Foreign Correspondents : Job Abroad Often Fatal to Marriage

Robert Secter spent 270 days on the road during the last year he was based in Bangkok for the Los Angeles Times.

By the time the year was over, so was Secter’s marriage.

It’s difficult to identify a single cause in the breakup of any marriage, but Secter says the strain of living in Bangkok and doing all that traveling certainly “put a strain on our marriage in general.”

It’s a common strain--and a common refrain--among foreign correspondents. Living overseas can be an exciting, broadening experience for a correspondent’s spouse and children, but these advantages are often undermined by the correspondent’s frequent absences and long working hours. Many correspondents spend a great deal of time on the road, and virtually all are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week; most correspondents say they routinely work at least six of those days.

‘Occupational Hazard’

When Malcolm Browne surveyed his fellow correspondents at the New York Times in 1976, he found the divorce rate among those who’d been abroad for more than five years was 50%. Correspondents interviewed for this story said they doubt that the percentage has dropped in the past decade.

Divorce is “an occupational hazard for a foreign correspondent,” says William Tuohy, now based in Bonn for the Los Angeles Times.

“Foreign correspondence tends to be a marriage-buster,” says Jim Yuenger, the Chicago Tribune correspondent in Warsaw.

Both men should know. They’ve also been divorced.

Yuenger is remarried now, and he says his new wife has “been able to begin carving out a life for herself in Warsaw,” studying three foreign languages and working part time as an editor on an English-language magazine.

A few other wives also have particular skills and interests that can make their stay abroad with foreign-correspondent husbands both personally and professionally rewarding. Marina Ottaway, wife of David Ottaway of the Washington Post, is a university professor, for example, so when her husband was sent from country to country in the 1960s, ‘70s and early ‘80s, she wrote books with him and taught at universities in Egypt, Ethiopia and Zambia.

Most wives aren’t so fortunate.

In some countries, spouses of Americans aren’t even permitted to have work visas. In most countries, even if they have a work visa, it’s hard to find work, especially if they don’t speak the native language--and most don’t (although some papers will pay for a spouse’s language lessons on some foreign assignments).

Spouses--usually wives, since most foreign correspondents are men--often wind up feeling bored, abandoned, frustrated, frightened and resentful while their husbands are off covering exciting, sometimes dangerous stories.

Much of this is inevitable. As E. J. Dionne Jr., a New York Times correspondent in Rome (and a 34-year-old bachelor), says:

“I love what I’m doing. . . . It’s just a very strange life . . . a very peculiar way to make a living. . . . How much you have to move around, the irregularity of the hours, it’s an extremely unpredictable life. . . . Foreign correspondents tend to make bad fathers, bad husbands. . . . Is it the job that makes them that way or . . . (is) it the nature of (those) . . . drawn to this kind of work . . . (to be) like that? I think it’s a little bit of both.”

Marrying Other Reporters

Either way, it’s no wonder that divorce among foreign correspondents reaches epidemic proportions--and it’s no wonder many editors think that the ideal foreign correspondent is a bachelor, preferably a young one, ready, willing and able to race off to civil wars, quaint villages and isolated jungle settlements, rather than worrying about missing his wife’s birthday, his son’s soccer game or his daughter’s school play.

Some reporters, men and women, try to avoid this problem by marrying other reporters--a phenomenon that’s occurring “more and more often,” says Jim Hoagland, assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, who spent eight years abroad for the Post and was divorced once himself (and who’s going back abroad this month for the Post, to be based in Paris as a columnist, reporter and associate editor).

‘Unreasonable Demands’

“The profession makes what many people see as unreasonable demands, and you need a mate who can understand that, who can accept that,” Hoagland says.

Moreover, many spouses going abroad with a correspondent have been able to find reporting jobs in the same city, working part time for other American newspapers or for American magazines, wire services or radio or television stations.

A few spouses even find part-time employment with the same publication as their mates. Marlise Simons and Felicity Berringer, both of the New York Times, work on a contract basis for the New York Times in the same cities (Rio de Janeiro and Moscow, respectively) where their husbands are the paper’s staff correspondents.

Marital Accommodation

The Wall Street Journal is trying an even more unusual marital accommodation in Cairo.

