Bolivia - Worth the Money?

Foreign Correspondent
BOLIVIA - WORTH THE MONEY??

As it turned out, the Bolivians went and settled their constitutional crisis peacefully. No civil insurrection. No war. Only one dead person. Great for them. Crap for visiting journalists. In the end though, things turned out OK for me too. I managed to interview the head of the opposition movement Evo Morales, and most of the other key political leaders in La Paz. With that work I was able to sell a total of three pieces to the Globe and Mail. I also did my debut as a CBC radio reporter. Radio pieces are fun to put together, but at CBC rates it's simply not worth the effort. They pay US$55 a hit. Considering that newsgathering and editing for 1"20s piece will run to from 5-10 hours, you're looking at less than minimum wage. The rate apparently doubles if you're in a war zone. The live 5 minute chat from the Current (a national CBC radio show) is on the other hand remarkably well paid. C$100 a minute. No editing involved. You just have to be there and know what you're talking about. The Globe pays its usual paltry US$250 (bad, but standard for papers). And I managed to sell a short radio doco on Evo Morales to the NPR show LatinoUSA. Between all of that I actually managed to pay my expenses and turn a small profit on the Bolivia trip. And I now know the country and the political players for when the next crisis hits.

Am now trying to sell magazine pieces on the country. No one's interested in anything but Iraq, but trust me, the world will wake up and discover Bolivia...or rather, be forced to wake up...

Also trying to interest the world on the decline and fall of President Lula. Considering he was a media darling just two years ago you'd think the world would be more interested that his government has been revealed to be a common pack of corrupt plundering thieves...