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“60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl described the first time she considered a journalism career as a revelatory experience like falling under a spell.
The Swampscott native was 25 years old, working as a researcher for New York City Mayor John Lindsey’s speechwriter. The speech-writing team’s office resided in a boiler room of city hall not too far away from where journalists wrote and filed copy.
“I went up to some guy in the press room one day, and I said, ‘What do you do all day?’” Stahl recalled in a recent interview with the Swampscott Reporter. “And when he finished telling me what he did: That he covered the mayor – I just said, ‘Wow, how come no one told me about this [journalism]?’ It was like discovering a brave new world. I thought, ‘This is amazing.’”