If you are in any kind of interesting profession, chances are that there is a watch especially for that purpose. Divers can choose from a plethora of dive watches. They resist depths of hundreds of meters, will let helium out of special valves when you ascend to the surface, they have bezels with markings so you can time your dive (or boiling eggs, for that matter). There are pilot watches in abundance (although most pilots don’t need or use them) with special chronographs and bezels and scales meant to precisely time bomb drops and fly-back time and fuel consumption. There are military watches for life in the trenches, and field watches for when you get out of the trenches. If you are a race car driver you can also choose your timepiece from a vast supply of watches with chronographs and tachymeter bezels (who uses that???). There are watches for doctors (with pulsometer scales, über-cool) and watches for people who do badass things like ocean racing (or would like to). Even spies have watches, according to a former spook who started “Watches of Espionage”.
There is nothing, however, for journalists. Search for “journalist watches” and what you’ll get is journalists who write about watches for a living. Endless drivel about how it sits on the wrist and that the watch case is one millimetre bigger than last year, and if the bezel clicks the right way when you turn it. But watches for journalists? Nothing.
Time for the Rolex Reporter?
Sure, many journalists don’t need a special watch. If all you do is sit behind a desk and make up fake news, any watch will do. Most television reporters and talkshow hosts will — and should — spend their money on a blow dryer, not a watch. For our wristwatch purposes, these people don’t count.
Foreign correspondents, that’s what I’m talking about. The kind that goes places, explores, seeks out conflict, strife, unrest and mayhem to report on. Correspondents who document and report on human rights abuses, disasters, crises. Reporters who do adventurous things, risky, and at least as badass as those sponsored sailboat show ponies. You get my drift.
There was a time that we, correspondents, were afforded special clothing. That was the time of expense accounts, a good price per word, and “why don’t you go there and check things out.” Legendary journalism came out of that approach, and so of course they had to kill it. There’s only a handful of foreign correspondents still on payroll, certainly where I live, and the rest freelances. And since an increasingly nationalistic world cares less and less about foreign journalism, there is hardly enough work for these freelancers, so they get by on poverty wages.
That, in turn, means that we can’t usually afford the great watches made by expensive brands. Breitling, to name just one, makes a watch, the Breitling Emergency, that has a built-in antenna that you can pull out in case of an emergency, it will transmit a signal to satellites (no dependency on cell phone coverage), magic happens and helicopters are dispatched to rescue you. I think it’s great. Every correspondent who does more than hotel bar reporting should have one. God knows how many lives could have been saved. But they’re starting at € 14,390.= and that’s more than half of what many of these freelancers make per year. Media owners and publishers are too stingy to buy them for their foreign correspondents, and press orgs don’t have the money. And we’re not even going into Rolex territory — yet.
The correspondent’s watch
So, what would approach the perfect correspondent’s watch?
First of all, let me tell you what is is definitely not. Apple watches and other smart watches are out. You have to charge them often, they depend on cellphones half of the time, and they sit on your wrist like an ugly black block. I waited in some jungle outpost in the Darién gap once for days to visit a FARC camp. A smartwatch would have been completely and utterly useless. Also, they do too much. As Timex explains it, one wants to “know the time without seeing you have 1,249 unanswered emails.” Especially when you’re in journalism.
Israeli elite forces
What it is also not is a myriad of numbers and bezels and multipurpose dials. I like the idea behind these Citizen watches — radio signals make sure it runs on time, the sun keeps it charged — but a dial like this, who has time for that?
Same with the Casio G-Shock. It may be tough and able, but sometimes you have to visit official events and talk to dignitaries, and then you don’t want to look as if you’re part of some Israeli elite force where you spend your days demolishing Palestinian houses so illegal settlers can steal the land. Same with many cheap watches. People might think you’re about to set off an IED.
So, now that we know what we don’t want, what should a correspondent’s watch have?
