By Jameson Parker Holloman

Sam Dealey nods and continues to scribble notes as Ahmed Hatum Shiib Ahmed, a tribal elder of Kebkabiya, a small town in Darfur, goes on about the rebel warfare within Darfur and the damage that it is wreaking upon his village. Dealey pitched the idea to Time Magazine of traveling to Darfur to cover the continuing conflict between the janjaweed militia and rebels and, lo and behold, a few weeks later he found himself on a plane to Kebkabiya.

“In journalism, the only thing you can trade in is access. I can go where people can not and will not go. I go for the stories that are intellectually stimulating and exciting,” says Dealey.
Dealey specializes in stories about countries in conflict and prides himself on his ability to deliver stories straight from some of the most dangerous streets in the world. However, his journey to become a foreign correspondent has more humble origins.

In places where violence is an everyday part of life, it helps that he knows his way around an automatic weapon. Born in Texas, Dealey had a keen interest in sharpshooting growing up and at 12 years old he became a national sharpshooting champion in the under 13 division.
“It is good to know about guns when you are out there. Every soldier is a gun nut and it is easy to talk about and it makes it easier to get to know them,” says Dealey.

He became interested in journalism while at Cornell University and his sophomore year he took fall semester off and went down to Washington D.C. to work for famed political columnist Robert Novak. He then spent his college summers coming back to Washington D.C. and working for Novak. Upon graduation he moved down to the capital and began writing for The Hill newspaper http://www.thehill.com. After working there for eight months, Dealey grew bored and interviewed for a position at the Wall Street Journal. The interview had been set up through a friend who informed Dealey that they were looking for someone who could work overseas so, as soon as the interview began, Dealey began to pepper his interviewer with facts about how he had studied Russian and English extensively in college and had numerous family members living in Europe. Upon hearing this, the interviewer smiled and said, “That’s great Sam, what do you think of Hong Kong?”

Dealey accepted the job with the Wall Street Journal and relocated to Hong Kong. However, the transition proved to be too much of a change for his liking and after two years he quit the job and moved back to Dallas where he began work at numerous different newspapers. He then became a fulltime freelance writer at the age of 27 and wrote sporadically for Time, GQ, and various other magazines. His work takes him all around the world. Dealey, now 34, works as a contributing editor at the US News and World Report, but still mainly hits the road as a freelance foreign correspondent.

Sam Dealey discusses his craft in the following interview:

Q: What motivated you to become a foreign correspondent?
A: While I was working in Hong Kong, I met a friend who was sneaking food into Burma and who was hanging out with guerrillas whose villages had been burnt down. He agreed to take me on one of his trips and meet the soldiers. It was crazy to interact with these guys. I mean, their families had been torn apart and their villages been burnt down. This was something much more real. After that experience I had no interest in covering PTA meetings. I realized this is what I want to do with my life. I quit the job at the Wall Street Journal after two years. At that point I had been bitten by the bug of third world countries. I then began traveling to different countries and writing as a freelance reporter.

Q: Do you have a particular method that you use when conducting interviews?
A: Interviewing really depends on who I am going to interview. If it is a person who I want to be a strong lead or my central character in my story, I am very casual. I don’t pepper him with questions, I just spend time with him. I’ll travel around with him for a few weeks until he gets comfortable with my presence. If it is an interview with some governmental official, I don’t always take notes. Also, if the guy says something interesting I might wait a few questions later to write it down. You don’t want to get these guys nervous or have them try to censor what they say. It’s just making friends. It’s like how you pick up a girl, some girls are ugly and some are church girls, so you’re going to want to vary your approach.

Q: What would you describe as the highlight of your career?
A: My greatest journalist moment was a trip to Haiti that I took as a whim. I was back down in Dallas and bored to tears, and I had been reading a novel that centers around a hotel in Haiti. Recently Haiti had been undergoing all kinds of internal strife. January 1st was going to be Haiti’s 200 year anniversary of freedom, but there were also all sorts of violence and mobs in the streets. Before I knew it, I was heading out. By the time I had booked my trip and had everything set up I was in Washington D.C. and my plane was set to leave at like 5 in the morning. I was dressed in a tuxedo that I had worn to a party the night before, and I was incredibly hung-over. I crawled off the plane in Haiti, and I grabbed someone with a car to help drive me around. We spent a whole day photographing street mobs, tear gas and incidences where people were getting beat up. I had not even checked in yet, and as I was returning to my hotel my driver says, “Mister Sam, are you going to the party at the palace tonight?” I had no idea what he was talking about, but I said yes and brought out the old tuxedo that was covered in cigarettes and booze. We went to the palace of Aristide (Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide) and my driver dropped me off at the front. I walked up the palace steps and walked right on in.

