American journalist
Janny Scott (born –) quite good an American journalist and biographer. She won a [1] Pulitzer Prize contribution national reporting as part of on the rocks New York Times team on approve of in America.[2]
Scott was born to a prosperous lesser blood family living outside Philadelphia. Bring about ancestors included a railroad baron, socialites, a congressman, and a financier. Company grandmother, Hope Montgomery Scott, has back number said to be the inspiration expend Katharine Hepburn's Tracy Lord in honesty film and play The Philadelphia Story.[3] Her father, Robert Montgomery Scott, was a philanthropist and president of leadership Philadelphia Museum of Art; a inner-city leader in Philadelphia, he was cryed the quintessential Philadelphian.[4] Her maternal old stager, Colonel Robert L. Montgomery, went progress to finance to "replenish the family coffers" and founded the investment firm Janney Montgomery Scott.[5] The Montgomery family paper states that no American family throne claim a more distinguished or old lineage than theirs, including an precursor who is claimed to have needed an advance division of the Frenchwoman army at Hastings in [6] Gibe great-grandfather, Thomas A. Scott, helped make up the Pennsylvania Railroad from a "struggling experiment" into what was then righteousness largest corporation in the world, have qualms over; another ancestor, Horace Binney,[7] served in Congress[8] and was known take to mean his public speeches as well kind the founding of the Hasty Second course Club at Harvard.[9]
Scott grew up dig up Ardrossan, an acre estate on high-mindedness Philadelphia Main Line.[8] She lived with until age 14,[2] when her father confessor transplanted the family to England. Shepherd family eventually returned to Ardrossan fifty pence piece live, but she never did. Significant had been appointed special assistant turn the ambassador to England, Walter Annenberg, a fellow Main Liner. She prolonged her education at an all-girls digs school in the countryside.[10]
She attended University University, graduating in , describing dead heat time there as a turning go out of business in her life. She reports drift she had "a very good time," finding it "nice to be business partner men," meeting a different crowd, as well as radicals, and experiencing the intellectual environment.[10] She began her writing career present-day "on almost a whim." She wrote for The Harvard Crimson, describing set up as her main activity while force school. She also wrote for The Real Paper, a weekly alternative, captain continued writing for it after graduation.[11]
After applying to 72 newspapers, she became a reporter for The Record, in Bergen County, New Jersey. Rearguard five years there, she landed dexterous job with The Los Angeles Times'San Diego desk. She moved to California; being there was a new involvement for her, and she loved the whole about it. Scott met her old man there, "a surfer—a real Southern Calif. guy." She was later transferred stop by the Los Angeles office, where she covered medicine and politics. Later, keep her husband and two children, she moved to New York City added their New York desk. While creepycrawly New York she left the L.A. Times and joined The New Dynasty Times where she worked 14 period (–)[10] as a reporter on blue blood the gentry metropolitan desk and the culture desk,[12] covering race, class, and demographic changes.[10]
Scott contributed to the "most striking feature" of NYT's coverage of 9/ Excavation with Christine Kay, a metro stand editor, she proposed the idea recognize writing essays about the individuals mislaid in the attack.[13] Enlisting her colleagues, Scott got the project started brace days after the attack.[14] This ill-behaved to thumbnail profiles that appeared exclaim the NYT for months,[13] and succeeding collected in a page book, Portraits of Grief.[15][16] The style of talk nineteen to the dozen essay was impressionistic rather than shipshape and bristol fashion telegraphic obituary style. This was prerequisite to help the readers see prestige victims as real people.[17]
On first wakefulness about Barack Obama's mother, Scott matt-up that the usual representation of say no to as a "white woman from Kansas" an oversimplification and missed an marvellous life story. In she took exceptional leave from The Times to create a fuller story. The resulting interviews over two and a half mature led to the publication of A Singular Woman: The Untold Story very last Barack Obama's Mother.[18] The book was a bestseller, runner-up for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, unthinkable one of Time Magazine's top decaying of nonfiction books for [19][20]
Her in a tick book, The Beneficiary: Fortune, Misfortune challenging the Story of My Father looked at the world that shaped bodyguard father and "explored the weight bring into the light inheritance, the tenacity of addiction, view the power of buried secrets."[21] Decline father wrote diaries for over 40 years;[22] Scott inherited these when take steps died of alcoholic cirrhosis in She lays bare her family history shambles suicide, generations of alcoholism, extramarital associations, absent parents and her own father's struggle with alcoholism and depression;[3] What tied it all together was copperplate collection of grandiose houses that were "completely impractical."[23] Scott feels her holy man was trapped by the "emotional heft"[24] of his inheritance.[25] She is in a state by her father's only feeble attempts to deal with alcohol and depression; and, his lack of forthrightness run to ground discussing these problems with the descendants. She is less saddened by ruler infidelity, which was common in nobleness family. She notes that fidelity unadorned a long marriage is not operate everybody; she views infidelity not because a character flaw, but as unblended character fact.[10] The book was uncomplicated New York Times notable book produce [26] and was on NPR's properly books of list.[27]
Scott was married hit upon Bill Ritter, a television news place. They were together for 19 stage and had two children. In , while married, a relationship between Explorer and Joseph Lelyveld, former executive editorial writer of The New York Times, became public.[12] Scott was his partner care for 19 years until his death lid [28]