Video (Click titles to view): Roll With the Punches - Journalism as Elliot's lifework. Running Time 3:53 Breaking into the AP - Elliot aces the AP test, but discovers there are no jobs. Running Time 4:23 Working at the United Nations - Elliot describes her first several weeks covering the UN, after working at AP. Running Time 3:53 Links: QuickTime required to view videos » Click here to download QuickTime

Joy Elliot

Covered the South African Liberation Movement for Rueters

Luckily for Joy Elliot her grandmother demanded nothing but excellence from her as she grew up in rural Jamaica. When her grandmother felt the local schools weren't rigorous enough, she made Elliot study hard for the entrance exam to a top-rated boarding school. She got in.

"We're sending you to this school," her grandmother explained, "because you are lazy and your mind needs to stretch, you know."

While in boarding school young Elliot took Latin and Spanish and earned a scholarship to attend university. Little did she know this training would come in handy years later when she tried to break into the old boy network at The Associated Press in Washington D.C. in 1971.

After months of persistence, she finally got The AP to administer to her its proficiency test. Out of 50 questions she was to answer 25 correctly, a ratio far below her grandmother's standards. She also had to complete a vocabulary test with the most obscure, abstruse monosyllabic words. But she knew Latin and used that determine the etymology of words she didn't know. She ended up with the highest score in the history of The AP. No matter, the wire service wouldn't hire her.

When Austin Scott, the first African American to work for The AP, found out about the agency's recalcitrance he wrote a stern letter to management stating that unless they hired Elliot he would quit. He had some leverage because he had just returned from a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard. Letting Scott go would make The AP look bad.

She was hired shortly after. Though she had no training in journalism, she managed to survive with the help of her colleagues, including Scott and reporter Howard Rosenthal. She worked hard, put in long hours.

The AP's most senior writers and editors worked in the Washington bureau, so it was difficult for Elliot to get the training she needed as a cub reporter. The AP sent her to Philadelphia to do radio reporting, but she wasn't happy there. She did a try-out at the New York Post, which offered her a job. But when The AP editors found out, they got the Post to drop their offer. In June 1972, Reuters hired her to work on the desk editing and rewriting copy. Later that year they assigned her to cover the United Nation General Assembly.

Once while covering the General Assembly, she learned that when South African liberation members, including the African National Congress, came to the United Nations, Reuters didn't cover them. When she inquired why, she was told that South Africa had a law that members of the liberation movement could not be quoted.

"Can't be quoted where?" she asked. "We in Jamaica want to hear these people. Jamaica was anti-apartheid." So she sent a message to headquarters in London saying South African law should not dictate Reuters policy. They agreed and she began covering the South African liberation movement's actions at the United Nations.

While Elliot saw the impact of her efforts, some of her relatives questioned the significance of her path.

Often when she went home to visit family her aunt would ask, "Have you found a job yet?" To which Elliot responded, "What do you mean a job? I have a job."

"But I thought you might be doing something socially useful," her aunt said.

After she got over her shock, Elliot asked what she meant by socially useful.

"Teaching," the aunt replied, the same profession as Elliot's grandmother.

So much for helping to bring the world's attention to the South African liberation movement.

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