Diary of a Swashbuckling Journalist

Religioning it up

2010-08-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

While researching polling numbers yesterday, I discovered that one of my recent stories had made it to the website of one of my most relied upon sources -- the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Does that mean I've made it?

The story was one I'd written last fall -- on how Muslim couples grapple with infertility -- that finally saw the light of day. I'm always happy when a story gets out there, but especially so with this one. It was an incredible honor to be welcomed into Dilnaz's life, and after our chat I got several emails from other Muslim women who told me they were grappling with infertility and were eager to read the story.

Meanwhile, the reporting continues on Latinos and faith. My first material from the New Mexico trip went up this morning, and a few days earlier I wrote a quick story about the Catholic Church's efforts to hold on to Latinos. Read away!

Meet my mentors

2010-07-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

In September my swashbuckling takes a national security turn. Check it out -- this morning NPR interviewed the two veteran reporters at the helm of my fall project about the recent Pentagon leaks. Could this be me in 20 years?

No hope of a straight face

2010-07-27T20:05:00.000-07:00

As soon as I landed in Albuquerque, I remembered why the world's religions all started in the desert. How can your thoughts be anything but heavenward when there's so very much sky?

Luckily, I was in town for a pensive sort of story -- a profile of a young Pentecostal pastor of a Hispanic megachurch.

There ended up being no time for the tram up Sandia Peak nor for a trip to the bright colors of Santa Fe, nor even for green chile enchiladas in Old Town...but as it turned out, four days with Pastor Tre proved more than adventureous enough. I crouched on the floor with my microphone during his meeting with an African American evangelical bishop; I flipped through paperwork as he led the school board meeting of a local charter school -- and prepared to hit the floor when gunshots were fired outside the school; I tickled a baby at his goddaughter's birthday picnic; I watched for jackrabbits while we talked politics in a park overlooking the city; but most of all, I grinned for five straight services on Sunday as I watched thousands of people give new meaning to the word "rejoice."

I don't care what your spiritual beliefs are, I can't see how anyone wouldn't want part in this.

The first service was in English, which was lucky for me since I got to get my bearings before the big 11AM Spanish service. I'd never been to an Assemblies of God church before, and frankly, it was pretty low-key compared to what I expected. The audience stood during the opening music. People swayed and lifed their arms to the sky, but it wasn't any different than some of the other youth-focused Christian services I'd been to.

I'd been looking forward to the speaking in tongues, but even that was low-key. It came at the end of the service when Pastor Ruben asked the youth to come forward -- they're preparing for a trip to a national convention -- and had the congregation place hands on them. There were quiet murmurings throughout the crowd, which at first I thought was just everyone praying quietly under their breathe. Even when I realized what was happening, it wasn't anything wild, just soft personal prayers.

Then came the 11AM service. The sanctuary's 1,400 seats were filled and I was strategically positioned halfway up an aisle with my marantz when the music started.

My oh my, I know I'm a writer, but there are not words.

Somewhere in the middle of the music, as the bright mess of a crowd was gasping and undulating, the man at the end of the row behind me came leaping forward up the aisle. His eyes were closed and I haven't a clue how he avoided knocking me over. Other people poured forward. Choir members came off the stage and down to the front. At once, there were 1,400 intensely personal experiences and one communal event. I know I'm a reporter, but there was no way to stay stoic through this. And really -- how well can you report on it if you don't let yourself feel it?

After that, I think Pastor Tre and I both loosened up. For all of his maturity and poise, he's young and I think the mic freaked him out a little. And I just didn't have enough experience with it to know how to put him at ease. So, for the 7PM youth service I put it away and we sat on a folding table in the back and chatted -- about the families who are leaving Arizona and finding their way to the church, about missionaries and vegetarianism and dred-locked proponents of the New Monasticism. I thought about taking it out when the crew moved to a local sub restaurant after the service, but opted instead to leave it in its bag and join in the kids' pretend spitball game.

I've got my douts about some of the audio I got, but boy oh boy, I've got a story.

