This is an evening to allow new members to be introduced to the Club and make acquaintances over a glass of wine or a beer. These are complimentary, from 6pm-8pm. All members are welcome.

Hope to see you there.

Teams can consist of up to six people, and there will be five rounds of 10 questions. The entry cost is £5 per person, with all money raised going towards the Fixers Fund, assisting families of fixers around the world killed or injured while working with the international media.

Get a team together and purchase tickets here.

Caroline Johns is a reformed historian, having given up her PhD when the roof of her garret caved in and the novelty of penury wore off. She left the hallowed groves of academe (lecturing on the BA Journalism course at City University) to cross to ‘the dark side’ that is the private sector and now works for Deloitte as speechwriter to the UK CEO and chief of staff to the global chairman.

Dr Keith Surridge is a history lecturer in several American college programmes in London. He is the co-author of The Boer War (with Denis Judd), which, if you look hard, may even still be available in some good book shops.

This event is only open to full members of the Frontline Club. Please RSVP by clicking “book”- no payment necessary.

Former foreign correspondent Thomas Crampton talks to Eric Weiner, another former foreign correspondent, about his thoughts on the 10 career options left for foreign correspondents. As media giants crumble and budgets for "the old way of doing things" no longer exist it’s a timely (and funny) 10 minute chat. I’m guessing option number 5 – "Public Relations" is proving to be the most popular for all journalists, not just foreign correspondents, purely for economic reasons, but…

 "Deep down, in your heart of hearts, you know, you’re just a flack" link

However, after several years of media training for the Frontline Club, the BBC, Al Jazeera and others, it looks as if I’m heading yet deeper towards two of the other options. Firstly, option number 4 – "The Professor".

I won’t quite be a professor, but I will be training Rwandan journalists here in Kigali, where I moved with my family one month ago. I’ll be trying to impart a little of what I know and hopefully learn a fair bit of what they know about journalism.

I’ll be working part-time on a USAID funded programme in association with the Rwanda Initiative, a Canadian media NGO based in the Rwandan capital. I’ll have around 5-8 journalists per month, from radio, newspaper and TV, and I hope to learn a bit about what they do, how they work and where they work.

This shouldn’t take up more than a day or two per week, which leaves me plenty of time to desk-based research work, schedule training overseas with a little left over for option number 10 – "Digital".

I’ve handed over the bulk of the online end of Frontlineclub.com to the very able Charlotte Cook. And finally, instead of writing about journalists working on the frontline, I get to be one. Almost. I’ll be blogging for Frontline about life in Rwanda and I’ll be launching my Kigali Wire news/blog site in a week or so

You can follow me on Twitter @kigaliwire and if you’re really keen (and you’ve read this far) you can learn about the process behind building Kigali Wire which will possibly form part of the training I’ll be doing here in Rwanda.

Press accreditation in Rwanda currently costs $1,000 per year for foreign journalists, but it looks like the fee might come down to a more freelance friendly $300 in the near future. As and when it does, I’ll look at getting accredited and adding a bit of Eric Weiner’s option number 1 – "The Journeyman" – to my portfolio of jobs.

So, please stay tuned. And, if you’re passing through Kigail – do let me know.

Ex-SAS man and best selling novelist Andy McNabb had some nice things to say about the Frontline Club website and the bloggers who blog here in the latest edition of New Media Age this week. Thanks to Club member Peter Moore for pointing this out to us on Twitter and uploading the above snap from NMA. Note to Andy: to get more out of the site, may I gently nudge you in the direction of the frontlineblog on Twitter, much of which eventually arrives in the top right hand box on the Frontline Club News page.

If you use the increasingly popular microblogging service Twitter, you might be interested to know who is on Twitter from the Frontline blogs, how often they tweet and how to follow them. First up, you’ll need an account, Second, find and follow the bloggers that interest you most. Here’s a round up of Frontline bloggers currently active on Twitter. If I’ve missed anyone, please shout out in the comments.

@frontlineblog – breaking news and views from the world of international news reporters, tweeted by me covering some stories mentioned on the Frontline blog.

@frontlineclub – news from the club about events and what’s going on at the Club in London.

@mexicoreporter – Deborah Bonello in Mexico City, currently trying to navigate the Swine flu story.

@TheOwenTake – Frontline Club Chairman John Owen and news from and about his blog.

@ljmaximus – Ali S. Novruzov, blogger in Baku, Azerbaijan.

@daxe – David Axe in Africa, not updated for a while though, although he’s blogging from Gabon at present.

@syrianews – Sasa recently joined as he blogs from Damascus and London.

@julietomlin – Julie is the Programme Editor for the Frontline Charitable Trust and she blogs on the Frontline Forum and the media.

@dan_10v11 – Daniel Bennett blogs about the impact of new media on the BBC’s coverage of conflict.

@robcrilly – Rob tweets from Nairobi, Sudan, DRC and beyond. He’s currently writing a book about Darfur. His blog is here.

