As both a concentrated commentary and an invitation-of-sorts to explore all the engaging essays in this collection, and their intriguing interconnections, as well as possible implications for current and future students and scholars, I suggest several overarching themes, for example, serendipity, mentors-colleagues-students, institutional infrastructure, inter/trans-disciplinarity, critical global science, and then sketch the stages of a nonlinear career that, in more and less direct ways, is the source of such a thematic view.

Part V presents an overview of different fixers’ career trajectories in the larger context of the international news economy and shifting meta-narratives about Turkey and Syria. Fixers find opportunities to contribute to the news behind the scenes, even as their counterparts in the domestic Turkish media face political and economic hardship, and even as Syria has become an inhospitable environment for journalists. Many fixers nonetheless find it difficult to challenge dominant narratives imposed by foreign reporters and news organizations, and so end up moving on to different pursuits. Turnover of both fixers and foreign reporters is continual and counterintuitively contributes to the stability of the system of international news production. The book concludes with a discussion of emergent forms of social media–based information brokerage in newsmaking in comparison with the longer-standing tradition of local fixers assisting foreign reporters.