Autor:Michael Werbowski,

Źródło:Ohmy News

A few days ago, a citizen reporter wrote about the reporter and great satirist Art Buchwald who died recently. I thought it appropriate to follow up with a personal tribute to Ryszard Kapuscinski, a worldly gentleman and great reporter who died Tuesday of a heart attack. He was a man whose writings gave me a passion for travel, world affairs and the thrill of “being there” where events happen.

In my early student days as an aspiring reporter, writer and “minor scribbler,” I kept a copy of Kapuscinski’s classic book The Soccer War in my Air France travel bag for companionship. It served me well as inspiration during my travels.

In an effort to understand what was going on in Iran, in order to give news context and enlighten myself, I read Shah of Shahs. Kapuscinski’s account of the last ruler of the Pahlavi dynasty of Iran which helped me understand how tyranny provides a fertile ground for revolution and fanatical rule.

When I needed to know about the eccentric Ethiopian monarch Haile Selassie, I turned to The Emperor.

Kapuscinski, who came from behind the iron curtain, was a remarkable reporter in the sense that he documented the last days of rotten regimes. He was a prescient observer of things to come. At times he was there for the final fall. As well, he was one of the first reporters and correspondents to venture into conflict zones and parts of the world that were off limits to many of his mainstream colleagues both in the East and West. He covered, analyzed and described happenings few of us would know about in detail today if he had not been there to relate those events.

Born on March 4, 1932, Kapuscinski became, without doubt, one of Poland’s most famed reporters. His international reputation is now legendary. He was one of the only full-time “roving reporters” for the Polish Press Agency; hence, its “world correspondent,” so to say.

In the 1960s, he traveled the world, mostly to the developing regions. He covered wars, conflicts, uprisings and revolutions. He documented the African independent movements, and much later the process of the disintegration of the Soviet Empire (see his personal travelogue titled Imperium). He approached his assignments through meticulous reading and researching books on his subjects or the “target country.” His written works are a unique literary genre, blending “literary journalism” with visual and frequent historical references that “frame” the events within a specific period.

Comparisons are seldom accurate, but at times they must be made. Kapuscinski, in my view, is the Albert Londres of our time. Like Londres, who saw the pernicious effects of colonization a century earlier, Kapuscinski played witness to the slow and painful decolonization process in Africa with a wry wit and a critical eye. He was a marvelous storyteller. He was able to paint portraits of the people he met with words. With enviable ease and charm, the intrepid Polish journalist blended into the settings of his reportages by immersing himself in the mundane lives of those around him, then described the events as they happened to impact his subjects.

Also somewhat like Londres, Kapuscinski in his dispatches, essays and articles decried and described the absurdity of absolute power in a tragicomic manner through the use of vivid, colorful language and narrative style.

Whether reporting from Russia or Africa or Latin America, Kapuscinski in his own words said he wrote for “people everywhere still young enough to be curious about the world.” His vivacity, brilliance and inquisitiveness about the world is a memorable legacy for all reporters – citizen or otherwise – to cherish.

źródło: kapuscinski.info