My 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 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 PolgreenI think, I just always carry this kind of happy sense of being able to come into any situation and know that I don't exactly fit in, but I can make a place for myself.
Lydia PolgreenThe level of dependence on government among rural populations is actually extraordinary. They suffer even more when that assistance is taken away because they don't have access to the economic dynamism of cities. So if there are ways to tell stories that help people in rural areas see their kind of mutual need for care, that to me is the kind of thing that I want HuffPost to try and do.
Lydia PolgreenJim Rich is many different things but he has a great combination of a kind of old school tabloid reporter and editor's sense for what's a great story, but he's also incredibly passionate about social justice. I think Shaun King called him the most woke editor in American, if that's a compliment.
Lydia PolgreenTo me the tabloid sensibility, in the best sense of the word, and I think people as like tabloids have receded as a kind of force in media people have started to associate the word "tabloid" with like National Enquirer and stuff like that.
Lydia PolgreenIndia's notoriously difficult. It's visa routine is notoriously difficult to get a residency permit and all that stuff, so that threw up all kinds of complicated barriers for us. I remember once having to go meet with the foreign ministry official and say 'You know look I have a real problem here. Is this person really important to you?' And I just thought 'My God.' You know my wife and I have been together since college. You know it's 20 years.
Lydia Polgreen