Q: What happened in the palace?
A: They were going to have some play about the 200 years of freedom. It was like 200 of Aristide cronies, myself and a very reluctant French ambassador. About halfway through the play the lights went out. This was a common occurrence in Haiti so no one was really that worried, but then there were three loud booms. The lights lit up the windows of the hall. Everyone turned around and it turned out it was fireworks, but everyone was so shaken up by the incident, that I thought to myself that the whole government is very unstable. I started wandering through the palace and there in the back were all these street gangs waiting to get paid by the palace. They were known as shavers or street toughs who went around and the Haiti and beat up people who were against the government of Aristide. Aristide claimed he had nothing to do with these people but then there they were at the back of his palace waiting to get paid.  I thought to myself, this place is so shaken up that there is no way Aristide with remain here for much longer, and sure enough with a few weeks the government collapsed and Aristide went into exile.

Q: What is you writing process like?
A: Well, first I don’t do much. Once I come back from overseas I cook a lot and do stuff around the house. For the first week I will just be mulling things over, organizing stuff mentally. For the second week I transcribe my notes in the interview. I check them closely and maybe there was something I lost the first time around. After that I begin working on sections. I write small nuggets and then I play the big jigsaw game of where it is going to fit. The whole time it looks like I am an incredible procrastinator. I like to see what really resounds and what is stored in my mind after a week. What really jostles forward out of that mess, the points and the arguments you want to make that really stick out, that is the stuff that you need to base the story around. After a while, it just starts to form.

Q: What are the essentials that you bring with you when you conduct foreign reporting?
A: Well, a good foreign reporter cannot go without coffee, cigarettes, for bribes or smoking, someone you can trust, a camera, a pen and a piece of paper.

Q: How do you pitch stories to papers?
A: Pitching is probably the hardest part, maybe even harder than writing. Journalists like to tell you that a good idea always sells, which is a complete lie. Most often you have to get the piece in front of them with a recommendation or you won’t get it in there. You need to get it into the right editor and get it in front of his face. When your email comes, the editors he needs to say, “Oh yeah I should actually listen to this guy.”

Q: Could you describe a typical pitch?
A: Sure, let’s say I’m going to pitch a piece on the janjaweed rebels in Somalia. I would start out with just a description of what the janjaweed are about, how they are out there burning killing and raping. I would then describe who they are as part of a larger role and how it is newsworthy material. You have to show the editor that there is something special that you can deliver for them. I personally would say that I could gain exclusive access with the janjaweed leader and that I would spend two weeks with him reporting about all the specific stuff that he does.

Q: What is your viewpoint on journalistic bias?
A: No journalism is unbiased, that is a horse shit idea. I have ideas that I am willing to be convinced otherwise. I keep myself intellectually open.

Q: Any advice for journalists interested in being a foreign correspondent?
A: Just because a situation is dangerous does not mean it is dangerous to you. In Iraq, I think there is not a story that I could do. In Sudan, they are too busy killing each other to worry about me. Danger really is very relative. You start asking around. You approach business leaders. It’s all Washington D.C. politics. You have to be able to read who is on the up and who is on the down. You have to be open with them.
(Interviewed, condensed and edited by Jameson Parker Holloman)

DEALEY ON THE ROAD:
1. After almost a decade since US troop’s withdrawal from Somalia, conflict still reigns supreme with Islamic fundamentalists in control of most of Somalia’s government. Could Somalia prove to be a breeding ground for international terror?
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1561131,00.html

2. In a continuing fight between janjaweed rebels and government backed Arab-militia, rape has become a symbol for the massive turmoil embroiling the country.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1098951,00.html

3. The Sudan government could be preparing a military strike against the U.N. in the retaliation for the International Criminal Court conviction of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1822833,00.html

4. Gillian Gibbons, the British schoolteacher in Sudan who has recently received a presidential pardon for the Sudanese government, provides an example that the Islamic regime is a double-edged sword in Sudan.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1690280,00.html

5. As rebels, soldiers, and pro-governmental militia fight on in war-torn Darfur, average citizens pay the price.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1007220,00.html