Leçon inaugurale d'Elian PELTIER

"A few weeks ago, my colleagues and I published this story. inside Afghanistan’s secret schools for girls. 

As you may know, under the Taliban, Afghan girls cannot go to school above Grade 6. The goal of the story was to highlight the importance of those secret schools as spaces where Afghan girls and young women can socialize; where they can see other human beings; where they hear each other laugh, where they can admire each other’s new clothes.

The goal was to show what it means, for those students, to step outside their home and into a world the Taliban want to keep them away from.

One of them, Ayesha, told me: “Without school, there will be no social part of me. I need to interact with people or I will lose half of me.”

I've thought about those words a lot since. To do our job as journalists, we must step outside — outside our phones, our social media feeds, outside our comfort zone as well. We need to talk to people and see the world with our own eyes and hear it with our own ears. We can feel it by going into the field, where the story actually is, and that is what we will talk about today. How do we tell stories in 2026, how I do it as the New York Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan and how you are going to be doing it too. 

So good afternoon everyone and thank you for coming today. Thank you Marie, Alice and the team at the journalism school for this opportunity. 

To all the first year students, congratulations. It is an honor to be here in front of you. I was told you are the best cohort this school has ever seen.

 I am not surprised. You must be incredibly talented, because getting into this world of journalism and staying in it, has never been harder.

 Authoritarian governments prevent us from going to places and reporting on something they don’t want us to report on. News outlets have fewer resources and cannot send us on reporting trips the way it used to be. It can feel increasingly hard to step outside our own bubbles — whether they are social, algorithmic, intellectual… 

 It won't be easy. But then, you didn't sign up for easy.

I know this because I sat where you are sitting 12 years ago. I joined the journalism school in 2014 and graduated in 2017. The guest speaker in 2014 was the legendary foreign correspondent for the New Yorker, Jon Lee Anderson. Jon Lee Anderson has written the definitive biography of Che Guevara, he’s reported on the crimes of the Assad regime, and all over Latin America. Some of you might be thinking, “Jon Lee Anderson 12 years ago and this year they’re giving us this Frenchie with a thick accent whom we’re already struggling to understand?” I know, I told you this industry isn’t in great shape. 

At the time, Jon Lee Anderson talked about how the new normal, in news and global affairs, was chaos. Journalists were being killed. The Islamic State was on the rise. The war in Syria was full on. Russia had annexed Crimea a few months earlier. 

Today, the new normal is still chaos, but an even more confusing one. To me, maybe to you, the new normal is foggy. We are struggling to cover the effects of climate change in a comprehensive and impactful way. We are racing to adopt AI as journalists and at the same time to cover the changes that AI is bringing to our societies. We are trying to figure out how to capture the deep frustration that runs through many of those societies. Not to mention all the conflicts and crises happening throughout the world.

The fog I’m referring to is also about the state of journalism. We still don’t know how to make enough people pay for the work we do. 

The New Yorker, The New York Times are incredible places to work for, but the job competition is tough. 

Maybe one of you will work for the New York Times in this room. Maybe another one will work for the New Yorker. Maybe none. And that’s totally okay.

Instead, you might win an Emmy Award for your groundbreaking work in virtual reality with the company you co-founded. You might write a novel that is shortlisted for the Goncourt — the French Booker Prize. You might launch your own podcast production company.

These are just a few of the achievements that some of my classmates. They were sitting where you’re sitting 12 or 13 years ago.

 “MAKE THEM DREAM”

 I am giving those examples because I was encouraged to make you dream, to spark some excitement and at the same time, to show you how international reporting has changed, how it’s changing and how much work we still have to do. To make you dream might not be too complicated, I have a dream job, though it comes with many caveats. 

The short version is this: If you’re curious, if you’re hungry for what life has to offer, if you feed yourself on social connections and on the beauty of this world, there is no better job. You are in the right place. It’s a privilege, but you’ve earned it.

But the second part about the turbulence we face in journalism, is much more sobering. Since we are peers now, I have to share that less glittering part with you as well in order for you to know, as you hopefully step outside your comfort zone, what you’re stepping into.

 NYT BUREAU CHIEF

 Let me talk a little bit about what this privilege looks like for me, as the New York Times’s bureau chief for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

 I joined the Times in 2017 as a local reporter in our Paris bureau. I helped cover the presidential election that year. I covered terrorist attacks and the Notre-Dame fire. In 2019, I moved to the Times’s London news hub to cover breaking news and later the Covid-19 pandemic in a few European countries. Then in 2022 I moved to Dakar as the Times’s West Africa correspondent. I stayed there for 3.5 years and last year I moved to Islamabad to cover Pakistan and Afghanistan. I do a little bit of everything I’ve done in my previous jobs (breaking news, feature stories, investigations). 

 The two countries present very different opportunities and challenges.

         PAKISTAN

I am the first staff correspondent for the New York Times to be permanently based in Pakistan in more than 12 years. 

It is the fifth most populous country in the world, it’s a nuclear power, it’s a vibrant society where nearly two thirds of the population are under 30. There are also large Pakistani diasporas in the U.S. and the U.K., in Canada, all of which are big subscriber markets for the Times. So in Pakistan the goal is to provide some steady coverage that can keep readers up to date on the most significant developments in the country. At the Times, we call it “steady drumbeat.” 

It can be a challenge, because the authorities don't let us report freely. To go anywhere other than Islamabad, Karachi, or Lahore, I need an authorization, and the authorities seldom give one.

I’ve talked about Pakistan and in a way, it’s easier for me to report in the other country I am in charge of, Afghanistan… 

         AFGHANISTAN

… where I run one of the last remaining bureaus of an international news outlet with a permanent presence there. The others are BBC and AFP.

