A Risky Feat: Covering The Arab Spring As A Freelancer
The Article: Rookie Freelancers Risking Their Lives To Cover The Arab Spring by Sarah Topol in The Daily Beast.
The Text: After two days of rough seas, the small fishing boat carrying two seasoned correspondents, rebel fighters, and Ruth Sherlock arrived at the besieged city of Misrata. It was the height of the Libyan civil war and the seasick passengers were eager to make landfall when suddenly, the boat came under fire. Not knowing if the bullets were from government troops or friendly fire from confused rebels, the journalists dove for cover. This is it, Sherlock thought. She was 24, working as a freelancer, with no one to bail her out in one of the most dangerous spots on earth.
Their boat was one of the first to land in the coastal enclave where 600 people had been killed in the first few weeks of fighting, mostly by government shelling of civilian homes. Libya was Sherlock’s first brush with conflict reporting—and unlike the experienced journalists she was traveling with, she had no money, no health insurance, no first-aid training, or even the most basic idea about how to work in a conflict zone.
When I met the petite blonde in the Libyan city of Benghazi in February 2011, she was filing stories for a Scottish newspaper and tagging along to the frontline with older correspondents. I was only two years older, but had been through a five-day hostile-environment training course and was on assignment—expenses paid—for an American magazine. I thought Sherlock was insane. “At the time, I was just so desperate to make it as a journalist, it was all I wanted,” she says.