@adamblenford – Adam blogs about photojournalism.

@strickvl – Alex is based in Kandahar, Afghanistan and regularly blogs and tweets from there.

@onewmphoto – Onnik is blogging and tweeting from Yerevan, Armenia.

@fieldreports – Guy Degen is based in Bonn, Germany, but tweets and blogs from Africa and beyond.

@thejjunkie – Isabelle is based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

@salam – Salam Pax is based in Baghad.

@scarlettlion – Otherwise known as Glenna Gordon, based in Monrovia, Liberia.

@mikewhills – ex-TimesOnline, just moved to Beirut, soon to blog with us here.

@mortenhvaal – Morten is a photojournalist, based in Sri Lanka and will be blogging with us soon.

@hyfreelance – Hodan Yusuf-Pankhurst is a freelance journalist and blogs from Hargeisa, Somalia.

@vaughansmith – Frontline Club Founder, soon to be again Afghanistan blogger and irregular tweeter.

@kylemacrae – not currently blogging with us, but did write a great blog on Citizen journalism.

@benhammersley – Ben blogged with us briefly when we first set the blogs up. He’s a founding member of the Club and now works at Wired UK.

@totalfrontline – an automated Twitter channel combining Frontline blog posts, events, articles, news and more.

I’ll keep this post updated as new bloggers join us and as and when older bloggers start using Twitter. If you sign up, let us know in the comments or send an @message to @frontlineblog.

Original Frontline TV agency camera woman Tira Shubart recently finished filming and producing a TV comedy series called Taking the Flak about the world of war reporters, stringers and fixers all set in a fictional African country called Karibu. Tira produced the film with Jon Rolph and it draws on her experience as a foreign correspondent covering war zones for the old Frontline agency and other media outlets. She dropped me a line about the series which I thought I’d share with you here,

“Taking the Flak” is the story of journalists covering a small war in a (fictional) African country. The stringer (Bruce McKinnon) based in Karibu, is disconcerted to find a high-powered team from London parachuted into his patch. And the local fixer (Kobna Holdbrook Smith), who saves the team time & time again, also turns out to have his own agenda.  And then there are a few romantic interests as well…
 
Creating a fictional civil war can be trickier than covering a real civil war. And I now have had experience doing both.  The major factor in staging a fictional war for “Taking the Flak” is that Health & Safety is even more stringently observed. Hence we moved our shoot from Kenya after episode one, reeling from post-election violence a year ago, to neighbouring peaceful Tanzania with the same backdrop of the spectacular Rift Valley. So our UK cast & crew were joined by our Kenyan and Tanzanian team members.
 
Coming from news, where we move so quickly and to a tight deadline, the logistics of working with a cast & crew of 50 or so, initially brings on culture shock. But it’s soon apparent that every person is needed to create the world that we wanted to portray on the screen. Each set up—and over a seven part series, there are hundreds of set up needs the full camera, sound, lighting, costume, props, makeup teams…. And the “action vehicles” some of which had convincing looking “mortars” built onto them, like the “technicals” I’d filmed in Somalia in times past.
 
Not to mention the logistics of moving all the cast & crew around (and any extras) on rutted African roads.  Then there is the all-important catering. Good food is a necessity, not a luxury when you are working 12 hour days in the African heat six days a week for several months on end. Our catering was supplied by safari outfitters who usually feed people on treks up Kilimanjaro. So being on mostly level ground, even in out bush locations, seemed no challenge to them. Their vehicles ferrying food and chairs & tables were always a welcome sight. So much for the Hollywood luxury with air conditioned trailers equipped with mini bars. We had tents for shade and rudimentary bush toilets under canvas for pit stops.

The two direcors of photography are Pete Rowe, from the world of drama, and then from news: Darren Conway (DC) who has won Camera Operator of Year at the RTS three times plus other awards from the many conflicts and news stories he’s covered over the years.

This is without doubt the most difficult and dangerous place I have worked so far, but I think the film gives a good insight into the futility of the current strategy in Afghanistan, and the pointless dangers the soldiers are facing every day. link

John’s about to take a short break from Afghanistan as he’s getting married this coming Saturday. Congratulations from all at the club John.

If you’ve nipped into the Frontline Club recently you might have noticed the Fixers Fund gift donation envelopes, on the stairs, at the bar and in the forum. We’ve also put together a short video explaining more about the fund and how it was started following the murder of Ajmal Naqshbandi. Afghan journalist and fixer Najibullah Razzaq discusses the importance of their job along with BBC journalists Alan Little, Jeremy Bowen and Martin Bell. You can donate to the fund on the Charity Giving website.

On one occasion he saw 16 child­ren under two shot dead. ‘It’s not easy to come back from Congo and fit back into normal life,’ he says. Otherwise, it is the camaraderie of banking that he misses most. ‘You get it if you hit a war zone and everyone is there together and you meet everybody in the bar in the evening. But the life of a journalist is quite lonely.’ link