As a reporter for more than 40 years, most of them on national television, Lynn Sherr has brought clarity and insight to many of the compelling news events of our day. In Outside the Box , this widely respected journalist lets us in on what she’s seen "inside the box" as she steps outside for a reality check.Sherr tells how television journalism has changed over the years and explores the state of TV news today. When she first began in the industry, newspaper editors bluntly told her, "We don't hire girls," but Lynn persevered, both covering and experiencing the emergence of modern feminism. From growing up in Philadelphia, to suddenly becoming a step mom, to the heartbreak of her husband’s death followed by her own battle with colon cancer, her personal story mixes with accounts of the political and cultural upheavals she has covered to make Outside the Box a social history of our time.
Broadcast journalist and writer Lynn Sherr has been swimming since she was a toddler, learning first by watching frogs in a Pennsylvania lake. She has since expanded both her strokes and her waterways. For more than thirty years, she was an award-winning correspondent for ABC News. She is the author of many books, including Tall Blondes: A Book about Giraffes; Outside the Box: A Memoir, and Failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words. She lives in New York.You can contact her at LynnSwims@gmail.com and follow her on Twitter@LynnSherr and at Facebook.com/SallyRideBio.
I had to skim through some portions of this book in order to make it to the end. I'm sure Lynn is a very nice person, but I felt she got mired down in minutae. The numerous passages devoted to her father's basketball days were monotonous and went on for far too long. Her recollections of the stories she's covered throughout her career were quite often boring and could have been summarized. Where the book did redeem itself for me, however, were the portions about her personal life -- meeting her husband, Larry, being a stepmom to his three sons, his bout with cancer, her bout with cancer. Although I felt that she was a little harsh on her friends' behavior about the cancer, it is, after all, her story and her opinions.