“I can’t imagine a better job”: an interview with Joe Schlesinger

“I got into the news business because news was very important to my life. It started in school when I was 15 or 16 years old,” veteran Canadian reporter Joe Schlesinger told J-Source Ideas editor Janice Neil in this interview.

He spoke with Janice Neil recently about his start in journalism, interviewing Ayatollah Khomeini and walking through Paris with Brigitte Bardot.

LISTEN to the interview (5:08).

Schlesinger, 80, worked full-time for the CBC from 1964-1996. He has covered wars and conflicts from Vietnam to the Gulf.

The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) will honour the longtime CBC reporter with its Lifetime Achievement Award at a gala in Toronto on June 9.

In selecting Schlesinger for the award, the CJF said:

“Schlesinger was in Russia with Richard Nixon, in China with Pierre Trudeau, in the Middle East with Jimmy Carter, in Tehran when the Shah fell and Ayatollah Khomeini took over, in St. Peter’s Square when John Paul II became Pope and with him on his travels to Poland and other countries, in Europe with Gerry Ford, with Brian Mulroney in Africa and Jean Chrétien in Latin America, with Ronald Reagan on many of his travels, including his summit meetings with Mikhail Gorbachev.”

LISTEN to the interview (5:08).