NLU Alumni Magazine
New York Times Reporter’s Tales Thrill NLU Audience When Jeffrey Gettleman told a roomful of people at National Louis University how masked gunmen blockaded his car near Fallujah, Iraq, and approached him with guns drawn, listeners could almost feel a shiver going through the audience. Gettleman, the New York Times Bureau Chief for East Africa, came to NLU in February as part of the M.S. in Written Communications program’s Pulitzer Prize Series. Joanne Koch, Ph.D., director of the program, brings in Pulitzer winners to share their wisdom with the university community; Gettleman, a native of Evanston, Illinois, won the award in 2012 for his reporting on the famine and turmoil in Somalia.
Watch the Pulitzer event at
nl.edu/Gettleman
Back in 2004, however, Gettleman had been stationed in Iraq, and that was when he had a brush with death. He was with a photographer, a translator, driver and guards when the gunmen stopped them and ordered Gettleman out of the car. “I stepped out, this guy pushed me away from everybody, lined his gun up and chambered a bullet,” Gettleman recalled. “This all happened so fast. I felt totally powerless.” Fortunately for his survival, he had slipped his U.S. passport to the female photographer, who hid it in her jeans. Gettleman thought quickly and decided to tell the gunmen he was Greek. Greece was one of the few Western
4
countries which was not part of the U.S.-led coalition occupying Iraq. “And they have a good soccer team. Iraqis love soccer,” he explained. He spent hours keeping up the Greek ruse, persevering through intense questioning. Finally, before dusk, the Iraqi captors decided to let them go. “When we got back to the bureau, everybody was waiting for us, hugged us and started bawling,” the journalist said. “At that moment I realized they had counted us for dead and it was like we had come back to life.” Gettleman also told of more recent coverage, when he went to Sierra Leone last summer. He visited a teenage girl who was sick with Ebola, and got frustrated that no one would put her in a vehicle and drive her to the treatment center, which was not far. When she died on the third day, he felt infuriated, depressed and regretful he hadn’t done more. Asked how he can find the emotional strength to keep covering Africa’s wars, diseases, famines, anarchy and epidemics, he reflected, “I get some weariness at times, but there are still things that really move me.” Koch responded, “Your sense of caring about the individual people just shines through everything. It’s so gratifying to know that degree of caring is still around.”