He also made the acquaintance of 'this nutty guy called Ralph. We then figured we could get away with a few things Iraqis couldn't.' He held up his American passport, and 'all of a sudden the tear gas stops and the water cannons stop. While studying in Beirut, he started protesting against the invasion of Iraq alongside the Lebanese students. After being defeated in the editorial elections for the student paper by his roommate, he decided to take himself to Lebanon to finish his studies. Enders is from Detroit, where he got a job with Associated Press while still studying English at college. The way Enders tells it, the bulletin happened by accident. 'I guess I'm just the guy who's like, 'Just shut up!',' he says, when I ask where he fits into the Baghdad media circus.

He spends much of the rest of the time checking his text messages.Įnders just simply won't be told, it seems. During our interview he is called at least twice by a frantic publicist from Pluto Press (which has just published his account of his exploits in Iraq, Baghdad Bulletin), whom he talks to at length while I look gormless. For starters, Enders only works to his own rhythm. This surprisingly tiny man's laidback, almost bumbling delivery is at odds with everything he says and does. Many of his contemporaries share his sentiments, but not all of them took themselves off to Baghdad to start its first English-language weekly, in the process earning a reputation as an editor's nightmare.Įnders does not come across as an arrogant man, but he does some profoundly arrogant things, both in his professional and his daily life. A foreign correspondent who hates everything about the way in which war is reported a broadcaster who doesn't believe in rolling news and a media jobseeker who describes the industry as 'the beast'. David Enders is perhaps the least employable man in modern journalism.

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