Baby shower in Baghdad

2010-07-06T14:48:00.001-07:00

After a long weekend spent agonizing over a (non-journalism) job offer from an old boss, I awoke to this story about female war correspondents on NPR. By all practical accounts, I'm an idiot for turning the job down, but oh, I'm not ready to give up on swashbuckling yet!

Back with a bang

2010-05-13T07:39:00.001-07:00

Oh, how I have been neglecting the blog!

Swashbuckling has taken a different turn here in DC. Linen shirts and leather satchels have been traded in for suits and heels. Nevertheless, the swashbuckling continues. I'll catch up on a few good adventure stories soon, but in the meantime, the one from yesterday.

After 8 months of negotiations, and really decades worth of work, Sens. Kerry and Lieberman announced their much-awaited energy bill yesterday, and guess who got to be there (albeit smushed between a mult-box, a video camera and way too many people for the Senate Foreign Relations room).

It's been interesting to watch the mix of supporters shift. After K & L each spoke, the first person to take the podium was retired Admiral William Fallon. Supporters of emissions-capping legislation have been taking the national security tack more and more frequently lately -- heading to the conference I got stuck behind a group of more than 60 vets who were there to lend their support (watch for a story on this soon). Other leaders at the dais yesterday included USCAP heavyweights, evangelical minister Joel Hunter, and of course the usual enviros.

Here's my story for AOL's PoliticsDaily -- enjoy!

A little bit itchy

2010-02-08T21:35:00.001-08:00

Continuing my reporting on Bhutanese refugees, tonight I went to a health event in Rogers Park. What I knew was that the health promoter I'm profiling was giving a talk. What I didn't know was that the event was called because the refugees' building had bedbugs.

Did you know that everybody -- no matter their race, creed, language or religion -- makes the same disgusted look when squinting through a magnifying glass at a plastic baggie full of dead bedbugs?

We may all taste the same to the little devils, but we're not all equally vulnerable. These folks don't have the money to run their clothes through the dryer (the first step in battling the bugs), let alone to buy the plastic mattress covers and caulking equipment that health officials recommend.

Apparently a number of apartments in that building are infested, and now I'm trying to figure out how to bake my clothes (yes, oven, low temperature kills 'em, too) and how to make my skin stop crawling.

Not exactly what I had in mind when I set out to swashbuckle...

Lessons in generosity

2010-01-30T23:17:00.000-08:00

That old saying -- that those who have the least are the ones who give the most -- it never ceases to amaze me how true it is.

I spent the better part of this afternoon with a refugee family who, after being driven from their home in the south of Bhutan in the early 1990s, spent nearly two decades living in a bamboo hut with a plastic and thatch roof in a Nepalese refugee camp.

They arrived in Chicago with four bags between the five of them, stuffed with clothes and paperwork and a few pieces of jewelry. Now they live in a brown brick building in the black hat section of Devon. The walls are bare and the living room holds two twin beds. The walk up three flights of twisting stairs left me winded, though the 86-year-old grandpa glides up them with an ease unimaginable for a man with an inhaler and a walker.

In the early 1990s, the Bhutanese government began a multi-pronged campaign against its citizens of Nepali origin, many of whom had been settled in the south of the country for several generations. The government instituted a national dress code, burned books written in Nepali and became pickier and pickier about citizenship papers. Then, they began direct pressure. Heads of the family were called in to government offices and presented with paperwork in a language that they couldn't read. When they signed it, they relinquished rights to their land and declared they were leaving the country by their own choice. Those who didn't sign were threatened. Some were tortured.

That 86-year-old stair-climbing grandpa watched the army burn his house and farm -- the only home he'd ever known.

How do you ask someone to tell you about an experience like that? I started slowly, asking about specific memories and pointing out what few objects were around the room. When I asked about food, they called their 18-year-old daughter and before I knew it she was serving us the most amazing dumplings. I asked about the parents' wedding and they brought out pictures tucked inside a hand-me-down American children's book. I complimented the mother's necklace and they brought me a beautiful hand-beaded necklace and put it around my neck.

