Reporters on the Job
• Less Elbow Room at Angkor Wat: Reporter Adam Priore first visited Angkor Wat in 1999. At the time, he was working as a reporter for an English-language paper in Cambodia. His father came to visit, so they took a trip to see the famous 12th-century Hindu-Buddhist temple.
Today, Cambodia – and its biggest tourist attraction – are changed. "The temple is mobbed. It's a totally different experience. It's still a beautiful place, but now there are large packs of camera-totting people and large, tinted-glass buses," says Adam.
When he was working as a reporter in Cambodia in the late 1990s, the big story was the war. "The last Khmer Rouge commander had been caught. The question was: 'Would peace hold?' Today, the major story line centers around development. Is it sustainable? How will it change the country? And Ankor Wat is one of the places where development is occurring fastest, but it's not planned.
"I talked to a South Korean investor who used to do business in the Philippines. He visited Angkor Wat on vacation, then moved here. Now bus loads of Koreans arrive and eat at his restaurant," says Adam. The fastest-growing groups of tourists are the South Koreans and the Taiwanese, he says.
• Barcelona's Generosity: In an age of professional sports when uniforms are billboards, the Spanish soccer club Barcelona has long marched to its own drummer. While Real Madrid and Manchester United each makes about $35 million annually from selling space on players' shirts to corporate advertisers, Barcelona balked. Its jerseys were not for sale.
This week, the 106-year old club put its first ad on their player's chests. But Barcelona still isn't selling the space. In fact, it's paying UNICEF. The team put the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund logo on their jersey, and will pay the UN some $2 million for the privilege.
David Clark Scott
World editor