Get to Know an NPR Staffer!
by Susannah MichaelsEleanor Beardsley has been NPR’s correspondent in Paris since 2004. You hear Eleanor’s reports on French politics and her pieces on French culture, including her “postcards from Paris.” In this latter category, for instance, are stories about the lunches at her son’s preschool, the public bicycle rentals in Paris, the swine-flu-endangered French custom of kissing in greeting and farewell, and the rejuvenation of Paris at the end of the long vacation season. These evocative stories made me want to ask Eleanor for an interview and she generously accepted. In this process, I learned the amazing coincidence that although she hails from South Carolina, Eleanor was born and spent her first three years in Madison, Wisconsin!
RadioWaves: Why did you become a reporter?
Eleanor Beardsley: I did not plan or study to become a reporter. But I discovered rather late in my work life — mid 30s — that being a journalist, and more particularly a radio journalist, was exactly what I wanted to do and that I could maybe even be good at it. In university I studied European history and French, so I have always been interested in traveling and other cultures and telling and hearing good stories, but somehow I didn’t put it all together. I have done many things in my life, from working for a senator in the U.S. Congress, to donning a costume and working at Euro Disney. In fact, I think it’s great training for a journalist to have a diverse background.
Well, in 1999 I had been working for a few years as a producer for the U.S. bureau of a French television news channel in Washington, DC, when I decided to buy my own radio equipment and visit a friend who had moved to Kosovo just after the conflict to work for the United Nations. I had never really liked television, but always loved radio. So I wanted to try it. Working with the French station I learned how to set up news stories, even though I wasn’t on the air. Well, that vacation trip to Kosovo changed my life. I threw myself into it as if I were a foreign correspondent on a mission. And when I got home I actually had three stories on the air with the show The World, out of Boston, which takes a lot of work from freelancers. It was the most incredible feeling to hear that first story on the air.
The next year I ended up moving to Kosovo to work in the press office of the United Nations. In my free time I still did some reporting for The World, and also wrote some pieces for newspapers like The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Boston Globe. There were just incredible situations all around me, and it was fascinating. So I found plenty of great stories to pitch.
Three years later I moved to Paris and slowly began to make my living as a journalist for the first time. It wasn’t easy to go from doing some journalism on the side (while I had a regular paycheck) and doing it for a living. But my craze for everything French seems to have finally paid off in Paris. I now get paid to know the culture and the language. I never imagined that happening. And of course I no longer have that starry-eyed view of France. I can be critical of French things, now that I live amidst them and can see the flaws.
But I don’t think I would ever have become a journalist if I had not struck out on an adventure in Kosovo. Gone someplace else, that is. I found myself in an incredible place with unbelievable stories and I immediately saw that. Had I stayed home in the United States and tried to get published, it would have been hard — I had no journalism degree, there were younger and better competitors, and I started out with no clips!
RW: How do you manage to feel connected to NPR and NPR listeners while you are living outside of the United States?
EB: I talk with people at NPR every day on the phone. Especially the Europe editor, with whom I have a very close relationship. We speak two or three times a day. We discuss what’s going on in France and Europe, themes, ideas, and possible stories. He keeps up with French news very well. Also my family and many friends live in the United States, so I stay in touch with them. And I read the Herald Tribune every day, which is the global edition of The New York Times.
But still, being far away means you miss a lot of things — popular culture, sports, TV shows. It's amazing how out of touch you can become, although I do try to watch clips of The Daily Show and things like that. So of course you’ve got to go home every once in a while to really see and feel your country. I just went home in August for the first time in a year and a half. It was a good visit. I felt renewed when I got back. And being home inspired one of my recent stories on La Rentrée. It’s about how France bursts back into life after the summer off — a giant back-to-school for the whole country. We have nothing like it in the United States because we don’t take a month off in the summer. Anyway, I noticed that difference right away upon coming back. I don’t think I would have felt that so deeply had I not just been home. And I would have missed the story.
RW: How did your French turn the corner from being something you learned in school to being something you could use to do your job?
EB: Well, believe it or not, I used to hate learning French. I was always bad at it. I graduated from university with a minor in French, but never wanted anyone to know because I couldn’t speak a word. But somehow I knew I wanted to be fluent one day. So I kept it up. Not intensely, but I’d take classes sometimes after work when I lived in DC, and I would eat at French restaurants, go to a French hair dresser, anything to try to practice a little. And of course I took vacations in France. Then I did a graduate school program in international business that included a six-month internship in Paris. That got me addicted. I would study grammar at the laundromat. I had a French boyfriend, which was like a giant language-learning game.
After graduate school I ended up living in France for a year. And that brought it all together. But the better you are in a language, the more you realize you have to learn. I’m fluent today, but I couldn’t give a technical talk about medical devices, or something like that. And I still get horribly tongue-tied sometimes if I have to speak in public or on the radio here. It turns out that there are varying levels of fluency.
Before coming to France, I used my French on the job in DC when I worked for the news station. And I used it in Kosovo with the UN. But now I completely live it. French people love it when you speak French with a foreign accent. They always say my French is great and I always reply that it should be — it took me 25 years to learn it!
RW: How is working in France different than working in the U.S.?
EB: The working atmosphere in France is just so different. People work hard, but they take time to play too — lunches, vacations, trips, etc. What you do for your living doesn’t define you, like it does in the United States. And you wouldn’t automatically ask someone about work if you met them at a party, for example. There seems to be time for other things here. Work and making money are not as all-encompassing as they seem to be in the U.S. And jobs that students and aspiring actors might do in the U.S., like being a waiter, are careers here in France. Here, no matter what the job, everyone gets retirement and five weeks of vacation; everyone's allowed to spend time with their families and have a decent life.
RW: What is your favorite thing to do in Paris, whether it’s something touristy or something off the beaten track?
EB: Oh let’s see. I love to sit at a sidewalk café and watch people. I get a big café au lait and sit there for hours sometimes. Often I write my stories sitting at a cafe, because I get tired of being cooped up in my tiny office.
I also enjoy going to parks with my son. And I love going out to eat at cozy little bistros with traditional French cooking and good red wine. Or going to one of the big cinemas on the Champs Elysees and seeing a movie with my husband. I like living in Paris and being able to walk out my front door and immediately be part of this great city! Even though I’ve been here more than five years now, I still marvel at Paris’ beauty. Like when you drive or walk along the banks of the Seine, when you see the glittering Place de la Concorde lit up at night with fountains flowing, or just getting lost along the narrow back streets of St. Germain. I could go on and on!