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The Unexpected Benefits of the Ethically Ambivalent Job
Lessons learned from a weird experiment in ‘public diplomacy’
When I graduated college, the Iraq War was in full swing. The U.S. economy was still trying to shake off the hangover of the early-2000s stock market crash. And if that wasn’t turmoil enough, my chosen profession, journalism, was beginning to suffer the initial symptoms of what would eventually become full-fledged collapse.
After applying for any number of jobs, I found myself working for a custom publisher that had recently secured a rather unusual contract with the U.S. State Department. The government wanted us to produce a glossy monthly magazine, in Arabic, that would show off American culture (in all its glory and ugliness) to a Middle Eastern audience. This monthly, titled “Hi,” was similar in spirit to other “public diplomacy” projects such as Radio Free Europe, which broadcast news over the Iron Curtain.
In theory, “Hi” was supposed to promote better understanding between the Middle East and the U.S. In reality, however, the entire project (budgeted at $4.5 million per year) was hopelessly muddled, and eventually went down in flames. As I wrote in an article about the project and its impact on diplomacy for Fast Company:
“In its doom, we see echoes of issues that…
