Reporting Live, From ... Everywhere
Bernd Debusmann '09, filming along the Mexico-U.S. border for a story he covered.
Bernd Debusmann '09 was a political science major who grew up with two journalist parents. So it might not come as a big surprise that he's now a journalist himself, covering various beats abroad. Find out Dickinson's role in his trajectory, what some of his favorite moments have been across the globe and how his career brought him face to face with a cloned camel.
Can you speak to how Dickinson’s useful liberal-arts education applies to your career?
Something that came up again and again in my classes at Dickinson was critical thinking. Perhaps a better way to put this is that there was a big emphasis on how to think, rather than what to think. It seems like a simple point, but a huge problem in 21st-century journalism is that reporters (and their audience) take things at face value. It’s important to dig a bit deeper and read between the lines. Sometimes what people are saying isn’t actually what they mean. For example, a “government source who isn’t authorized to talk to the media” is often a very calculated—and very well thought out—attempt to get a message out to the public. It’s all about asking the right questions.
Additionally, I’d say that Dickinson’s global focus, its "engage the world” mindset, has been quite influential in terms of journalism I’ve done. Even when covering local news stories in New York or here in Dubai, I find that it all connects to something bigger. Many of my professors very much understood that and incorporated that into class discussions.
What was your favorite organization at Dickinson?
I’m particularly partial to my participation in the now-defunct Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity, in which I held a number of positions over the years. It was a great group of intelligent, incredibly funny guys from all walks of life, some of whom I might not have gotten to know otherwise. I keep in touch with a good number of them, and I often find myself impressed and amazed with how well they’ve been doing since leaving Dickinson. Many of them remain very close friends with whom I talk to regularly or see whenever I’m back in the U.S. It’s interesting to think that a few of the guys I sat around with in the cafeteria laughing and joking about insane, very off-beat topics will soon be making a huge impact in the world.
What jumps out as a great memory from your time at Dickinson?
A particularly memorable experience from those years were the two classes I took with Professor Anthony Williams (visiting professor of political science and security studies), a former CIA official. Many of the things he taught us have proven extremely useful to me professionally. I’ll always remember one class in which he warned us to avoid “mirror imaging”—or assuming that people in other countries all think like Americans on some level. Having lived in three foreign countries on three continents since leaving Dickinson and having visited more than 20 others, I’ve seen how true this is—and how damaging such an assumption can be.
How do you stay involved with Dickinson?
I managed to get to a Dickinson reunion in D.C. not long ago, which was nice. I like to think I support Dickinson by being a sort of ambassador for the school abroad and recommending it highly. It was influential to me, so that’s the least I can do.
How did you get interested in your work, and what about it excites you most?
Both my parents are journalists, so I was always interested and quite sure that it’s what I would end up doing. I grew up into it, and even as a child I wanted to travel the world and meet interesting people—and now having worked as a journalist in TV and print, that’s still what I find most exciting. I’ve had a chance to go to some amazing places and meet some incredible people. I still get a rush every time I head out to do an interesting story or, better yet, to travel and do an interesting story.
What does your current work entail?
In Dubai I work for the Khaleej Times, the oldest English-language newspaper in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). My primary beats are aviation, technology and the country’s Western expat communities, but I get to write about all sorts of things. For the most part, I’m free to do the stories I find interesting, whatever they are. It’s a great variety. In the last two months alone, for example, I had an opportunity to travel to the U.S. to visit aircraft factories and military drone and helicopter facilities, then come back to cover local UAE elections and technology and cybersecurity events.
What is the most challenging part of your work?
The culture of the Arabian Gulf is very different from any I’ve worked in previously. Both Mexico and the U.S. have cultures and languages with which I’m intimately acquainted. There’s a learning curve to journalism in the Middle East. Aside from that, journalism is a bit odd in that it’s hard to turn off and relax. It’s a 24-hour job, and I often find myself probing for stories even when I should be relaxing. Also, the hours can be very unsociable, although that’s decidedly less true in the UAE than it was working at Reuters in New York or in Mexico City.
What’s the coolest (for lack of a better word) thing you’ve done since you graduated?
In December 2012 I went to the ruins of Chichen Itza in Southern Mexico to cover the so-called Mayan apocalypse. We set up at night and got to see the pyramids at night, something that very few people can say. Last year I went to Tijuana on my own to write a story and do a video on deported Mexican-American veterans of the U.S. military for GlobalPost. That was quite memorable, working on my own. More recently, in Dubai I had a chance to meet Injaz, the world’s first cloned camel, and to try an indoor skydiving wind tunnel, which was a blast.
If you could have dinner with anyone famous, living or dead, who would it be?
Hunter S. Thompson—a fellow reporter, of sorts. I’d love to pick that man’s brain over a few beers. Hemingway would be a close second. Ideally I’d have dinner and drinks with both of them at once. That’d be an evening to remember.
You just built a time machine: Where and when do you go?
I’d say the 1960s and 1970s. That was an amazing time for journalism, in which you could still go cover parts of the world that hadn’t been touched by the globalization and the Western media and in which tremendous changes were happening. Plus, it was before computers and cellphones served as electronic tethers, so I’d be free to roam about as I see fit.
You’re going to live on an island by yourself for a year: What books, albums and movies do you take with you?
I’d perhaps just take an assortment of Hemingway and Hunter Thompson’s books, alongside Hendrix and Bob Marley albums, with maybe a bit of early 1990s rap thrown in for variety’s sake. I could probably do without movies, but if I had to pick, I’d take Scarface and Lawrence of Arabia. Those two never get old.
If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be?
Not much. I’ve had a great run and a good time. Nowadays I keep thinking I probably should’ve taken Arabic much, much earlier, but, c’est la vie.
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Published November 5, 2015