I went back to the States and started at a small newspaper in Riverside County, California, covering the police; I was making $280 a week covering the police.
From John Pomfret
I grew up in New York City in the late '70s, at a time when U.S. - China relations were something that was on the front page of The New York Times on a regular basis.
I was fourteen when Kissinger made his secret trip to China, and then there was subsequently Nixon's trip to China, and I was very much seized with an interest in China.
And then I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go to China in 1980, which was quite early.
The desire to become a journalist came really because I very much like living abroad, and like to travel, and wanted to be paid for it.
Stanford had no journalism program so I just learned by doing, effectively.
In some ways the domestic reporting is a lot easier because Americans will talk to you about anything.
Working overseas is more difficult in that it's much more complicated to get people to open their hearts to you and to tell you information.
Whereas with foreign coverage there's a much broader disconnect between you and your audience.
A lot of times when we work overseas we tend to put the experience of someone who lives overseas, a Chinese person or a Korean person or a Bosnian person, within the prism of an American life.
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