Yes, still a book for “Znak,” which I promised long ago. About my native land — that is, about Pinsk, about Polesie. There are so many things still to write — Good Lord!

Compiled by: Robert Nowacki, with the collaboration of Marlena Nowacka. www.kapuscinski.info

source: kapuscinski.info