When your office is a battlefield
A timeline of Kate Webb's 40 years as a war correspondent

Kate Webb, a war correspondent who covered Asia for almost 40 years, was the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism's Visiting Professional for 2004–05. In the fall issue of Ohio Today, Webb shared her views on journalism, war coverage and other topics. To complement that

piece, here's a closer look at Webb's career.

1964 — Graduates from Melbourne University in Sydney, Australia, with a degree in symbolic logic

1965 — Joins Sydney Daily Mirror

1967 — Accepts job in Vietnam with United Press International

1971 — Is captured by North Vietnamese troops while working as UPI bureau chief in Cambodia; held for three weeks and released

1973 — Joins UPI Hong Kong's Asia desk

1974 — Named UPI Indonesia bureau chief

1975-76 — Accepts correspondent job with UPI in Manila; also detached to cover the U.S. Seventh Fleet evacuation of U.S. troops from Vietnam; declaration of emergency rule in India; the four majors' coup and the murder of Mujbur Ali Rahman in Bangladesh.

1977 — Named regional UPI chief based in Singapore; quits UPI

1978 — Based in Indonesia, works as freelancer for Reuters, BusinessWeek, The Economist, McGraw Hill, London Times, London Independent

About 1982 — Joins the Agence France Presse

1983 — Covers the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the fall of Chun Doo-Hwan in South Korea, the Kanak rebellion in New Caledonia and the PLO hijacking in Karachi, Pakistan

1986 — Reports on the fall of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines

1988 — Works as AFP deputy bureau chief in South Asia and bureau chief in Kabul; covers the Russian exit to arrival of Mujahedeen, the fall of Ershad in Bangladesh and the revolt against the monarchy in Nepal

1991 — Covers the Gulf War

1994 — Named AFP bureau chief in Seoul; covers death of North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung, the nuclear crisis and the Asian financial crisis

1997 — Sent with AFP team to cover the handover of Hong Kong to China

1998 — Reports on the fall of Indonesian leader Suharto

2001 — Retires from the news business because she feels "too old to keep up with front line reporting, and that was the only kind I liked." She gets as far away as possible from the news as she could — an Alaskan fishing trip, for instance — so she wouldn't be tempted to pick up the phone.

2004 — Comes to Ohio University as the Scripps Visiting Professional

Compiled by Chuck Bowen, BSJ '05, who worked as a student writer for Ohio Today in 2004-05.

Related links

A feature on Webb by the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong

A transcript from Webb's appearance on National Public Radio's "On the Media"

The E.W. Scripps School of Journalism