In late 1984, the Journal decided it wanted two reporters based in the Mideast. Traditionally, newspapers doing that have one reporter in Jerusalem and one in the Arab world. But Norman Pearlstine, managing editor of the Journal, thinks that the relationship between Israel and the Arab world can best be covered by having two reporters travel, interchangeably, between the two areas. To do that effectively, he figured, the Journal should have two reporters who could coordinate and cooperate with each other.

Pearlstine decided to transfer Gerald Seib, then based in Washington, to Cairo and to hire his wife, Barbara Rosewicz, from the United Press International bureau in Washington and send her to Cairo, too.

Surprised, Delighted

Once Pearlstine made that decision, Karen Elliott House, the Journal’s foreign editor, telephoned Seib and Rosewicz separately from New York and invited each to lunch on the same day when she would next be in Washington. Rosewicz says House didn’t tell either of them what she wanted to talk about--or that she had called the other.

When the three arrived at lunch together and House made her offer, Seib and Rosewicz were as surprised as they were delighted.

Ideally, of course, as Rosewicz said recently, in a telephone interview from Cairo, “if the Journal had two reporters out here (in the Mideast), they wouldn’t have them based in the same city,” even with Pearlstine’s novel approach to covering the Mideast.

But the Journal’s foreign coverage tends to emphasize feature stories more than breaking, daily news stories, so the arrangement is a bit more practicable than it would be for other papers. Journal reporters often travel for a few weeks at a time, gathering material for several stories before writing them, rather than reporting and writing one story, then reporting and writing the next, as most newspaper journalists generally do.

Time Together

Thus, both Seib and Rosewicz travel a great deal, usually independently, but the Journal has encouraged them to wind up together, in Cairo or elsewhere, to write their stories whenever they can.

Working this way, Rosewicz and Seib figure they spent about 200 days together last year--far more than many foreign correspondents spend with their spouses. But even Rosewicz and Seib have gone a month at a time without seeing each other--and two weeks without even speaking to each other on the phone, in large part because no Arab nation (except Egypt) has regular communication with Israel.

“You can be a one-hour car drive apart, but you can’t call, telex or send a letter,” Seib says.

Once, when Seib was in Israel and Rosewicz was in Kuwait, he telephoned her sister in Kansas City and asked her to call Rosewicz and tell her that he missed her.

Special Arrangement

Although no other papers have accommodated their correspondents in the same way the Journal accommodated Seib and Rosewicz, the Washington Post is trying to work out a special arrangement for married reporters Margaret Shapiro and Fred Hiatt, both of whom want to go to Tokyo for the paper when that bureau is next available.

Leonard Downie, managing editor of the Post, says the paper may make one of the two the paper’s full-time correspondent in Tokyo, and sign a contract with the other to work part time, then reverse the assignments midway through their stay in Tokyo so neither suffers a career setback.

This would not be the first time the Post has tailored its normal assignment and work schedule to fit the individual needs of its reporters. Two Post medical reporters work part time, for example, so they can spend more time with their young children, and Jonathan Randal, a longtime Post foreign correspondent, has worked only six months a year for the past 11 years because he “wanted to do something else” with his time.

Competition a Problem

But special arrangements can get very delicate when husband and wife work for competing newspapers.

In 1984, the New York Times asked Steven Weisman, its White House correspondent, if he’d like to go to New Delhi. It sounded exciting--all the more so because A. M. Rosenthal, executive editor of the Times, was once the paper’s correspondent in India and he still has special feelings for the country.

Weisman’s wife, Elizabeth Bumiller, a reporter for the Washington Post, was skeptical about going to India, though. She was “doubtful she would be able to write stories from India,” Weisman says.

Why not?

Rosenthal.

“I don’t think it’s healthy for . . . one couple to report for two of the major papers in the United States,” Rosenthal says. “There ought to be competition and different points of view, and I do not think a husband and wife can really compete with each other.”

Complicated Discussions

Sensitive and complicated discussions took place with Weisman, Bumiller and various editors at both papers before Bumiller’s continuing relationship with the Post was finally determined.

The Post already had a correspondent in New Delhi so there was no question of Bumiller going to India as the Post’s full-time correspondent, even had Rosenthal not objected so strenuously to that. In fact, Weisman told Rosenthal that Bumiller, a feature writer in the Post’s Style section, wouldn’t even be writing news stories if she were in New Delhi. Nor would she be contributing stories of any sort to the paper with great frequency.

