Richard Oppel Jr, foreign affairs correspondent for the New York Times, answers questions from students in a military diplomacy class Wednesday afternoon in Hester Hall. Jeremy Dickie/The Daily

Richard Oppel, Jr. is no stranger to international affairs, but he said Wednesday while visiting OU that more newspapers are unaccustomed to foreign issues than ever before.

Oppel, New York Times foreign affairs correspondent, said Wednesday while his newspaper and a few prominent others have several reporters placed in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan to cover conflict, many papers no longer do so.

“I think collectively, it’s the kind of story you would think the media would collectively have more people covering, but it’s an expensive story to cover too, and now’s not the right time to be covering expensive stories,” Oppel said.

Mike Boettcher, journalism and international and area studies professor and friend of Oppel, said it seems like there are fewer reporters these days who want to cover conflict halfway across the world.

“There are really only a handful of reporters who continue to cover this on a full-time basis, and Rich is one of them,” Boettcher said. “The biggest danger of all is not bombs there, but it’s ignorance here.”

Boettcher, a veteran CNN and NBC reporter, is also an international journalist. He has covered foreign affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and returned from the Middle East last summer after he and his son were embedded reporters there.

Oppel, who has worked for the New York Times since 1999, began reporting overseas in 2004. He has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently, Pakistan. While in Pakistan, Oppel covered major stories including the Mumbai bombing and the Taliban takeover of the city of Swat.

Oppel said the most difficult part of reporting in a foreign country was getting his feet on the ground and establishing sources.

“When you go to a new country like that, there’s a pretty steep learning curve in figuring out sources,” Oppel said. “It takes a lot of work to get your feet on the ground with sourcing, and just understanding this very complicated nuance story.”

Although Oppel was embedded in Afghanistan, he said it was not necessary to do so in Pakistan.

“Much of Pakistan is quite safe. There’s always a bombing risk and a kidnapping risk anywhere in the Middle East, I suppose,” Oppel said. “But there’s a lot of it that’s not hospitable, so you just have to know which is which.”

Oppel said he wanted to report overseas to do something different, and that he has found foreign reporting produces an interesting story.

Boettcher noted that Afghanistan is one of the most difficult stories he has tried to tell.

“In three decades of doing this, Afghanistan is the most difficult story that I’ve encountered to try to tell, to get around them, to just understand it as a place that we’re in, and its people, what makes them tick,” Boettcher said. “It’s a much harder story to tell than Iraq.”

Oppel said he will go back to Afghanistan soon, and then on to Pakistan in December for a couple months.

“It’s exciting,” Oppel said. “It’s a really interesting story. I’m looking forward to it.”

Boettcher said reporting in the Middle East is incredibly complicated and takes many experienced people to carry out.

“It’s a tough, tough place to work, just like it is for our military...” Boettcher said. “I haven’t seen anything like it.”