Jane Ferguson.Photo:HarperCollinsJane Ferguson’s rise to the top ranks as a war journalist have been anything but traditional. After growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and ‘90s and without any connections in the industry, Ferguson took it upon herself to secure her dream job, at one point buying a one-way ticket to Kabul in the hopes that she’d land work.The gamble paid off.In her new book,No Ordinary Assignment: A Memoir,Ferguson, 38, charts the last 15 years of her career as a journalist, which includes coverage of every major front line from Yemen to Afghanistan. She also delves deep into her personal life, detailing a challenging relationship with her parents that often made her feel as if she didn’t belong in her younger years.Jane Ferguson, No Ordinary Assignment book cover.HarperCollinsSince then, Ferguson tells PEOPLE in an interview ahead of the July 11 release of the book, she’s found her sense of belonging in perhaps the unlikeliest of places: through covering war-torn regions around the globe.Now a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour and contributor toThe New Yorker,Ferguson previously worked as a foreign correspondent for CNN and, later, Al Jazeera, where she covered major stories including the Arab Spring uprisings, the war in Afghanistan, and the Syrian civil war.Jane Ferguson.Allison Michael OrensteinIn 2020, she moved to New York, putting a pause on in-the-field war reporting for the first time in decades. Standing still has allowed her to reflect on her career and the decisions that brought her to where she is now.“The fact that I do feel more grounded at this point in my life lead me to write the book,” she says. “I could look back at that young woman and recognize her in a certain polarity to who I am now. I stopped running and looked back, in a way.“And looking back, she acknowledges, reveals just how much there is to take in. Ferguson has reported from nearly every war front around the globe—from Yemen and Syria during the Arab Spring, Afghanistan during the fall of Kabul, and more recently, the war in Ukraine during Russia’s 2022 invasion.As she writes inNo Ordinary Assignment, Ferguson was 24 years old when she made the decision to purchase that one-way ticket to Kabul. At the time, she was working as a business reporter based in Dubai with “a nice apartment, nice car, and good job” – but she didn’t feel fulfilled, and her lifelong dream of working as a war reporter lingered in the back of her mind.“You wait for someone to call you up and give you the job that you want and it just didn’t happen for me,” she says. “I couldn’t find a way to get from here to there and the fear of staying and living a life I did not want to live became greater than the fear of going. So I bought a ticket to Kabul, Afghanistan, took vacation time from my job, and decided I’d rather fail at trying to do this than not try at all.“Jane Ferguson at Mogadishu K4 Junction.The vacation time turned into a new opportunity when, after landing and arriving to a local hotel, Ferguson began making connections and was able to secure a contract as a foreign correspondent.Despite being inexperienced in the world of war reporting, Ferguson found that her unique outlook and background primed her to handle the stress.“I was able to handle danger and fear because I had grown up in a fairly chaotic environment and been a fairly anxious child,” she says. “I had learned how to coexist and function even while feeling intense feelings of fear.“That ability to compartmentalize allowed Ferguson to cover even dangerous uprisings like those that took place during the Arab Spring of the early 2010s.Jane Ferguson and Taliban commander.“There was a lot of danger and for my generation of reporters, it was nonconventional warfare,” she says. “We were [embedded] with insurgents a lot of the time. We were with Syrian rebels and protesters starting to take up arms… I look back at some of the riskier days, especially in Syria, and get a little knot in my stomach just thinking about it.“Ferguson often poured herself into work rather than confront the emotional toll of situations as they happened. Assessing danger and tragedy, she says, often comes days, weeks, or months after actually living through them.“When I’m working and filming, I compartmentalize. The thing I can do best is to do my job. But afterwards, of course, when I come back from a big trip … I would have what I call ‘The Big Cry,’ " she says. “I almost purposefully allow myself to think of the things I didn’t at the time. And I mean on a granular level — the one guy who couldn’t afford the surgery for his kid, or the soldiers who were fighting on the front with no supplies…I think a lot about how unbelievably unfair a lot of those things are, and let myself feel those feelings.“Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer.Writing the book, she notes, was therapeutic in allowing her to dig deeper into the stories she’s covered. But it also allows her to lift a curtain on the often glamorized world of war reporting.“War reporters are so lionized and on the other hand, journalists are so demonized and so mistrusted,” she says. “I just wanted to write a book about how we are human beings. We are complicated people who are passionate about what we do, who make extraordinary sacrifices for what we do. And we are often just doing our absolute best.”