But Rosenthal thinks that life style is “one of the most important parts of the life of a country,” and Benjamin C. Bradlee, executive editor of the Post, says Rosenthal was resistant to letting Bumiller write for the Post at all if Weisman were the Times correspondent in New Delhi.

‘Probably Illegal’

“I told Abe that was . . . probably illegal,” Bradlee said recently.

Rosenthal says he doesn’t even remember talking to Bradlee about the matter, “except, maybe, when he yakked at me for a minute at a cocktail party,” and Rosenthal insists that he tried to be “as accommodating as possible.”

But the issue left Post editors with harsh feelings toward Rosenthal. Bradlee says Rosenthal was “petty.” Downie says Rosenthal was “awful.”

Regardless, a deal was finally struck: Bumiller would write 15 feature stories a year for the Post as a part-time contributor to Style.

That, at least, is the deal that Bumiller and the Post agreed on. Rosenthal says he specified no number and told Weisman only that he didn’t want Bumiller to “overdo it and become, in effect, a second Post correspondent there.”

“I left it up to (Weisman and Bumiller),” Rosenthal said recently. “They’re mature, responsible people. They apparently have more maturity than their editors.”

Cut in Pay

Bumiller’s salary was reduced significantly when she went to New Delhi, and at first, she says, she felt as if her career had been “derailed.” But she’s found that it takes much longer to get things done in India than it did in Washington, and 15 pieces a year keeps her busy.

In addition to her reporting and writing, Bumiller is studying Hindi, traveling through India, and seems to be having a wonderful time after all.

“I really love this,” she says. “It’s opened up a new world for me.”

The Weisman/Bumiller problem is not dissimilar from that encountered by Jay Mathews of the Washington Post and his wife, Linda Mathews of the Los Angeles Times, in 1976.

The Post was sending Jay, a longtime China scholar, to Hong Kong. Linda, who then covered the U.S. Supreme Court for the L.A. Times, wanted to go with her husband and become The Times correspondent there. But The Times was also concerned about the competitive aspects of a husband-and-wife team working for rival papers. In addition, editors say, they had already hired Jacques Leslie, who spoke some Chinese, and the paper was hoping to send him to China.

Husband-Wife Team

When The Times refused to give Linda the Hong Kong assignment, she quit and went to work for the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal. But Leslie didn’t keep the Hong Kong assignment for long, and when he left, the paper rehired Linda and gave her the job. She and Jay subsequently opened their papers’ bureaus in Peking after relations between the United States and China were normalized.

Was the competition between Linda and Jay Mathews--and their papers--a problem?

Both say it wasn’t, although both recall one afternoon when Linda told Jay an amusing anecdote she’d just picked up, then went to take a nap. (She was eight months pregnant at the time.) While she was asleep, Jay stole her anecdote, put it in his story and filed the story to the Post.

Both Linda and Jay say they were scrupulous about being fair to their respective papers--even to the extent of taking into consideration the different rhythms of the two papers.

Published Same Day

The Los Angeles Times often edits and schedules its major Sunday feature stories several days in advance, for example, while the Post prefers to run stories as soon as possible after their reporters write them. So, on one occasion, when Linda and Jay simultaneously encountered the last American to serve time in a Chinese prison, Linda filed her story on Thursday and Jay held his until Saturday and pretended he’d just gotten it.

Both stories were published Sunday--both on Page 1 of their respective papers.

It could be argued, of course, that this wasn’t fair to the Post--that if the Post wants to run stories more quickly than does The Times, Jay should have accommodated his editors, filed his story early and let his wife and The Times worry about their own timing. But the story was not of cosmic significance, and Jay doesn’t seem to think he acted improperly.

‘A Little Naive’

Jay is now the Washington Post correspondent in Los Angeles; Linda is also in Los Angeles, as an assistant foreign editor of the Times. Suppose they want to go abroad again--together?

“In general, I would not like the idea of a husband-and-wife team, one working for The Times and one working for the opposition,” says Alvin Shuster, foreign editor of The Times. “Apparently, the experience with Linda and Jay worked out quite well. . . . But I’d want to look at it very carefully before I would approve it again.”

Most foreign correspondents say editors shouldn’t worry about competitive factors in such circumstances, though.