Really, what can you possibly say to that?

Sects in the City

2009-10-13T17:52:00.000-07:00

Somehow this troglodyte has found her way into a case of dueling blogs.

Part of my religion reporting class, it seems, is posting to the aptly-named class blog, Sects in the City. My first post, on Jehovah's Witness door-to-door training, was an adventure and a half.

Stay tuned for the continuing adventures. Next-up: an afternoon at a restaurant where Muslim cabbies stop to pray.

G-d's Word is heavy

2009-10-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

There was music. There was dancing. There were construction-paper flags being waved from taped-together-plastic-straw poles. And in the middle of it all there was me -- dancing with a Torah scroll.

This weekend is Simchat Torah, when Jews celebrate the completion of the annual cycle of Torah readings and bring the scrolls out for the congregation to see and touch and celebrate.

I celebrated tonight at a Reform synagogue (tomorrow I will be at a Chabad shul), where women wore yarmukles and prayer shawls, and even a shiksa like me is invited to take a turn dancing with a scroll.

Even this reform congregation, where women lead many portions of the service, it was the men who stood up to take the first turn parading the scrolls around the room. The first man -- short, middle-aged, in a suit -- nearly burst with pride as he held the Torah.

I was so touched by his joy that when the rabbi prompted me to take a turn with a scroll, I couldn't say no.

And what I learned is this: not only is the scroll an awkward thing to carry, but it is much heavier than you'd think. The music and dancing are dizzying, and you are at once putting such concentration into not dropping the precious object and also lifted by the jubilant spirit around you.

The children didn't seem to have a real sense of what was happening, and their parents seemed mostly to be putting on a show to get their kids excited about it, but the older people -- this meant something to the older people. As we circled the seats carrying the scrolls, they reached out with their fingers or their texts to touch the Torah and kiss the object that had touched it.

What a blessing, to be responsible, if even for a moment, for something that brings people such meaning.

Still waiting on the press credentials, but...

2009-10-01T22:10:00.000-07:00

My first story went live today!

Earth's past, present and future in a grain of sediment

2009-09-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

Each night, from the hill just above the private runway, the paleoclimatologists stared up at the Big Dipper and Orion and the Milky Way, waiting. A flash of light. A second. There it was! The International Space Station moved through the night's sky at astonishing speed.

The moment of awe lasted exactly that -- a moment -- and then the calculations began. How fast would the station have to be going to pass from horizon to horizon in a matter of minutes? Factor in Earth's orbit in the opposite direction, and the lengthened radius given its distance from Earth...

This was, in fact, what they did for fun after full days of presentations. Relaxation after hours spent discussing the dating of glaciers in Antarctica and New Zealand, the modeling of ancient rainfall patterns and ocean currents, and the monitoring of earth quakes on Greenlandic glaciers.

* * *

The late Land's End billionaire Gary Comer caught the climate bug on a boat trip to the Arctic. He and his shipmates decided to dare the famed Northwest Passage, and were shocked at how easy it was. Where was the ice?

The question pulled at him and he, who had never gone to college, immediately dove into the science of historical Ice Ages. One name kept coming up again and again in his research -- Wally Broecker -- a climatologist at Columbia who, among other contributions, put forward the idea of a "conveyor belt" to explain global ocean circulation.

When Comer and Broecker finally met they hit it off immediately. Believing that a better understanding of past abrupt climate changes is critical to averting one now, Comer quickly began pouring money into the work of Broecker and his colleagues.

For the last half dozen years the group of scientists, postdocs and graduate students funded by Comer have gathered on his remote Wisconsin estate to push the science forward through formal presentations, conversations over beer, and even folk songs around the campfire.

Although Comer passed away recently, the tradition has continued.

Which is how I found myself, Tuesday evening, sitting around a campfire joining in the chorus of a U Penn professor's song about Milancovitch theory (which hypothesizes that Ice Ages are spurred by changes in Earth's orbital cycles).