Jane Ferguson.Photo:HarperCollins
HarperCollins
Jane Ferguson’s rise to the top ranks as a war journalist have been anything but traditional. After growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and ‘90s and without any connections in the industry, Ferguson took it upon herself to secure her dream job, at one point buying a one-way ticket to Kabul in the hopes that she’d land work.The gamble paid off.In her new book,No Ordinary Assignment: A Memoir,Ferguson, 38, charts the last 15 years of her career as a journalist, which includes coverage of every major front line from Yemen to Afghanistan. She also delves deep into her personal life, detailing a challenging relationship with her parents that often made her feel as if she didn’t belong in her younger years.Jane Ferguson, No Ordinary Assignment book cover.HarperCollinsSince then, Ferguson tells PEOPLE in an interview ahead of the July 11 release of the book, she’s found her sense of belonging in perhaps the unlikeliest of places: through covering war-torn regions around the globe.Now a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour and contributor toThe New Yorker,Ferguson previously worked as a foreign correspondent for CNN and, later, Al Jazeera, where she covered major stories including the Arab Spring uprisings, the war in Afghanistan, and the Syrian civil war.Jane Ferguson.Allison Michael OrensteinIn 2020, she moved to New York, putting a pause on in-the-field war reporting for the first time in decades. Standing still has allowed her to reflect on her career and the decisions that brought her to where she is now.“The fact that I do feel more grounded at this point in my life lead me to write the book,” she says. “I could look back at that young woman and recognize her in a certain polarity to who I am now. I stopped running and looked back, in a way.“And looking back, she acknowledges, reveals just how much there is to take in. Ferguson has reported from nearly every war front around the globe—from Yemen and Syria during the Arab Spring, Afghanistan during the fall of Kabul, and more recently, the war in Ukraine during Russia’s 2022 invasion.As she writes inNo Ordinary Assignment, Ferguson was 24 years old when she made the decision to purchase that one-way ticket to Kabul. At the time, she was working as a business reporter based in Dubai with “a nice apartment, nice car, and good job” – but she didn’t feel fulfilled, and her lifelong dream of working as a war reporter lingered in the back of her mind.“You wait for someone to call you up and give you the job that you want and it just didn’t happen for me,” she says. “I couldn’t find a way to get from here to there and the fear of staying and living a life I did not want to live became greater than the fear of going. So I bought a ticket to Kabul, Afghanistan, took vacation time from my job, and decided I’d rather fail at trying to do this than not try at all.“Jane Ferguson at Mogadishu K4 Junction.The vacation time turned into a new opportunity when, after landing and arriving to a local hotel, Ferguson began making connections and was able to secure a contract as a foreign correspondent.Despite being inexperienced in the world of war reporting, Ferguson found that her unique outlook and background primed her to handle the stress.“I was able to handle danger and fear because I had grown up in a fairly chaotic environment and been a fairly anxious child,” she says. “I had learned how to coexist and function even while feeling intense feelings of fear.“That ability to compartmentalize allowed Ferguson to cover even dangerous uprisings like those that took place during the Arab Spring of the early 2010s.Jane Ferguson and Taliban commander.“There was a lot of danger and for my generation of reporters, it was nonconventional warfare,” she says. “We were [embedded] with insurgents a lot of the time. We were with Syrian rebels and protesters starting to take up arms… I look back at some of the riskier days, especially in Syria, and get a little knot in my stomach just thinking about it.“Ferguson often poured herself into work rather than confront the emotional toll of situations as they happened. Assessing danger and tragedy, she says, often comes days, weeks, or months after actually living through them.“When I’m working and filming, I compartmentalize. The thing I can do best is to do my job. But afterwards, of course, when I come back from a big trip … I would have what I call ‘The Big Cry,’ " she says. “I almost purposefully allow myself to think of the things I didn’t at the time. And I mean on a granular level — the one guy who couldn’t afford the surgery for his kid, or the soldiers who were fighting on the front with no supplies…I think a lot about how unbelievably unfair a lot of those things are, and let myself feel those feelings.“Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer.Writing the book, she notes, was therapeutic in allowing her to dig deeper into the stories she’s covered. But it also allows her to lift a curtain on the often glamorized world of war reporting.“War reporters are so lionized and on the other hand, journalists are so demonized and so mistrusted,” she says. “I just wanted to write a book about how we are human beings. We are complicated people who are passionate about what we do, who make extraordinary sacrifices for what we do. And we are often just doing our absolute best.”