“It’s a little naive,” says H. D. S. Greenway, former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post and now associate editor for national and foreign news at the Boston Globe. “Journalists overseas cooperate with each other anyway. There are many husband-and-wife combinations where they’ll keep their scoops more guardedly from their spouses than another person would just with the opposition.”

‘All in a Special Boat’

Evelyn Waugh, with an exclusive story on the imminent invasion of Ethiopia by Italy in 1935, cabled his story to the London Daily Mail in Latin to prevent his colleagues from stealing his scoop, but such competitive tactics are rare (and, in Waugh’s case, counterproductive; by the time his editor was able to translate the story, the invasion was on and the “exclusive” was no longer exclusive).

“I felt very little sense of competition with any of my colleagues living abroad,” says David Ottaway of the Washington Post. “You’re sort of all in a special boat, and often you either sink or swim together. . . . There is a fraternity of foreign correspondents, a solidarity. You fight the same uphill battles of getting planes and . . . the logistics of filing (a story). . . . I’ve helped L.A. Times guys file.

“If you’ve (all) sat in a building which is being bombed and wondered if you’re going to survive, it creates a special bond. . . . I’m closer to the people from other papers . . . I was abroad with than I am to anyone at the Post.”

Cooperation Is Common

Indeed, correspondents say cooperation is far more common than competition abroad, and they speak of “teaming up” on stories and of believing that only other foreign correspondents can truly understand what they go through; they insist that the camaraderie of their fellow correspondents is one of the great pleasures of working abroad.

Foreign correspondents--far from home, friends and editors and, often, far from family as well--share information and sources, drinks and meals, danger and excitement with each other as a matter of both habit and survival. Sometimes, when communication with the United States is difficult, they share telephone lines, too--as when Michael Ross of the Los Angeles Times used a CBS line one night and a Newsday line another night to relay to Los Angeles his stories on the American bombings in Tripoli in April.

Newcomers Get Help

Foreign correspondents compete more against circumstances than against each other, and experienced foreign correspondents usually help newcomers abroad without even being asked, whether they work for rival news organizations or not.

E. J. Dionne Jr. was a relatively new New York Times foreign correspondent when he was sent to Beirut for a while in 1983, and he recalls how he “spent a lot of time” listening to David Ignatius, then the veteran Mideast correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.

“I called it ‘Lebanon 1A’,” Dionne says.

Dan Goodgame, then of the Miami Herald, says he received similar help from Don Schanche of the Los Angeles Times when both were covering the assassination of Anwar Sadat in Cairo in 1981, and Charles T. Powers of the Los Angeles Times says Jonathan Randall of the Washington Post “showed me who the players were” when Powers first went abroad in 1980 and was “as green as they come.”

Networks Compete

Being freed of the “nonsensical competitiveness that you have in the United States” is a great benefit of being a foreign correspondent, Powers says.

There are exceptions to this spirit of cooperation, of course.

Correspondents for the three television networks and--to a lesser degree--the two newsmagazines are very competitive with each other. So--at times--are correspondents for the New York Times and Washington Post, which regard each other as prime rivals.

“Friendship is one thing . . . wanting another reporter with you if you’re in a danger zone . . . going off to the mountains in El Salvador, that’s acceptable,” says Rosenthal of the New York Times, “but we tell our correspondents . . . not to make a practice of cooperation . . . I don’t think there should be cooperation between the New York Times and Washington Post (or) the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I don’t really approve of it.”

‘Living in Dream World’

Jim Hoagland of the Post feels the same way.

“I don’t want our correspondents helping them (New York Times reporters) out, and any of our correspondents who expects them to help us out is dreaming,” he says.

In fact, Hoagland still enjoys talking about the time in Cyprus, more than a decade ago, when a New York Times reporter refused to share a boat with him and Hoagland then refused to share a phone line with the Times man.

But foreign correspondents for both the Post and New York Times say they cooperate with each other more often than Rosenthal and Hoagland think. Reporters from other papers agree.

“With all due respect to Jim, he’s living in a dream world,” says David Lamb, who was based in Nairobi, Cairo and Sydney for the Los Angeles Times. “I could give you six examples of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times sharing information. . . . With rare exception, you share everything with your colleagues. . . . And why shouldn’t you? The readers are better-served if we share information. Who are we supposed to serve anyway--our readers or our editors’ egos?”

Susanna Shuster of The Times editorial library assisted with the research for these articles.