Last night, I began thinking about the remarkable number of men who gave me a leg up in my newspaper career. Some of them probably didn’t even mean to. Take Ken Johnson, a college boyfriend, who had to listen to my senior-year muddle about what to do with my life…

I remember staring out my window toward the Chrysler building, stunned. Charlie Edwards, the publisher of The Des Moines Register, was on the phone: Would I consider coming back to the Register — as editor? I couldn’t imagine leaving the Times. I couldn’t imagine uprooting my family. …

Mentors, Part 3 Paris to Washington to Des Moines: Not your standard route to success, yet surely the best move I ever made. But what led Gil Cranberg, editor of the editorial pages of The Des Moines Register, to open the door to the rest of my career? Most of…

Mentors, Part 2 After my cub-reporting days in Colorado Springs, I spent five years overseas: two in Kinshasa, one traveling through Africa and Europe in a VW bus, two in Paris. There wouldn’t be as much mentoring during those years; there wouldn’t be nearly as much journalism. I’d had visions…

Mentors Last night, I began thinking about the remarkable number of men who gave me a leg up in my newspaper career. Some of them probably didn’t even mean to. Take Ken Johnson, a college boyfriend, who had to listen to my senior-year muddle about what to do with my…