Two of the last four executive editors at the New York Times were Johannesburg bureau chiefs at some point, Bill Keller and Joe Lelyveld. This is a very prestigious post and I was like I don't know 28 years old, which at the Times is very young, I had the temerity to put my hand up for that job. I don't think I slept a single night of those six weeks that I spent in Johannesburg. It was an unbelievable experience, and I think I did okay.
Lydia PolgreenTo me the sort of like, the ethos, if you will, of like tabloid is like Daily News in the 1970s. It's a news organization that thinks of its mission to speak directly to people who are kind of , the people who are sort of the foundation of the American workforce or were at one time. What I love about this conception of the tabloid is that actually everybody read it.
Lydia PolgreenOnce I came out in college I just have always been out and at work with pretty much everybody. My wife and I both working as journalists, because she's a photographer, and often working together, would have to kind of navigate this weird world. When you're trying to develop sources, when you're trying to you know make personal connections with people, you inevitably want to share things about yourself and that can be really tricky.
Lydia PolgreenMy parents were adherents of the Baha'i faith, which is sort of, I can't think of the best way to describe it, but it sort of has the same relationship to Islam that Christianity has to Judaism, and it's a kind of a universalist creed and missionaries aren't paid. You're essentially expected to go out and find a job and do your own thing, and in your spare time spread the faith, and so that was the driving force of us going overseas.
Lydia PolgreenTo me, that's the foundational fact of my identity is that I'm a journalist and so it's hard to imagine putting anything else first.
Lydia PolgreenI think I'm this sort of perpetual outsider, I grew up most of my life in countries that were neither where I was born nor where either of my parents were from. I was part of a weird religion that nobody had heard of.
Lydia PolgreenTwo of the last four executive editors at the New York Times were Johannesburg bureau chiefs at some point, Bill Keller and Joe Lelyveld. This is a very prestigious post and I was like I don't know 28 years old, which at the Times is very young, I had the temerity to put my hand up for that job. I don't think I slept a single night of those six weeks that I spent in Johannesburg. It was an unbelievable experience, and I think I did okay.
Lydia Polgreen