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Melinda Henneberger
Contributing Editor, Newsweek Magazine
Class of '80
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Transcript:
"American Studies was fantastic. One of the best teachers, and really mentors, in my life was Elizabeth Christman who I took several writing classes from and she taught me so much more than writing. We’re still friends and she still lives here. And I can’t even really express everything she gave to me but I remember that the best piece of advice she ever gave me was that the hard part is just deciding. Once you decide everything else is just hard work.
"I write now mostly about politics and I do mostly political profiles. I always say I don’t really cover politics, I cover people in politics. But I’m also working on a book about women voters and how women process information, how they make the decisions they do and it’s really interesting.
"My first real newspaper job was at the Dallas Morning News and I was the night cop reporter. And so, I had a ball doing that job. My hours were from four until one in the morning and a lot happens during that time. It was, I think a great place for anybody in journalism to start—is on the cop beat.
"You know, when I went into journalism, I think I saw it as an alternative to social work but I really was drawn to service and to looking at that work as a ministry. And, so, there was some—you know, that’s not what journalism is. Journalism is not social work so even though I think it fulfills an extremely important role in society and it is a ministry to try and keep the people we cover honest by questioning everything they do which is a service role, it’s not the same service role that I had in mind when I got into it. I love it, but probably, as in any business, you learn a little bit more about it as you go on."