We Don't Need Another Hero

I have never been one to have "heroes." 
Role models, maybe, but not "heroes."
I remember Jane Fonda once saying women have to be their own heroes. I get that. All too often we don't have anyone appropriate to look up to. More than women in the "first wave," but not so many.
Which is not to say we don't look up to people in our profession.
I had the opportunity to meet one of the people I have long admired.
Geneva Overholser has had many prestigious jobs in the newspaper business, but she first rose to fame when she took a phone call from a rape victim to wanted her story told. 
The press doesn't report the names of victims of sexual assault, but often we wonder if that actually is a good or a bad thing. Protecting their privacy is a good thing on the surface, but doesn't it also perpetuate the idea that there is something to be ashamed of?
The woman who called Overholser at the Des Moines Register thought so. Her name was published and more important, her story was told. It was told in a five-part series, after the trial of the rapist, that won the Register a Pulitzer Prize.
"When we won the Pulitzer," Overholser said, "it sounded like we were campaigning for change, but we were just telling a story."
That's the whole point of what we do as journalists, we tell stories. Sometimes those stories strike a chord and things change and sometimes they don't, but when they need to be told, we tell them. 
When I read about Overholser's decision to run the series, I was very impressed because I knew she would take some flak, but I also knew she was doing the right thing. 
Which is a hell of a thing to aspire to. So often doing the right thing isn't easy and it results in flak from unimaginative people. Or angry people. Or people with agendas. 
So maybe I have some heroes.