Learning to write effectively and with flair under tight deadlines topped the list of the most valuable skills acquired at Cornell, said Jeffrey Gettleman '94, the East Africa bureau chief for The New York Times, speaking April 14 in Lewis Auditorium as part of the Munschauer Career Series.

For most of those years, Gettleman said, he "had no idea" what he wanted to do after graduation.

"I was pre-med, pre-law, pre-everything," quipped Gettleman, who majored in philosophy. "I was all over the map. I had no focus whatsoever."

When an English professor suggested he try his hand at journalism, Gettleman initially dismissed the idea, saying, "Who's going to want to work at a boring newspaper? [And] then that ended up being my career."

Gettleman urged students to study or travel abroad, noting that he developed an interest in international journalism after taking a year off to travel the world. When he returned to Cornell, his focus had sharpened, but his career plans were far from solid. After graduation, he headed to Oxford as a Marshall scholar.

"It was there that the idea of being a journalist congealed," he said.

Still, success was not immediate; Gettleman applied to more than 150 internships before nabbing a position at a Wisconsin newspaper.

"In journalism, like a lot of careers, the hardest part is getting in. Once you're in, you can move around," he said. "I tell people to this day, it was way easier getting hired at The New York Times that at the Kenosha News as a summer intern."

But before The New York Times, Gettleman reported for the Los Angeles Times and the St. Petersburg Times. He has been covering 12 East African countries since 2006, reporting on a number of international stories in Kenya, Congo, Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia.

In 2007, while reporting on Somali rebels in Ethiopia, Gettleman was kidnapped, along with his wife, Courtenay Morris '94, a Web producer for the Times, and another Times colleague. He described it as "not just the worst day of my career [but] one of the worst days of my life."

The kidnapping resulted from confusion about the journalists' visas. They were released after a week in Ethiopian prison. Gettleman wrote an article after this ordeal, but he was careful to make it about what he had seen -- not about his own experience.

"[I can] talk about it now without being traumatized reliving it, because I believed in [the] work I was doing," he said.

He admitted that maintaining objectivity is difficult in his profession because of the area of Africa on which he reports. Many of his stories cover child sex slaves, brutalization of women and killing of young children -- an especially difficult topic since he has a toddler himself.

"I want to be objective," Gettleman said, "but I don't want to be neutral, I don't want to be cold."

He stressed the importance of writing stories that present a new angle for readers and picking stories that effect positive change. He noted that the job of a journalist is "not to take action" at the risk of compromising impartiality, but that a journalist can facilitate positive change.

"I don't know if I've figured it out yet, because I do get discouraged," he said. "There is some post-traumatic stress that I deal with. But I have an outlet. I don't have to bottle it all up. I can write about it in a big way."

Olivia Fecteau '11 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.