Jane Ferguson’s rise to the top ranks as a war journalist have been anything but traditional. After growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and ‘90s and without any connections in the industry, Ferguson took it upon herself to secure her dream job, at one point buying a one-way ticket to Kabul in the hopes that she’d land work.
The gamble paid off.
In her new book,No Ordinary Assignment: A Memoir,Ferguson, 38, charts the last 15 years of her career as a journalist, which includes coverage of every major front line from Yemen to Afghanistan. She also delves deep into her personal life, detailing a challenging relationship with her parents that often made her feel as if she didn’t belong in her younger years.
Jane Ferguson, No Ordinary Assignment book cover.HarperCollins
Since then, Ferguson tells PEOPLE in an interview ahead of the July 11 release of the book, she’s found her sense of belonging in perhaps the unlikeliest of places: through covering war-torn regions around the globe.
Now a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour and contributor toThe New Yorker,Ferguson previously worked as a foreign correspondent for CNN and, later, Al Jazeera, where she covered major stories including the Arab Spring uprisings, the war in Afghanistan, and the Syrian civil war.
Jane Ferguson.Allison Michael Orenstein
Allison Michael Orenstein
In 2020, she moved to New York, putting a pause on in-the-field war reporting for the first time in decades. Standing still has allowed her to reflect on her career and the decisions that brought her to where she is now.
“The fact that I do feel more grounded at this point in my life lead me to write the book,” she says. “I could look back at that young woman and recognize her in a certain polarity to who I am now. I stopped running and looked back, in a way.”
And looking back, she acknowledges, reveals just how much there is to take in. Ferguson has reported from nearly every war front around the globe—from Yemen and Syria during the Arab Spring, Afghanistan during the fall of Kabul, and more recently, the war in Ukraine during Russia’s 2022 invasion.
As she writes inNo Ordinary Assignment, Ferguson was 24 years old when she made the decision to purchase that one-way ticket to Kabul. At the time, she was working as a business reporter based in Dubai with “a nice apartment, nice car, and good job” – but she didn’t feel fulfilled, and her lifelong dream of working as a war reporter lingered in the back of her mind.
“You wait for someone to call you up and give you the job that you want and it just didn’t happen for me,” she says. “I couldn’t find a way to get from here to there and the fear of staying and living a life I did not want to live became greater than the fear of going. So I bought a ticket to Kabul, Afghanistan, took vacation time from my job, and decided I’d rather fail at trying to do this than not try at all.”
Jane Ferguson at Mogadishu K4 Junction.
The vacation time turned into a new opportunity when, after landing and arriving to a local hotel, Ferguson began making connections and was able to secure a contract as a foreign correspondent.
Despite being inexperienced in the world of war reporting, Ferguson found that her unique outlook and background primed her to handle the stress.
“I was able to handle danger and fear because I had grown up in a fairly chaotic environment and been a fairly anxious child,” she says. “I had learned how to coexist and function even while feeling intense feelings of fear.”
That ability to compartmentalize allowed Ferguson to cover even dangerous uprisings like those that took place during the Arab Spring of the early 2010s.
Jane Ferguson and Taliban commander.
“There was a lot of danger and for my generation of reporters, it was nonconventional warfare,” she says. “We were [embedded] with insurgents a lot of the time. We were with Syrian rebels and protesters starting to take up arms… I look back at some of the riskier days, especially in Syria, and get a little knot in my stomach just thinking about it.”
Ferguson often poured herself into work rather than confront the emotional toll of situations as they happened. Assessing danger and tragedy, she says, often comes days, weeks, or months after actually living through them.
“When I’m working and filming, I compartmentalize. The thing I can do best is to do my job. But afterwards, of course, when I come back from a big trip … I would have what I call ‘The Big Cry,’ " she says. “I almost purposefully allow myself to think of the things I didn’t at the time. And I mean on a granular level — the one guy who couldn’t afford the surgery for his kid, or the soldiers who were fighting on the front with no supplies…I think a lot about how unbelievably unfair a lot of those things are, and let myself feel those feelings.”
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer.
Writing the book, she notes, was therapeutic in allowing her to dig deeper into the stories she’s covered. But it also allows her to lift a curtain on the often glamorized world of war reporting.
“War reporters are so lionized and on the other hand, journalists are so demonized and so mistrusted,” she says. “I just wanted to write a book about how we are human beings. We are complicated people who are passionate about what we do, who make extraordinary sacrifices for what we do. And we are often just doing our absolute best.”
source: people.com