The things scientists can do now are amazing. Plankton shells on the deep ocean floor can tell us about precipitation patterns thousands of years ago. Calcites in ancient river basins can tell us when glaciers thousands of miles away melted.

And what all of this adds up to is: when climate changes, it changes abruptly. Past ice ages have built over periods of about 90,000 years, and warmed in about 10,000 years. Human civilization has never experienced warming of this magnitude before, but the tastes we have had haven't been pleasant.

Villagers in the European Alps had front row seats for the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-19th century. In one instance, a rush of melt water washed away a Swiss village, taking out 500 homes and killing 50 people.

The only thing scarier than what scientists know about climate change is what they don't know.

The last time Earth's climate was near what it is today, half of Greenland was gone. And here's the really scary part: scientists don't know much about how glaciers melt. It's one thing if the water melts slowly and ripples into glacial rivers called "tongues." It's another thing if the melt water seeps into cracks in the glacier and makes it down to the glacier's bed. A melted bed could unhinge the glacier and speed up melting exponentially.

In the case of the Swiss glacier, plumbing -- the way the glacier melted -- was the problem. Glacier dynamics can be counter-intuitive. For instance, "termination," when the glacier begins melting rapidly, comes at the moment that the glacier is at its biggest.

This is was the state of the Swiss glacier in 1818. Its front was sitting at the edge of a steep slope. When big chunks of ice would break off its front (a normal process called calving), they would fall into the valley below. There, they broke apart and refroze, forming an ice wall that closed off the narrow valley.

When spring came, this wall dammed the Danse River, which normally would have rushed with melt water. The villagers saw the inevitable, but couldn't act quickly enough -- the melt water burst through before they were able to carve a small tunnel to release the accumulated water in at a manageable pace. And away they went.

So where does that leave us now? When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its most recent report in 2007, it updated its 2001 predictions to show how much quicker things were happening than they had expected. Already, IPCC scientists are saying the 2007 report, too, was too conservative.

Gary Comer was a smart investor, though. He didn't put all his money on the public and policymakers waking up to the science in time. He also put money into developing tools to get us out of this cesspool of greenhouse gases if we don't act in time.

The last presentation of the conference was by Klaus Lackner, a Columbia professor and an entrepreneur. Before his death, Comer partnered with Lackner to build a synthetic tree with "leaves" coated with a resin to capture carbon dioxide at higher-than-natural rates and then sequester it.

The project is still in its adolescence, but provides a counterpoint to the runaway disaster to which so much of conference's findings pointed. We got ourselves into this mess and maybe -- just maybe -- we'll be able to get ourselves out.

Cupcake and painting parties

2009-08-15T06:29:00.000-07:00

It's a charmed life I lead.

Friday evening I put down the books and focused on the less tangible journalistic skills -- swapping stories and meeting characters at a local bar. Then headed into town for a book reading followed by cupcake party for a friend's mentor's book.

Chick-lit is not my thing, but amazing river views and swanky hors d'oeuvres spreads are.

The place was amazing, but we were exhausted and by far the youngest guests there and kept mostly to ourselves until some bored, middle-age-and-then-some husbands came to mingle.

I don't remember much, but I must have said something about religion reporting because before I knew it I was being whisked over to a woman sitting cross-legged in a beautiful black party dress on the leather sofa.

Who turned out to be a Harvard-lecturer religion and human rights reporter. Better yet, she was clearly looking for an excuse to leave the conversation she was in.

Well then.

The next day I had to get a video story. My last one was a bit of a disaster so I decided to make it easy on myself and cover a neighborhood mural painting. Not exactly hard news, but pretty and active and formulaic enough.

But -- who knew? -- there turned out to be an amazing story behind the mural (tragedy, community, hope, all the classics).

Just as I was finished interviewing a neighborhood teen a woman came over to ask what I was doing.

