Intrepid Adventure Reporter

ASTORIA, New York- A nice surprise was waiting for me when I returned back to NYC after a little US tour where I filmed for a doc series in Kansas and Texas and gave a talk at the University of Michigan: a book by a guy who I helped out a little on his Silk Road travels.

His name is Daniel Markey, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and his book is called China’s Western Horizon. It’s a good book about China’s activities in Central Asia — good quarantine reading.

I got a pretty cool nod in it. On page 86:

Intrepid adventure reporter? Yeah, I guess that just about says it all.

I once thought — even well into my twenties — that all journalists were traveling the world, deeply embedded in their topics of focus. It took me a long while before I realized that wasn’t the case, and that was when everything opened up for me. I saw a niche that needed filled and felt that I could fill it. In many respects, I did that.  The more media companies are strapped for cash, the lower ad revenues fall, and the more foreign bureaus they can, the more the demand for people like me — “intrepid adventure reporters” who can be anywhere at anytime.