More After the Break

May 1, 2022

Local news reporting not only provides a vital pipeline of information to a community, but it often reflects the heart and soul of a people. Maxfield (journalism, Columbia Univ.) recounts some of the most memorable stories she covered as a reporter for various broadcast news outlets in the New Jersey-New York area. With vivid details, she reflects on heart-wrenching stories ranging from a cancer patient receiving life-saving treatment due to the generosity of viewers, victims of moving vehicle accidents and how their deaths affected their families, and a ferry boat collision that altered the lives of injured passengers. Even when she reported on national events, she kept her focus on the local impact of the event. Her astute observations about having to interview people via Zoom after the onset of the COVID pandemic get at the core of what it means to be a reporter on a local beat. Without in-person interviewing, she felt that it was difficult to establish the intimacy of human connection she otherwise would have gotten. VERDICT Reading these excellent stories is like watching the author report in real time.--Donna Marie Smith

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2022
Maxfield recollects the travails and triumphs, as well the moral challenges, of her work. A reporter with experience covering news in both her home state of New Jersey and beyond, Maxfield is a seasoned veteran of the industry. She graduated from Columbia Journalism School and taught there as an adjunct professor and has worked for CNN. At the heart of journalistic practice is improvisation in the face of the unexpected, a key theme in this heartfelt memoir. She reflects with admirable candor on her diverse experiences, recollected in 10 vignettes that reflect on professional and personal dimensions of being a journalist. She discusses covering national news, like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and smaller but equally poignant stories, like that of Yarelis Bonilla. Yarelis, a 5-year-old girl, had leukemia and was in dire need of a bone marrow transplant. The only viable candidate, her sister, Gisselle, lived in San Salvador and had great difficulty obtaining permission to enter the United States. Maxfield is impressively forthcoming about her own foibles. She charmingly calls a nightmare about her work a "newsmare"--and furnishes examples of her mistakes, including ones that resulted in some harm for those she interviewed. She reflects sincerely on her right to interject herself uninvited into the lives of those upon whom she reports: "Did they resent that I monopolized the time after a trauma when they should have been comforted by family and friends? Did they wish that their family's struggle had been kept private? Did they feel they didn't have a choice when I came knocking at the door?" Her answer--that such intrusions are justified because they "inspire introspection in our viewers"--is not a searching or plausible one and won't likely be convincing to a public increasingly hostile to journalism as a profession. However, this memoir remains an edifying and humanizing peek into the life of a reporter. An instructive, illuminating tableau of a reporter's mission.

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