Alexander Ragir is a co-founder and chief operating officer of Storyhunter. A former foreign correspondent for Bloomberg News in Rio de Janeiro, he frequently contributed to Bloomberg Markets and Businessweek.
He won the Overseas PressClub’s award in 2010 for best reporting in Latin America and the 2010 SABEW award for best international investigative story. He’s worked for the Associated Press in Sao Paulo and produced video journalism for Current TV.
What’s ended up to be Storyhunter has been an idea evolving for almost a decade. It started as a dream, and now it’s real but it’s still evolving. Basically, the news industry was disrupted. The leading news organizations began cutting budgets and closing their foreign bureaus. They relied a lot on Twitter and YouTube as a replacement for paying professionals for breaking news coverage. The problem is you often have no idea who uploaded the images and they are bad quality, so it gives the viewer little insight.
At the same time, equipment to produce and edit high-quality news video became cheaper. My co-founder and I thought that there needed to be a technology that connects all these journalists and filmmakers on the ground with the news outlets that previously didn’t have an efficient system for accessing them. Leveraging the power of technology and talented journalists on the ground, we believe we can improve the quality of information available about the world.
What’s the most difficult part about starting a company?
I wouldn’t say starting a company is difficult. That’s just paperwork. What’s extremely difficult is creating real value and sticking to your mission.
How do you recruit the journalists you work with globally?
Word of mouth. We’ve never really had a marketing budget, actually. Our biggest recruitment tool is the fact that we offer the opportunity for freelancers to work directly with the world’s premier news and documentary organizations, and get paid within 10 days of completing a project. On Storyhunter, freelancers can also build a verified resume and have a chance to be part of our global community. We also have screening events around the world called ScreenUps. If you’re in New York, we have them once a month.
How was you facing some of the global challenges for journalists in terms of their ability to gather news?
Last year was a horrific year for journalism. We saw brutal murders of our colleagues that really showed the power of media being used in terrible ways. One of our Storyhunters was released last year after being kidnapped for six months in Syria. He wasn’t working with us on that occasion, but this really shook us up at Storyhunter. Now, we offer conflict insurance free-of-charge to any freelancer entering a conflict zone. I know this doesn’t solve the bigger issues, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Your manifesto is now almost three years old, how has the business changed since you wrote it?
Are you asking us to make an addendum to our manifesto?? Actually, you are right that a lot has changed over the past three years. Our premise that the world needs more original field reports from around the world was really validated by the success of a slew of well-funded news ventures, like AJ+, Vice, Fusion and others, that have expanded international reporting. This really happened in the past three years, so I just think it’s a validation that we were on to something and we weren’t the only people that thought the world needs more original field reporting.
What piece of advice would you give to those getting started in journalism? What about those looking to make a career change?
Always fight to do the stories you really are passionate about, and stick to your principles. You’ll get push back from your editors. People may feel threatened by you. But by pushing to tell the stories that matter, you’ll probably begin to love journalism more and you’ll be respected for the quality of work you’ve done. As for making a career change, I would say as long as you’ve focused on building real skills in journalism, you should have a lot of skills that are transferable to other industries.
