As proprietor of Slate’s new international news blog, I have a few goals in mind. Firstly, the blog will aim to provide up-to-the-minute coverage of the most important events happening beyond U.S. borders. Expect a combination of original reporting by me and analysis of the day’s top stories in U.S. and international media. For the next few weeks at least, that means that we’re likely to focus heavily on the ongoing crisis in Egypt, the civil war in Syria, and the continuing international reverberations from Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations.
Since the U.S. news cycle has a tendency to shine a light on only one foreign country at a time, and generally only when a major crisis or upheaval makes the place in question impossible to ignore, I hope to also get outside the news cycle a bit to highlight emerging but less covered international stories before they’re on the front pages.
Finally, I’d like this to be a blog that focuses on the why, more than the who, what, and where of global events, so expect a generous helping of social science and exploration of the cultural, environmental, and demographic trends driving the day’s news.
So what’s the why for this blog itself? I promise to keep the globalization clichés to a minimum, but I do believe that we live in an era where all politics are increasingly global, and in which Americans can’t afford to ignore international events or their country’s role in them. I hope this blog can be a valuable addition to ongoing conversation on politics, economics, and culture already happening across Slate, and if all else fails, I’m not above posting the occasional wacky dictator photo.
I’m thrilled to be starting here after six years as an editor and writer at Foreign Policy magazine. (You can find most of my previous work here.) I looking forward to meeting new readers and new colleagues and hope you’ll keep the conversation flowing by contacting me via email at Josh.Keating@slate.com or on Twitter at @joshuakeating.
So let’s see what’s going on in the world, shall we?
