Ode to Barbara Walters
Originally posted on www.insta-grad.tumblr.com
In the middle of March, a slim envelope arrived in my mailbox. The return address showed that it was from the only journalism school to which I had applied and its thinness indicated that the answer would not be in the affirmative. Expecting a “Thank you for your application. Due to a record number of applications this year we are unable to offer you a seat in our incoming class…” or something to that effect, I opened the letter unenthusiastically.
To my surprise, I was accepted, (so much for the thin envelope theory), and within a week was sending in my confirmation to enroll in the Class of 2015’s Masters in Journalism program.
When I told my grandmother that I’d be going to journalism school next year, she asked, “Do you want to be the next Barbara Walters?” At the moment I couldn’t tell if her question was earnest or sarcastic, but I replied honestly, “No, I don’t want to be the next Barbara Walters.”
For an aspiring (female) journalist this might sound blasphemous, an especially sacrilegious statement to make on this brilliant woman’s last day of work. I’m not going to retract my statement, but I am going to take the opportunity to examine it.
The truth is I admire Ms. Walters too much to ever imagine myself being the “next Barbara Walters.” Her career is almost too big for anyone to imagine filling, but it’s founded on two simple practices—leaning in and speaking up—that every woman can take to heart.
The first woman to co-anchor the nightly news on a network station, the only living journalist to interview every president since Nixon, the creator of an entirely female-driven talk show, and a reporter who has met with kings, dictators, and movie stars, Barbara Walters is not only a trailblazer for every woman in journalism, she has shown that a seemingly simple conversation may be the most powerful tool in a woman’s arsenal.
Using her “trademark probing-yet-casual interviewing technique,” she revealed answers ranging from how Monica Lewinsky had the nerve to show Bill Clinton her thong, to getting Fidel Castro’s admission about Cuba’s lack of freedom for the press. She leaned-in towards her subjects to ask bold questions, and left these encounters with poignant statements about culture, politics and much more. She didn’t just interview the right people, she asked them the questions no else dared to ask.
As more studies suggest that women are less likely to speak up in group settings, Barbara Walter’s confident questioning reminds women not only to lean-in, but also to speak up. While her all-female talk show, The View, may be fodder for comedian’s jokes on late-night TV, it is still a testament to the valuable perspectives that emerge when women get together to hash things out and speak their minds—seventeen years of hot topics that have become part of countless morning routines, including my own.
This past year, while interning part-time, freelancing, and generally job seeking, I’ve become especially acquainted with Barbara Walters and her View co-hosts, listening to their discussions almost every morning. Their varied takes on life actually inspired me to start this blog, so that my girlfriends and I could discuss issues facing recent graduates in the early stages of their careers within a digital forum. This is my meager attempt to be like Barbara Walters, but if I can do 1/10th of what Ms. Walters did, I would be professionally satisfied, content with the knowledge that my writings and investigations had made a difference in someone’s life, or broadened someone else’s view.
I believe that no one will be able to be “the next Barbara Walters”—there’s only one Barbara—but I do intend to take a cue from her unique and insightful view of the world and make it my own. So no, I don’t aspire to be “the next Barbara Walters”—she’s irreplaceable—but I do hope to carry on her spirit within my own work and be like her in my own small way.
