women journalist bad asses

This weekend, I went to a party for the Journalism and Women Symposium, a.k.a. JAWS, and I have never seen a such a large collection of bad asses in one place.

JAWS is basically a group for women journalists to come together and support each other, offer job advice and guidance, discuss the journalism issue d'jour, and just generally be total bad asses. At this party, I was in total awe of these women from some of the most respected media outlets in the country. I met women whose bylines I recognized, and was impressed by their humility, generosity and openness.

One woman in particular, a Washington Post reporter named Jackie Spinner, spoke to the group. She is one book leave from the paper to write about her time in Iraq. She looked my age (but was clearly older, since she said she was at the Post for ten years before heading to Iraq), and had started as a financial reporter before being at the right time in the right place. If my memory serves me correctly, she broke a story about the prison abuse at Abu Graib and lobbied her editors to send her to Baghdad.

They finally did and she spent about a year there. Three days before she left, one of their informants who was basically being paid to make sure none of the reporters got killed told her that he had been offered $5,000 to tell the insurgents where she was. She knew then it was time to leave.

The book she is writing is a joint venture with her twin sister, who is an essayist, called "Tell them I didn't cry." It refers to the time she was almost kidnapped. One day she was approached by these men who started yelling at her in Arabic. When she didn't respond immediately, they grabbed at her, tearing her scarf and dress away to see she was wearing a Kevlar vest. They then tried to abduct her, until she was saved by several Marines. She was shaking and crazed, but she didn't cry - a point she urged the Marines to back her up on when they returned to the office.

One of the other things she said that stuck with me was the fact that she never identified herself as an American - always Canadian or Ukrainian - and she never reported directly - always working through a translator, which meant her standing by as he conducted the interviews, trusting that what he relays is the truth. Also, if they did say they were reporters, they always identified themselves as being from some fake Iraqi newspaper, never the Washington Post. When asked if that made her uncomfortable, considering the shaky state of journalism ethics these days, she said of course it makes her uncomfortable, but that basically she is more effective alive.

Good point. After all that, she is returning in September. What a bad ass.