As news organisations grapple with shrinking budgets, they increasingly rely on freelancers, who cost less and are often willing to take on the attendant risks reporting in places they wouldn’t send their staff to. The competition is fierce and female freelancers work hard to ensure their gender isn’t a liability and clam up about the dangers they face and sometimes report before being commissioned to do so.
Kim Wall has reported on stories around the world. But she was to disappear in a country known for gender parity, Denmark, writes Sruthi Gottipati on the Guardian:
I met Kim last year. She wore her auburn hair in a top-knot bun and fashionably hemmed clothes that I later teased her were hipster chic. Kim, a Swedish journalist, was a fellow like me on a reporting trip to Uganda that was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), an organization amplifying the voices of women in journalism.
On our way from the airport to a hotel for a hostile-environment training course in Kenya, we bonded over our disdain about the thinning avenues to pursue original reportage. I was just wading into the murky waters of freelancing after holding staff positions as a journalist and admired Kim, who saw the media landscape for what it was and quickly adapted, snapping up bylines in top publications.
Kim had been living in New York at the time and was poised to move to China. She traveled to far-off corners of the globe – the Marshall Islands, Haiti, Cuba, Sri Lanka – mostly on competitive grants that recognized her immense talent. She even slipped into North Korea at one point.
After the reporting trip wrapped up, Kim and I stayed on in Uganda. We shared a hotel bed to cut costs. Kim would often roar off on motorcycle taxis to follow up on a story. I asked her if she worried about using them in a country she wasn’t familiar with. She paused thoughtfully and said she believed they were safe.
Before we left Uganda, we embarked on a safari trip to Murchison Falls national park. We spied giraffes, hippos, and elephants in the stark, arid terrain. “This is such an Africa cliché,” she said, leaning out of the car window and clicking photographs.
Last Saturday, I heard that Kim was missing. I frantically scrolled through news stories, most of which did not initially name her. They said she was on a private submarine that subsequently sank off the coast of Copenhagen.
The vessel’s Danish owner who had accompanied her had been arrested on preliminary manslaughter charges. He denies responsibility for her fate. Friends on Facebook have since embarked on a virtual search party, pleading for anyone with information to contact the Danish police.
As news organizations grapple with shrinking budgets, they increasingly rely on freelancers, who cost less and are often willing to take on the attendant risks reporting in places they wouldn’t send their staff to. Even against this backdrop, the competition is fierce to place stories and female freelancers work hard to ensure their gender isn’t calculated as a liability. So they clam up about the dangers they face and sometimes report before being commissioned to do so.
Kim’s family said the submarine sojourn was for a profile of the vessel’s owner. As news trickled in over the weekend, I waited for a publication to claim Kim and account for her whereabouts. None did.
As the hours and days ticked by, I began to fantasize that it was all just a big misunderstanding, that Kim was actually drinking a beer at a bar somewhere with one heck of a story to tell. But the thing is, the world has a way of knocking down women who are sharp, funny and bold. It has a habit of strangling the voices who dare to speak up, of humiliating the women who step outside their comfort zones, of crushing the ones who break the rules.
After traveling and reporting in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it was in her native Scandinavia, a supposed bastion of gender parity, in which Kim has disappeared. It’s a chilling reminder that women’s safety can’t be shrugged off as a problem specific to developing countries, as if the west is immune to misogyny.
In the US, an ugly contempt of women has been exposed in recent years under the guise of partisan rancor. In France, where I live, men murdering their wives is given the innocuous title of “marital drama” in the press. Newspapers, even credible ones, still use terms like “horrific rape”.
Kim knows this. She doesn’t see the west as morally superior. As the empathetic reporter she is, she writes with nuance and gives her characters, however downtrodden or peculiar or disenfranchised, agency. I wish we lived in a world that does the same for her.
Kim Wall has reported on stories around the world. But she was to disappear in a country known for gender parity, Denmark, writes Sruthi Gottipati on the Guardian:
I met Kim last year. She wore her auburn hair in a top-knot bun and fashionably hemmed clothes that I later teased her were hipster chic. Kim, a Swedish journalist, was a fellow like me on a reporting trip to Uganda that was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF), an organization amplifying the voices of women in journalism.
On our way from the airport to a hotel for a hostile-environment training course in Kenya, we bonded over our disdain about the thinning avenues to pursue original reportage. I was just wading into the murky waters of freelancing after holding staff positions as a journalist and admired Kim, who saw the media landscape for what it was and quickly adapted, snapping up bylines in top publications.
Kim had been living in New York at the time and was poised to move to China. She traveled to far-off corners of the globe – the Marshall Islands, Haiti, Cuba, Sri Lanka – mostly on competitive grants that recognized her immense talent. She even slipped into North Korea at one point.
After the reporting trip wrapped up, Kim and I stayed on in Uganda. We shared a hotel bed to cut costs. Kim would often roar off on motorcycle taxis to follow up on a story. I asked her if she worried about using them in a country she wasn’t familiar with. She paused thoughtfully and said she believed they were safe.
Before we left Uganda, we embarked on a safari trip to Murchison Falls national park. We spied giraffes, hippos, and elephants in the stark, arid terrain. “This is such an Africa cliché,” she said, leaning out of the car window and clicking photographs.
Last Saturday, I heard that Kim was missing. I frantically scrolled through news stories, most of which did not initially name her. They said she was on a private submarine that subsequently sank off the coast of Copenhagen.
 |
| ‘Female reporters, intent on uncovering abuse and telling other people’s stories, rarely share their own.’ Photograph: Johan Nilsson/AP |
The vessel’s Danish owner who had accompanied her had been arrested on preliminary manslaughter charges. He denies responsibility for her fate. Friends on Facebook have since embarked on a virtual search party, pleading for anyone with information to contact the Danish police.
As news organizations grapple with shrinking budgets, they increasingly rely on freelancers, who cost less and are often willing to take on the attendant risks reporting in places they wouldn’t send their staff to. Even against this backdrop, the competition is fierce to place stories and female freelancers work hard to ensure their gender isn’t calculated as a liability. So they clam up about the dangers they face and sometimes report before being commissioned to do so.
Kim’s family said the submarine sojourn was for a profile of the vessel’s owner. As news trickled in over the weekend, I waited for a publication to claim Kim and account for her whereabouts. None did.
As the hours and days ticked by, I began to fantasize that it was all just a big misunderstanding, that Kim was actually drinking a beer at a bar somewhere with one heck of a story to tell. But the thing is, the world has a way of knocking down women who are sharp, funny and bold. It has a habit of strangling the voices who dare to speak up, of humiliating the women who step outside their comfort zones, of crushing the ones who break the rules.
After traveling and reporting in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it was in her native Scandinavia, a supposed bastion of gender parity, in which Kim has disappeared. It’s a chilling reminder that women’s safety can’t be shrugged off as a problem specific to developing countries, as if the west is immune to misogyny.
In the US, an ugly contempt of women has been exposed in recent years under the guise of partisan rancor. In France, where I live, men murdering their wives is given the innocuous title of “marital drama” in the press. Newspapers, even credible ones, still use terms like “horrific rape”.
Kim knows this. She doesn’t see the west as morally superior. As the empathetic reporter she is, she writes with nuance and gives her characters, however downtrodden or peculiar or disenfranchised, agency. I wish we lived in a world that does the same for her.
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