We see it at the Times and I see this personally, as our responsibility to keep covering a society that many news organizations left when the U.S. and its allies withdrew in 2021.

I go to Afghanistan every 6 to 8 weeks on average for periods that can go from a week to a month. 

I have time and resources for nuanced and layered coverage, and to tell some counterintuitive truths as well. For instance, there is now more security under the Taliban, who are rebuilding roads and large infrastructure.

There are technically more female entrepreneurs 

The job involves a lot of interactions with the Taliban government so it’s sometimes as much about diplomacy as it is about journalism. 

         BUILD CONNECTIONS

That diplomacy, by the way, often starts with relationships — which brings me to something I wish someone had told me at your stage, and which is particularly true for the students who are in the joint program with PSIA. When I was a student, I was spending a lot of time at the j school and socializing with the j school students. That’s great because it is important to express solidarity as classmates and peers. But don’t neglect the connections you will make at PSIA, both classmates and teachers.

Some of my former classmates are now diplomats across the world or work for United Nations agencies or large NGOs. 

A professor I had at PSIA worked in Afghanistan and has put me in touch with lots of sources. The connections you make now will prove valuable in 1, 2, 5 or 10 years. 

The same is true inside a newsroom. The connections matter just as much.

The biggest privilege I have at the Times is the ability to work with many colleagues across different desks. If I write about tensions between Pakistan and India I’ll be in touch with my colleagues in Delhi. On Pakistan’s mediation role in the U.S.-Iran conflict I’m in touch with editors on the Middle East desk and my colleagues in Iran, Turkey and the Persian Gulf. For counterterrorism issues in Afghanistan I’m often in touch with colleagues in DC.

 WORRYING PICTURE

I’ve told you a little bit about what I cover at the New York Times, but the full picture is sobering: the Washington Post recently fired dozens of its international journalists. AFP, AP and Reuters are struggling. TV channels mostly work with production companies, which means less protection, less stability, fewer rights. Making money from podcasts is much harder than we thought a few years ago. Most of my friends or acquaintances working abroad are freelance. I won’t speak on their behalf but it’s tough. There are many pros, but it’s tough. 

         GEM IN THE CESSPOOL

It is tough because there’s no money. People don’t pay. Advertising revenues have been in freefall. Editorially, the biggest challenge for us all is to figure out how to stand out. How do we grab someone’s attention for 10 seconds, 30 seconds, maybe a minute if you’re lucky. 

Journalism has been thrown into that cesspool of online production that is increasingly polluted by unhealthy content. 

We now compete against influencers who go to a country and tell us, “this is what the media isn’t showing you.” They don’t do journalism, but audiences don’t know how to distinguish our work from theirs anymore. We compete against fake news. We compete against entertainment. 

Even within journalism, the stories we produce compete against new forms of content. At the New York Times I can have an analysis on how the Taliban have been governing Afghanistan over the past 5 years on the homepage, and next to my article might be an article about the 10 best vacuum cleaners or the 10 best sex toys out there. I cannot make my article about the Taliban as appealing as a comparative article on sex toys, but I have to make it as interesting as possible.

My message to you is, we have to accept that the journalism we produce is no longer in a closed circuit, insulated from other forms of content. We have to think about where and how the journalism we produce is going to land.

The SWISS ARMY KNIFE, THE TOOLBOX AND HANDY(WO)MAN 

When I joined the Times in 2017, I was writing research reports and articles. I no longer write articles only. I now write articles, but also explainers, newsletters, headlines, comments, video scripts, long photo captions… I also shoot mobile video and record audio material for potential podcasts.

Even articles have changed. On the international desk of the NYTimes, the default format of an article used to be 1,200 words. That’s about 2.5 pages of text. Now the default format is 850 — 1.5 page to 2 pages. I have less space. In theory. But I have more avenues for my work

I recently published a news analysis on the five year anniversary of the Taliban takeover last month. That was a typical New York Times article in its format and style. It got some decent readership. 

THREE FINAL THOUGHTS

I will end my speech with three quick thoughts. Maybe they can help you, they’ve been guiding me. 

The first point is, more than a taverneer or a parachutist, we need to be mindful and respectful journalists - with a government official, with a priest or an imam, with a baker or a fisherman, with a sexual assault survivor, with a superstar, with a Taliban official, with the sexists and the racists and the climate change deniers of our world, we need to be mindful and respectful. There are humans on the other side of our camera or recorder or notebook and what we publish can change their lives - one way or another. It feels more important than ever to me because people are criticizing and attacking our profession like never before. So we all need to show the best, the most human version of ourselves. 

The second point is, sometimes don’t hesitate to push back against what teachers will tell you here. They know better but you also know better. Do it respectfully, but we’re all trying to figure out where journalism is headed and you might have great ideas that may come across as slightly unorthodox at first sight. Once you work full time as a journalist, you will have to push back against your audiences, your colleagues, your editors, your competitors, your sources anyway, so start flexing that muscle now. Do it on the people who want the absolute best for you. Do it with me in a few minutes by challenging me on what I shared with you.

The last piece of advice is, have fun. It is the best job in the world. You are all incredibly brilliant and talented and you have a huge responsibility now but, enjoy, enjoy, and enjoy again. 

I will circle back to Ayesha, the Afghan student. She wants to become a psychologist.

After we published our story, two American psychologists reached out asking if they could mentor Ayesha. She is now being mentored by them. Ayesha stepped outside her home and now she may step outside even further. Sometimes our work does make a small difference, and I wish you to have as often as you can the same moments of joy and faith in humanity.

Thank you for listening and one more time, congratulations. Being admitted to Sciences Po's journalism school is a huge achievement and I hope you take a moment to pinch yourself and realize what you’ve accomplished, and what you’re going to accomplish."

Elian PELTIER