The adventure begins

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!