It would definitely need to have some way to keep track of different time zones. At some point I flew from Panama to Kabul with some short lay-overs in between, another time also from Panama to Amsterdam to Istanbul to Beirut, and then by car to Damascus, and on trips like that you wanna know what time it is and where. Also, a 24 hour dial or indicator would be great. Is it morning? Evening? Afternoon? Things like that get confusing, especially after, as real correspondents do, you have a drink or two.
A true beater
Then, it needs to be tough as a nail. I can’t tell you how many times I have been bumping into things, falling into the water, scraped my watch against a wall or rocks, leather straps simply falling apart after just a short time in the tropical rainforest, plowing through sand or mud, and so on. I remember hanging from and holding onto the back of a chiva, a pick-up truck with a cage on it that they use as public transport in rural Panama, with my watch banging into that cage for half an hour. After that, I rode a horse through a river to visit a remote village. A correspondent’s watch has to survive all that. So does the correspondent, by the way. No need to make it waterproof for depths of 200 meters, but it needs to be tough. The watch, I mean, not the correspondent.
Also, we journalists often face confrontations with the kind of protesting yahoos all over the planet who make everybody’s life miserable, be it with their white supremacy bullshit or anti-vaccination chemtrail idiocy. These people are a nuisance and they often get aggressive towards journalists. So, a good correspondent’s watch won’t have a scratch if we need to defend ourselves and it just happens to land on their front teeth. Similarly, our watch should just laugh at police violence.
Get creative
It would be nice if you can time things. As in, you’re editing a piece for radio and you’re writing narration, a wristwatch should be able to time your speech. It does not need a chronograph with exact times into the 10th of a second. Just seconds will do. Also, get rid already of these ridiculous tachymeter bezels.
A rather smart solution for this I saw on a medical watch that had a cross-shaped second hand: that way, you never have to wait long before you just can start counting from the top of the dial and there’s no need for a complicated chronograph movement. The Doplr medical watches offer something similar, with a double sided second hand. Simple, elegant, robust.
Last but not least, a correspondent’s watch needs to have extreme toughness and usability on one side and elegance on the other. I mentioned Rolex. They pull that off with their dive watches when they’re not too busy selling atrocious diamond crusted things to narco kingpins. But even their cheapest dive watch is way too expensive, not to mention the ones that can show a different time zone, so unless Rolex gets its act together and starts sponsoring journalism with the watches — tool watches, not showpieces — we need and deserve, we better forget about them. Seiko, then? Maybe.
So now what?
“Okke, in the mean time,” I can hear you ask, “what should we do? What do you recommend?”
Well, while the watch brands are now hopefully figuring things out for us, let me tell you what I use. As you can see in the picture on top of this piece, I like my Spinnaker Hull Chronograph. It looks cool, it works really well, and it’s sturdy.
Fidel Castro look
For a second time zone, if I need that, I use a really cheap watch, what they call a “Rolex hommage.” It’s a Pagani PD1662 GMT from China, and we can thank the Rolex design department for its stunning looks. A GMT watch has an extra hand that you can set to show a second time zone. This is especially handy in case you want to avoid the Fidel Castro look; carrying two watches around your wrist, one with Havana and one with Moscow time. For around $82 my Pagani does a surprisingly good job. Of course the Rolex is better, but here’s the thing": it is not 200 times better.
I have also been running around forever with an old Citizen dive watch that is so obscure that you can’t find anything asbout it online.
I used this watch, which is solar powered, for everything from scuba diving to jungle trekking and the glass has not just scratches, but little chunks of glass missing so I don’t take it swimming anymore.
Last but not least, another affordable solution for us poor freelancers is to forget about the big expensive brands, fire up ebay and get yourself a vintage soviet dive watch. Like this one:
I paid far less than $100 for this watch and for that money you get the soviet answer to Rolex and Blancpain and the like, more than 200 meters waterproof hand wound indestructible stainless steel glory. Parts are cheap and plentiful, any watchmaker can fix them and they are so cheap you can afford two or three in case something goes wrong. Who said communism didn’t work? For correspondents, it is the future!