Navigating the Logistics

This chapter examines the labor of navigating the logistics. A central tenet of this chapter is the news fixers’ suggestion that logistical labor is skilled labor; this type of work requires creativity and cultural savvy. The work of navigating the logistics requires the fixer to guide journalists through challenging sociopolitical environments, helping clients to meet their deadlines while also keeping the local authorities satisfied that they are following regional laws. Sometimes visiting journalists and documentarians try to enter a country without the proper permits for their equipment or without the proper work visa. In these cases, news fixers try to find creative ways to smooth things over and gain access for their clients, despite the fact that their clients have not respected the laws of the spaces they are trying to enter. Time and space are revealed to be relative, depending on who has the most power in a given situation. In the process of helping their clients to navigate the logistics, then, news fixers are ultimately helping them to navigate competing cultural notions of time and space.