‘Jumping’ into journalism BY GEORGETTE GOUVEIA
It’s rare that a reporter becomes part of the story she’s covering. But that is precisely what happened to Sarah Maslin Nir in March 2020.
32
A 10-year staff reporter for The New York Times whose beat is the metro area, Nir has covered everything from Gizmo, the runaway Bedford Corners llama, to the 2015 murder of North Salem socialite Lois Colley. So when New Rochelle became ground zero for the novel coronavirus in the eastern United States, she knew it wasn’t just “a foreign thing.” She got in her car and drove up from Manhattan to cover what has been the story of the young century. About a week later as New York state went into lockdown, Nir developed symptoms of what would become known as Covid-19. While she didn’t have the respiratory infection that was the initial signature of the virus, she lost her senses of taste and smell and could not distinguish hot from cold. Though she tried to work, she says, “My iPhone said, ‘You’ve taken 52 steps this week.’ I could not stand up.” Sick for three weeks, Nir went on to make a full recovery. She says she is grateful to have been spared both the worst of the virus — and the anxiety of wondering if she would get it. Knowing what she does now, Nir nonetheless says, “I’d do it again.” What she learned was that “there were no grownups in the room.” The crisis’ leadership vacuum, she adds,
WAGMAG.COM JUNE/JULY 2021
meant that it was left to news organizations like The New York Times to provide crucial information to the public as it unfolded. As with 9/11, Covid-19 may prove one of journalism’s finest hours.
‘PARTY GIRL’ A graduate of Columbia University and its Graduate School of Journalism, Nir was lucky to start her full-time career with The Times, though plucky might be a better word. She paid her dues freelancing and writing the paper’s nightlife column. “I covered 252 parties in 18 months,” she says, for which she received $50 a column. She may have been a Times columnist but she made $5,000 a year, working in restaurants to supplement that income. Her perseverance paid off: Two years later, Nir became a full-time staffer, which has taken her from West Africa to Alaska, from post-earthquake Haiti to wildfire-scorched California. Her 2016 investigation into the exploitative, racist practices of New York City’s nail salons, “Unvarnished,” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting that resulted in changes to the industry. But as she traveled the world for her career, Nir sought
