About book Buying The Night Flight: The Autobiography Of A Woman Foreign Correspondent (2001)
A quarter-century ago, I was a full-of-piss-and-vinegar journalism student whose plans included working at great newspapers and traveling the globe. I had the advantage of being a third-generation newspaperman in a family of people who had (and have) serious cases of wanderlust. I'd already had the opportunity to explore the world, having traveled to Europe and the Middle East on a few occasions. All of this left me primed to read "Buying the Night Flight" when the first edition came out.I picked it up somewhere around 1986 or '87 - and devoured it. Georgie Anne Geyer was a newspaper legend by that point, and her stories of how she broke into newspapers and escaped the typical toiling of female journalists of the day to become a high-flying foreign correspondent captured my attention, imagination and fervor. She traveled in Central American jungles with revolutionaries. She talked her way into and out of war zones to offer news and insights to hundreds of thousands of readers back home in Chicago (and beyond). She interviewed everybody - Fidel Castro, Anwar Sadat, Yasser Arafat, Ronald Reagan. In the early 1970s, she was the first journalist to interview a mysterious Iraqi strongman named Saddam Hussein. For nine months of the year, she lived in Beirut, Angola, Egypt, Israel, Nicaragua, Cuba and points in between.While I could not fully appreciate that she did this as a woman when there were few female foreign correspondents, I was enraptured with her feats and was determined to follow in her footsteps. I began to think of ways to become a foreign correspondent in the Middle East but soon learned that region was the plum assignment for those who put in years - even decades - at wire services and our nation's largest newspapers. I explored joining the Peace Corps as a way to get to the region, with the idea of becoming a stringer once I arrived. I considered study-abroad programs that might get me to Hebrew University for nine months. Alas, I could never quite come up with a viable scheme, and the sad reality of finding a job and settling into a career became the priority.A quarter-century later - presumably halfway through my career - I again picked up "Buying the Night Flight" after a discussion on Facebook about influential female journalists. This was a new edition that came out a decade ago (just before the world changed on 9/11). Again, I gobbled up Georgie Anne Geyer's stories. Again, I dreamed of what my life would have been like had I figured out a way to follow her path. I reflected on my life and my career as a newspaperman. I decided it's fun to have dreams and hopes, but it isn't worth wondering if you've wasted your opportunities by not fulfilling them.Geyer gave up a lot to do what she has done. Throughout her book, she is often wistful about never marrying, never having children, never "settling down." Eventually, she did stop being a foreign correspondent (in fact, by the time I'd read the book the first time). The 18-hour days with 18-hour flights in between were too much to endure for a lifetime, so she became a successful syndicated columnist. This allowed her to still travel the world and talk to everybody important. It gave her the freedom to write more books and offer insights exclusive to those with her experience.In the meantime, the world has changed. My beloved profession has changed (for the better, I think). Foreign correspondents are considered a luxury for most newspapers, who now rely almost exclusively on wire services for their international news (whose space in print shrinks almost daily as we focus on news of local interest). But people like Kevin Sites are the new breed of foreign correspondent. They have the same drive as Geyer to get into war zones - though now with laptops, video cameras and other multimedia equipment. They give us hope.Would I trade my career for Geyer's? Maybe for a year, but I love what I've done for the past quarter-century. My career has been a great adventure, and I have been privileged to work for a great midsized newspaper. I found my soulmate fairly early, and I have been blessed with the joy of being a parent, which is so much more important and fulfilling than what could have been had I veered on a different course.I love "Buying the Night Flight." I love Georgie Anne Geyer and what she represents. I love that her writing and adventures remind me I still have the spark to be newspaperman. But I would not trade her life for mine.
Do You like book Buying The Night Flight: The Autobiography Of A Woman Foreign Correspondent (2001)?
