Hotline Profiles Crawford

From their "Friday Feature": Jan Crawford Greenburg is a legal corr. for ABC News. Her book: "Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court," was published in January. Before joining ABC, Greenburg was a legal affairs reporter at the Chicago Tribune and a corr. for PBS' "NewsHour." But today she's our Friday Feature: Where's your hometown? What was it like growing up there? Wow. Tough question right off the bat. I don't have a hometown -- I grew up in unincorporated Morgan County, in rural north Alabama, a good 15 miles away from the closest town (which was Arab, pronounced A-rab, a metropolis of 5,000 people, a Piggly Wiggly, a roller skating rink and more churches than restaurants). I rode horses, showed steers in 4-H, went to cow sales, twirled the baton on the football field at halftime, hardly ever wore shoes (still don't unless I have to) and will always remember the first time I saw the sparkling lights of big-city Birmingham at night. What was your first job? My brother and I spent summers pumping gas at my Dad's service statin down the road from our farm. Business was so slow we spent most of the time drinking RC colas and killing flies. What's your most embarrassing on-the-job moment? (Or as embarrassing as you'd like to reveal?) Right out of college, I got a job at the Chicago Tribune and was working the night shift, covering all the usual late-night fare -- shootings, stabbings, arsons. One slow news night, I took dictation from a rock critic who was phoning in his concert review, as reporters used to do in the tech-free old days. He woke me up with an irate phone call at home early the next morning, asking why in the hell the Tribune had printed a review of the "Greatful" Dead concert. I groggily told him I thought he wanted it in the paper. "You misspelled it. You misspelled the name of one of the greatest bands of all time -- in my review, under my byline." (I have edited out the profanity here.) I wanted to tell him that I didn't own any Dead records and couldn't even name a single Dead song either and besides why did we even have to put "Grateful" in front of Dead, anyway, since everyone just calls them the "Dead?"). But I was too mortified to admit I was so lacking in hipness. Read the rest here.

Fishbowl

Hotline Profiles Crawford

Patrick

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Patrick