Former Tucsonan Mort Rosenblum teaches an international journalism class in the Marshall Building at the University of Arizona. Rosenblum worked for The Associated Press for 37 years.

Greg Bryan / arizona daily star

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Mort Rosenblum knows only one way to cover the big stories: by being there.

"If we're not there, you're not there," says Rosenblum, 64, who spent 37 years with The Associated Press writing from 200 countries — some of them, he adds, no longer there.

He covered the Congo mercenary wars and the Biafra secession in Nigeria in the '60s, Vietnam in the early '70s, African famine in the '80s.

He regularly pounded out dispatches from such hot spots as Bosnia, Kosovo, Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

He danced in Red Square the night communism fell. His were among the first reporters' boots on the ground during the first war in Iraq. A dozen years later he was back, covering the second Iraq War.

Two months past 9/11, he was working the marketplace in the Afghan capital of Kabul, sporting a beard and a rather strange-looking cap.

"I was trying to blend in," he says with a chuckle.

So it's a little strange to catch him on a friend's patio in his old hometown of Tucson, smoking his pipe and ruminating about the state of the world.

It is not a pretty state, as Rosenblum points out in his 13th and latest book, "Escaping Plato's Cave."

Just in case there's any doubt about the message, here's the subtitle: "How America's Blindness to the Rest of the World Threatens Our Survival."

Written after Rosenblum left the AP by what appears to be mutual consent back in 2004, the book is a litany of what's wrong in the world — from global warming to ill-conceived wars, AIDS to malaria, corporate greed to politics as usual.

Naturally, America comes up wanting, as do its citizens for often turning a blind eye.

"Of course it's not all America's fault, and we can't solve all the problems," says Rosenblum. "But we can become better informed, get involved in a project, vote for people who understand it."

But becoming better-informed means Americans need to pay attention — at a time when, says Rosenblum, they're being poorly served by a media, both print and television, that's stripping away its foreign bureaus way past the sinew.

"It's more vital than ever that we are out there sniffing and sensing and understanding the why and the what-next," he says.

"Sniffing and sensing" started early on for Rosenblum, who moved with his family to Tucson when he was 3.

By the age of 6 or so, he was putting out a newspaper on a toy press in his bedroom. At Tucson High School, he served as editor of the Cactus Chronicle.

During his junior year at the University of Arizona, he left his journalism studies for a stint working on a Mexico City paper and then the Caracas Daily Journal.

"I arrived at the Tucson airport wearing a hat. I thought I should look like a grownup," says Rosenblum, who was all of 20.

He returned to Tucson long enough to do a little reporting and copy editing at the Arizona Daily Star and snare a degree from the UA.

"I joined the AP in 1965 right after school." Two years later, he was covering the mercenary wars in the Congo.

"I was pretty gung-ho," says Rosenblum, who's been tossed out of jeeps, thrown into jails, and "barfed into toilets at 4 in the morning" more times than he cares to remember.

He's also lost friends and colleagues along the way, all striving to get the story in often harrowing circumstances.

"You're in danger a lot of the time, but you don't always know it," says Rosenblum, recalling how an 8-year-old suddenly shoved a Kalashnikov in his face at a roadblock in Uganda.

"It was the most scared I've ever been. His little, dead eyes were looking right through me."

But it hasn't all been coups and Kalashnikovs for Rosenblum. He's been nominated for eight Pulitzer Prizes and won the Overseas Press Club Award in 1989.

From 1979 to 1981, he served as editor of the International Herald Tribune, then returned to the AP as a special correspondent based in Paris.

He owns a small olive farm in the South of France and lives in Paris on a wooden boat docked on the Seine with his wife, Jeannette Hermann, a travel director and astrologist.

A foodie who's penned books both on olives and on chocolate, Rosenblum has written blogs on Janos restaurant, and on Sonoran hot dogs for Bon Appétit magazine.

For the last three years, he's taught a two-month class in international reporting at the UA.

After he leaves Tucson in mid-March, he'll take students at the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University to Cambodia.

By May, he'll be back in Paris, co-leading a sold-out chocolate tour.

"All these years kicking around, I've had a wonderful life," says Rosenblum.

Still, he remains the consummate journalist. Later this spring, he and Gary Knight, cofounder of the photo agency VII, will launch Dispatches, a quarterly publication "for people who care about the world by writers and photographers who watch it firsthand."

As a cub reporter, Rosenblum thought he could "right what was wrong" through his reporting. He now knows better.

Still, he remains hopeful.

"I am optimistic. I see a lot of young people who really want to know what's going on. If we're not optimistic, we might as well pull the covers over our heads."

Or stay in the cave.