journalistic rigor

 

I came back to reading the book Camera Girl, by Carl Sferrazza Anthony.  It's about Jackie Kennedy's young, single years - her education and writing.

[from the book jacket] - Camera Girl brings to cinematic life Jackie's years as a young single woman trying to figure out who she wanted to be.  Chafing at the expectations of her family and the societal limitations placed on women in that era, Jackie pursued her dream of becoming a writer.  

        Set primarily during the years of 1949 - 53, Jackie was in her early twenties, the book recounts in heretofore unrevealed detail the story of her late college years and her early adulthood as a working woman.  

Before she met Jack Kennedy, Jacqueline Bouvier [BOO-vee-ay] was the Washington Times-Herald's "Inquiring Camera Girl," posing compelling questions to members of the republic on the streets of D.C. and snapping their photos with her unwieldy Graflex camera.  She then fashioned the results into a daily column, of which six hundred were published.

        Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a historian and leading expert on First Ladies, draws on these  columns and previously unseen archives of Jackie's writings from this time, along with insights gleaned from interviews he conducted with the former First Lady's friends, colleagues, and family members.  

Camera Girl offers a fresh perspective on the woman later known as Jacqueline Kennedy and Jackie O, introducing us to the headstrong, self-assured young woman who went on to become one of the world's most famous people.  

        It's a glamorous and surprisingly hard-charging story of a person determined to define herself, told with admiration, empathy, and journalistic rigor.

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