Patrick McDowell: Reporting world events from the front lines
From Pacifican reporter to Southeast Asia bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, Patrick McDowell's journalism career has placed him at the center of major world events.
by Sheri Grimes
Pacific Review, spring 2015
Patrick McDowell '81 COP entered Pacific as an English major, bent on becoming the next Hemmingway.
While honing his writing skills with English professors Charles Clerc, Arlen Hansen and Robert Knighton, however, McDowell soon realized novel writing was not his passion after all. It was the opportunity to write for and then become the editor of The Pacifican that opened the door to what eventually became a life-on-the-edge career in international journalism.
Today McDowell is the Southeast Asia Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, where he handles leading news coverage for 10 countries from his home base in Jakarta, Indonesia. Over the course of his 34-year career, he has been at the frontlines of some of the most pivotal events of our time.
McDowell was working for a local paper in Fairfield, California, when he received a Rotary fellowship to go abroad to London. That experience helped him secure his first position with the Associated Press in Paris, where he covered the post-Cold War restructuring of Europe, the rise of Islamic parties in North Africa and the U.S intervention in Haiti.
Another turning point came when he was sent in to cover the genocide in Rwanda with nothing but a backpack and $1,000 cash. After that, he knew he would never be satisfied at the average daily news desk. He snapped up an opportunity to go to the South Africa bureau, where he witnessed the changes there under newly elected President Nelson Mandela after the fall of apartheid.
Since 1996, except for a two-year stint in Chicago, he has spent most of his time working in Southeast Asia, covering news from Iraq to the Philippines. He was shaken awake December 26, 2004, by the magnitude 9.1 earthquake centered in the Indian Ocean that triggered a massive tsunami. He coordinated award-winning coverage from his base as AP's chief Asia editor in Bangkok, Thailand, of one of the most devastating natural disasters in modern history, responsible for an estimated 230,000 deaths in 14 countries.
Most recently, he covered the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and the string of recent plane accidents across Southeast Asia.
It's been a roller coaster ride through history from one of the best seats in the car.