Looking at American Journalism From the Outside In.

This article offers insights on the status of the media market in various countries. In Mexico, even Reforma, the popular among the newspapers in the country, is no match for The New York Times newspaper. However, the publishing is trying, and so are Mexican journalists on many papers and magazines, despite a weak economy, persistent poverty, shifting standards, implicit and explicit journalistic corruption, and an audience that often seems mugged by television soaps and unable or unwilling to read. In Tokyo, a problem facing news agencies is not on circulation, rather on its stultification. In this country, the political and journalistic poverty is a poverty of the imagination. In China, there was a lack of real jobs in Chinese journalism. In others, particularly in Western Europe, editors and producers have some of the same worries, but hardly the angst. Journalism in Europe, particularly in England, Germany and France, still retains much of the verve and excitement of the Great Game. American journalists are sometimes viewed as taking themselves just seriously in places where sell papers remains the object of the game. In Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, journalists are trying to develop standards for reporting in societies where, for more than 50 years, no real reporting existed at all. In those places, young men and women with an inclination towards journalism often have found themselves shunted into government-ministry jobs or to obscure niches in academia.