media - 'Lost' in the tsunami-assignments

Reporter Carolyn Liu of the Oriental Morning Post briefed me yesterday extensively on her mission into Indonesia, the first-ever into a disaster-area. "Until now we only got holiday-like assignments to the US," she said. She was welcomed back as a hero, since she was the only female reporter among the about 100 Chinese journalists who headed for Indonesia, but still felt that lack of experience and information hindered her work. For her is was the first assignment out of China.
For Chinese media is was the second larger operation abroad after the World Soccer Tournament, and the first into a crisis area. Because of the fast expanding media industry and their increased competition, more Chinese journalists will report about crises, that might be in potentially much more dangerous places than the tsunami-strikken parts of the world. Until recently state news agency Xinhua and CCTV would be the only onese to go abroad and Xinhuao most mostly operate from Chinese embassies.
Carolyn came in the end not further than Medan, the capital of Aceh, and spend a week there. "I was very afraid, because I did not know what was going on," she said. She was not as afraid as a colleague who did not dare to leave Medan airport and spend there 17 hours waiting for a flight back to Jakarta.
Carolyn did not get a local fixer or translator, but joined the Chinese community and was very well taken care off, she said. "Jakarta was so dirty compared to Shanghai and the taxis would always rip you off." That resulted in interesting articles about the wealthy Chinese community in Medan, but that was not really the reason to go to Indonesia. Her photographer got into the tsunami-area itself, but she never left Medan, a combination of fear and feeling lost without good contacts outsite the itself very isoloted Chinese community.
It is certain Chinese journalists will go to more dangerous places in the future, and need to tap into the experiences of other foreign journalists with more experience in working abroad. I have already asked some international organizations of some tips and I certainly think I should help them in setting up a decent training. Any tips are welcome.