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The Western Viewfrom the United States, and Hannahknows that she’ll be spending muchof her time there, too. China, too, liesfallow; Tim Johnson has gone off towrite a book. We’ll rotate people infor six weeks at a stretch, but a lotof expertise will go missing.I know, if I worked for the RockyMountain News or the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I’d think this soundedlike heaven. At least we’re still doingthe work we love. And we’ve gottencreative to stretch our dollars. We’renow exchanging copy with The ChristianScience Monitor; McClatchy takestheir work from Mexico and Indiaand we give them our stories fromSouth America and Africa. It’s howwe covered Mumbai and the flu. Thebarter system lives.McClatchy also is dedicated tokeeping its Washington and foreignoperation; corporate has made thatclear. But the economic situation ishardly predictable. When I went awayfor a few weeks of vacation in February,I was assured that while cutbackswere likely throughout the chain, theWashington bureau wasn’t expectedto take a big hit. When I returned,the message was different: We cutexpenses by more than 20 percent,everyone took a pay cut, and twopeople lost their jobs—a big blow ina small bureau.When the State Department recentlyasked the news organizations thatregularly cover it to agree on a newrotation system to decide who wouldtravel with Hillary Clinton, we puzzled:Was it better to pick the system thatwould give us the most opportunitiesto travel or the one that would makeit so we wouldn’t have to say “no” asoften? The problem with those rotationsis that if you decline too often,you’re disinvited. Still, any invitationto travel with the secretary now getsweighed carefully: Is she going to someplace we already have someone near?Is she likely to make big news? Arethe editors of our local papers likely tocare? It’s a pretty high threshold at atime when we are trying to hold ontoas many of our diminishing dollarsas possible for coverage of America’sThe Iran news page of McClatchy’s Web site.shooting wars. This year, we haven’tgone on any trips.Which brings us back around toIran. We’ve gotten great stories out ofIran before, and Hannah’s done somewonderful work there, and Warren,too. We even have a section on ourWeb site devoted to the topic, www.mcclatchydc.com/iran/, and U.S.-Iranrelations are in flux. Obama supposedlyis trying to reach out, Ahmadinejadcould well lose, and the future of thewhole nuclear program could be inthe balance.Most important of all, journalistvisas have been hard to come by, andIran is making them available forthe election. In the end, that madethe decision for us. But not withoutcost: Our Pentagon correspondentslong-planned trip to Afghanistan wascancelled. That’s the sort of balancingact today’s economy forces us tomake. Mark Seibel, a 1992 Nieman Fellow,is managing editor for online news inMcClatchy’s Washington, D.C. bureau.In 1984 he joined The Miami Heraldas its foreign editor, where for nearly20 years he directed that newspaper’sextensive international coverage, includingthe expansion in the reach ofits International Edition. He becameMcClatchy’s editor in charge of internationaland national security coveragein 2003, a position he held untilassuming his current role in 2008.During the Gulf War in 1991 and theMarch 2003 invasion of Iraq, he wasassigned to Knight Ridder’s Washingtonbureau (then, the parent companyof The Miami Herald) to oversee coverageof those stories.Nieman Reports | Summer 2009 39