By Alex Boekelheide

When journalist Charles Sennott got his first taste of life as a foreign correspondent, he was a rookie beat reporter grabbing a drink with his editor in a New York City bar. While the newsmen were discussing some long-forgotten story on the cops and courts circuit, they were interrupted by a breaking news report on the bar TV of political unrest in Colombia. 

Sennott’s editor turned to him. “Have you got a passport?” he asked. Sennott replied that he did.

“Great. Here’s $2,000. Go cover that story,” Sennott recalls him saying.

Sennott shared this experience and others from his career as an international journalist during a lunchtime seminar with USC Annenberg faculty and students, part of USC Annenberg’s Media, Economics & Entrepreneurship speaker series. The initiative encourages students to consider the communication revolution from an economic perspective.

Sennott traces his current work, as executive editor and vice president of the news website GlobalPost, to that initial overseas assignment. Through his years as a foreign correspondent for The Boston Globe, to exploring multimedia production as a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University, to co-founding GlobalPost on the eve of President Obama’s inauguration, Sennott has stayed close to his background as a globetrotting journalist hunting down good stories to tell.

This ethic is evident in GlobalPost, which focuses on providing international news coverage to replace what it calls the “enormous void” left by shrinking budgets at American news outlets. With a core executive and editorial staff of 18 in its Boston-based offices, the site maintains relationships with freelance photographers and reporters around the world, while drawing on a mix of revenue streams — advertising, syndication of content and a membership paywall -- to pay for the endeavor.

Sennott said that GlobalPost had taught him a key lesson of being a journalist in today’s economic environment: “Know what skills you can bring to the table, and know when to turn to others to help you out.” As he was pulling together the resources to launch the site, he learned that a fellow Bostonian -- Philip S. Balboni, a local television executive -- was working on a similar idea. The two met and began working together, and “it was like a machine where the cogs came together,” Sennott said. With Balboni’s business sense and Sennott’s journalism background, GlobalPost was born.

Today, the site benefits from a wide range of content syndication partnerships with other global media brands, including the Times of India and PBS’ documentary series “Frontline.” GlobalPost’s traffic has increased steadily since its launch -- it receives 2.5 million unique visits per month -- and it has attracted a global audience, with more than 200 countries represented in each month’s visitor log. While the finances of the privately held company are kept under wraps, Sennott said he “is confident” the site will turn a profit within the next year.

As GlobalPost continues to build market share and expand its influence through its strategic partnerships, Sennott hopes to return to what he loves most: telling compelling stories based in foreign locales. No matter where he goes, though, he said the instinct that drove him to create GlobalPost is not that far from the drive of the young journalist in that New York City bar.

“You’re always an entrepreneur when you’re a journalist,” he said. “You’re selling the story -- to editors, to your audience -- you’re looking for the opportunity to go out and tell the story.” 

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