And who might she have been? Why, the very friendly president of the Chicago women journalists organization. And she seems to want nothing more than to introduce me to all the right people!

Not a bad weekend, I'd say.

Dog days of summer, no dog

2009-08-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

Finally, summer has made it to the midwest.

It was brought in by a monsoon on Friday, which was of course the day that I decided I needed to get out and about. I'd been doing well in newsreporting, but Thursday night it hit me: I'm not here to do well, I'm here to do the stuff that scares me.

So, out I trudged on Friday -- with my video camera and tripod and steno pad and tape recorder and background reading -- into the gusts of wind and rain. I was off to find some immigrants willing to talk about the Obama administration's recent moves on immigration.

Of course, how exactly do you find immigrants? My first stop was the Village Market Place in Skokie. Train, bus, 20-minute walk past the golf course. Annie a frazzled, soaking mess trying to get people to talk to her in the produce aisle. Is this really how it works?

Next stop: Skokie Public Library.

Only one problem. I'm a thinking walker. Which is to say, I get lost in thought while walking and more often than not, look up to realize I have no idea where I am.

The first time I did this I found myself infront of a synagogue. So, I figured, why not? The rabbi was in and willing to chat and -- who knew? -- he's on the cutting edge of web-based judaism conversion classes. One story idea for the kitty.

The wind was still gusting when I left the synagogue and by this time three prongs of my umbrella were broken. But did I learn from my mistake? No. I wandered some more, looked up, was definitely on the wrong street, but was standing right in front of an immigration law office. Well then.

After a brief visit there, I finally found the bus, got off at the right stop, and was waiting at a stoplight in downtown Skokie, wind about to knock me over, when a luxury car pulled up. I was, again, mid-thought and thus a little dazed when the 50-something man in the car rolled down the window and asked if I wanted a ride. He was going the wrong way so I didn't even think about it enough for the warning bells to kick in, I just said no thanks.

He leaned a little closer to the window, looked at me, snapped his fingers, and said, "too bad." Oh. That's what it was. One of the many perils facing female journalists, I suppose.

I made it safely to the library, though, where I met my new BFF -- the community librarian -- who was a goldmine of contacts (an interview with the social worker who coordinates Iraqi refugee services scheduled for Tuesday!).

Then it was another bus to west Evanston -- a not-so-great part of town -- for a documentary screening about the challenges facing black men and boys.

The place was packed and I quickly made friends with the videographers in the back who taught me how to work my tripod (after my camera nearly fell off since it wasn't screwed on tightly enough). It was not an easy event to cover, but wow, it was amazing. According to the doc, one in three black men will end up in prison in his lifetime and private prisons are projecting future numbers based on 3rd grade test scores. Sadly, my footage doesn't do the evening justice.

By the time the heat arrived on Saturday I was holed up in the downtown newsroom editing film. No lollapalooza for this girl, which, judging by the guy puking on the train on the way to the show, is more than okay by me.

The benefits of talking to strangers

2009-08-05T20:47:00.000-07:00

It was 9:30pm and I was riding the 97 bus from the Skokie Public Library to Howard Street station, feeling rather self-satisfied with the interviews I'd just done for a story on 'the 21st-century library,' when it hit me -- I'd forgotten to talk to any of the people actually using the library. No other word for it but: D'OH!

I shook my head, and as I did I caught sight of my fellow busriders. Hmmm...maybe one of them uses the library...

So I oh-so-casually floundered my way up the aisle of the speeding bus and sat down next to two women near the front.

"Hello, my name is Annie, I'm a journalism student at Northwestern University doing a story on the Skokie Public Library. Could I ask you a few questions?"

Blank stares. Awkwardness.

Finally the older woman said, "I'm sorry, again?" English not so much the first language.

Because she is IRANIAN. She's in the US for just a few weeks visiting her sister.

Needless to say, I didn't get my library interview.

Instead I tried to make out her words about the fear she feels for her husband and brother and cousins who are opposing Ahmadinejad, about how it was she was able to leave the country, about the government's tight fist around journalists. The bus was noisy and I missed most of her words, but the intensity of her eyes said it all.

