Print & digital
From print to digital media, I have written for newspapers and online news sources worldwide as a journalist and foreign correspondent. Based out of France for years, I have covered the European institutions, Europe-wide news and French, German and Italian news. Multimedia, I am adept in many technologies across radio and video journalism too.
The Toronto Globe & Mail, The Montreal Gazette, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald … The Singapore Straits Times and The South China Morning Post. These are some of the titles for whom I have been a regular to occasional correspondent over the years.
My ‘Eurofile’ column for the Montreal Gazette was written out of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg … on the cusp of email communication with editors! From fax to email story filing. What an antiquity I am! Nonetheless, truly multimedia and capable of adapting to the times.
The digital age: Forbes coverage
The time that my print experience truly turned digital, was during the Covid pandemic, largely reporting for Forbes. I wrote hundreds of stories for Forbes on the travel fallout globally for travellers, uploading them straight to the Forbes digital platform, Bertie. This included all the SEO stuff plus sourcing pics and promoting on social media. It was an exciting time, though I hope it’s not repeated.
Some of my stories for Forbes were getting up to half a million views. I take that as a sign that they were pertinent!
The classic ‘what you need to know’ article works a treat!One kindly American reader said I was ‘the best travel intel around’! I tried my best to provide timely information that captured the travel implications of the breaking news. Mostly in France, Europe-wide, Australia (because the call of home is strong!) and in the US.
Frankly, I was quite amazed at the lack of informative and accurate reporting for travellers, on such a huge issue.
My first story was a marathon effort to try and collate the border closures Europe-wide. And the situation just got more complicated with time, as each country took its own path, and the EU one to different degrees.
Reporting from home
Australia was home to the longest lockdown in the world, and arguably the most watertight border closures too. So, my home country was also a steady source of good stories, reporting from offshore.
Down under, in Fortress Australia, Melbourne was subjected to six lockdowns totalling 262 days between March 2020 and October 2021. The city understandably went lockdown crazy.
To think it all began, in journalist Laura Tingle’s words, because one security guard couldn’t keep his pants up! All that made a bit of joke out of the whole idea of quarantine hotels.
Then, Australia’s heavy-handed measures risked appearing hypocritical and unfair when celebrities – from tennis stars to Hollywood stars – dodged the travel restrictions.
Travel deprived: Airline news
In the end, Covid just showed how much we are all, pretty much, hooked on travel. Until Covid turned us off it! But as airlines slowly returned to European skies, from aviation graveyards, this story netted almost 200,000 readers. That’s one travel-hungry readership, eager for news and information.
Covid grounded airlines globally but much less so in the US than in Europe. Or particularly in Australia, which came to a standstill.
