Ginger Adams Otis's new book is Firefight: The Century-Long Battle to Integrate New York's Bravest.From her Q & A at the New York Daily News:
Question: You’re a journalist who has never been a firefighter. How do you know so much about life inside a firehouse and how did you get firefighters to share their stories and feelings with you, especially about a topic as sensitive as race?Visit Ginger Adams Otis's website.
It took more than 10 years of reporting to build up some basic trust among a lot of the firefighters I relied on for “Firefight.” I feel like most of them were confident I was not out to do a hatchet job on the FDNY. Many are not named, but they spoke to me on background and their experiences are folded into the story. I try to be fair in my reporting — but still, there are inevitably some times when what you report angers people. But when you’ve been around for as long as I have, you almost become like wallpaper — people just get used to seeing you, and they come to accept your presence as something normal. After so many years of covering this story, I’d heard pretty much every different viewpoint firefighters had to offer and I actual tried hard to...[read on]
--Marshal Zeringue