The only break in her forceful words came when she asked me what I know of the situation in Iran. When she saw that I knew of the protests, the muscles around her mouth released a little of their tension. She was surprised.

The bus pulled up to the train station and we got off. She took my hand, asked for my name again, and looked me in the eye.

"Annie, pray for my country."

Lessons of a religion reporter

2009-08-02T19:58:00.000-07:00

Lesson #1: blond haired blue-eyed girl = sore thumb at Armenian church.

Lesson #2: Armenian Apostolic divine liturgy = very, very long. Doubly so when it's in Armenian.

At 9:55am I was the first one there. For an hour I had the service to myself. The priest in his blue silk cloak, the red velvet curtains ornamented in gold, the handful of choir ladies with lace kerchiefs over their hair, the incense and chanting and kneeling and singing.

The congregation slowly trickled in and I was the spectacle of the day.

Afterward the Armenian grandmas took me under their wings and gave me sticky buns and showed me their kitchen and told me about Christianity's long history in Armenia.

That is, after one looked at me and exclaimed, "she's not Armenian!"

I wonder what tipped her off.

I walked out into the Sunday afternoon sunshine with about a dozen fliers for the church's street fair and about as many story ideas.

Waiting for the train at the El station I was recognized by the congregation's two grad students who were also on their way downtown. It caught me off guard. In the church I had on my Observer hat, but here I was, a grad student among grad students. Can I be their friend? Or must I maintain my unbiased nod and ask only questions that require complete sentences to answer? This is the stuff they don't teach you in class.

Russian berries

2009-08-02T19:55:00.000-07:00

Tada! I think I've finally figured out how to share my first project. Not quite ready for primetime, but fun nonetheless.

My first assignment

2009-07-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

Whirlwind, crashcourse, sinking or swiming...I am on my way to swashbucklingdom!

Assignment #1: audio slideshow

Armed with my trusty audio recorder (which I maybe know how to use?), my steno pad, and of course my leather satchel, I set out last Sunday to find a story.

My first try was the Apache Motel, one of a dozen or so 1960s-era motels that line a short stretch of Lincoln Avenue, classified by some as Hooker Motels. Hitesh, the front desk man, was kind and friendly, but not so well-informed on the history of the area. Background character, but not the story. So I called Heart O'Chicago. And the Tip Top. And the Diplomat. But no luck -- few managers were in, and those that were were not keen to be interviewed. So, the first story has been shelved until I can make a Karaoke Night at the Hidden Cove (a bar whose name says it all).

But what to do now? My deadline looming, I got desperate. Could I interview the little girls selling lemonade out of the red wagon on my street corner? Maybe a profile of a dog would be interesting...

This is when I know it's time to get out of my head and go for a walk.

And walk right into it, I did. It, in this case, being a little old Russian lady and her daughter picking berries from the bush by the tunnel under Lakeshore Drive. Forest stories! Mushroom soup recipes! Giant urban indoor cacti!

Falling in love with my subjects seems to be my biggest journalistic challenge. That is, until I start puking up poisonous berries tomorrow.

Stay tuned for the slideshow...

Postcards from Morocco

2009-06-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

Back stateside, I’m battling jetlag and nostalgia.

A dear college friend had clinically diagnosed synesthesia – colors appeared to her when she read words and heard music – and I was always ineffably jealous. That jealousy, I think, has something to do with why I fell in love with Morocco. The country is a brilliant whirlwind of sound and image and hue and scent and none of it quite lines up.

In Marrakech the tiny streets are crowded with donkeys pulling carts and shiny new sports cars and grand taxis smushed full of villagers and zillions upon zillions of zipping mopeds. In the mountains the air is chilly and fresh and the light is misty and glimmering and the mountains are so close it feels like you could reach out and touch them. Everywhere there are walnuts and dates and smoking meats.

Muslims believe that only God can create perfection, and so every item is crafted with some small imperfection. Door latches stick and hidden in the design of carpets is a slight asymmetry. Likewise, no picture of the country is entirely one thing or another: the hillside villages are all stone and wood with animals wandering about as they please and children chasing each other up the path – and then you notice that one of the children is wearing lime green crocks. Sitting at a café with white table cloths and Gucci-clad patrons, you could be in the south of France until a man cycles by with a live chicken under his arm. Nothing in life is ever all one thing or another, but Moroccans take pastiche to a whole new artform.

I won’t bore you with the play-by-play, but I will post a handful of snippets and say this: my explorer’s spirit has been renewed and I have a lot whole lot of tromping ahead of me!

T-18 hours to Marrakech

2009-05-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to believe that it's good for the health to do something that scares you every once in a while. When you get out of your comfort zone is when you see yourself most clearly. It's been some time since I've left my comfort zone, and now I'm going whole hog.

Starting with Morocco, tomorrow.

My friend Sara and I had been planning a trip for two years now, our destination requirement being simply this: a place with weepy-eyelashed camels and spice markets. Morocco seemed a fine choice but something always came up, and when her work schedule conflicted with my slot of pre-grad school time, I decided on a whim to go for it on my own.

As soon as I hung up the phone from booking my 8-day trekking trip through the Atlas Mountains my stomach turned. Was I insane? American girl in Middle Eastern country all by herself.

But then I thought of Sara's approach to international eating: if people can eat this, then so can I. And so I say: If people can do this, then so can I.

Besides, I rather like the thought of coming back a girl who has conquered Morocco on her own.

The adventure begins

2009-05-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

My picture of a swashbuckling journalist is distinct, to say the least.

He is a man in his mid-thirties with slightly tousled light brown hair. His shirt is an airy white button-down, hanging loose over his belted jeans. He is walking from a tiny plane at the edge of a desert, a beat-up leather satchel over his shoulder and a carpetbag in his hand. Arriving in town, he drops his bag at a boarding house where, with a wink of the eye and a witty bit of flattery, he charms the grumpy old-maid proprietor into letting him leave his things before check-in. Then he heads straight for a bar in the French quarter – a dark, cool spot where the patrons are occasionally blinded by a piercing swing of light let in through the door – and orders a scotch on the rocks. The bartender takes him in as a pensive, weathered sort of a fellow, but doesn’t look twice.

As the man he is watching for arrives and takes a seat at a corner table across the room, the journalist orders another scotch. When a second man arrives and joins the first, the journalist turns to his right and strikes up a conversation with an old man sitting a few seats down. By the third drink, he’s seen what he came for and he’s got a source.

From there ensues an endless night of digging and persuading and piecing together, which tapers only with the soft edges of dawn. As the last of the night’s stars fade, our man navigates the barren streets and slips silently into the boarding house, only to feel a hand on his shoulder just after pulling the door shut.

“Up so early?” the proprietor asks. She pulls her robe tighter, surprised by her embarrassment.

“Yes, I thought I’d catch the vendors setting up at the market,” he says without missing a beat.

Smiling back at her as he steps out the door, he walks the three blocks to the Cathedral and joins the gypsies groggily sprawled on the steps until the sun is up and his deadline is upon him.

~~~

My question is this: what does this look like for a female journalist? Despite its Indiana Jones intonations, there are working journalists today who live this picture – Sebastian Junger, Bill Buford… — but although there are plenty of amazing female journalists, there is no comparable model. The women report, and report well, but their personalities rarely shine through. Where’s the adventure, the risk, the fun?

I believe that it is possible to have all of these things. There is an unclaimed space out there – separate from the impersonal genderless standard and the male adventure model and the maternal inflections of soft reporting – and I am determined to find it.

This blog is intended to chronicle that search. A compendium of the thoughts and stories and adventures I come across as I leave behind my comfortable little life in New York City and head west with my passion and ambition and whatever else I can fit in my parents’ station wagon. I hope you’ll join me!