Inspiring Women Summer 2018

Germany: A Journalist’s Worldwide Curiosity
DEBORAH STEINBORN
American Women’s Club of Hamburg, Germany
From: New York
Lives: Hamburg, Germany
I grew up in New York City, the third child in an
immigrant family. My parents didn’t like to talk
much about their past, so I became curious about
the rest of the world. I also always wanted to travel;
we didn’t do much of that as a family. As a
teenager, I used to hang out in the reading room
of the New York Public Library, exploring books. I
guess I was a bit of a nerd.
After college, I went to Europe for an internship,
then to graduate school part-time while working as
an editor and reporter in NYC. I travelled a lot for
work, first through the US, then in Asia and, lastly, in
Europe, where the company I was working for
(Dow Jones) relocated me. I met my husband
while on a business trip to London. I have moved
back and forth between Europe and the US a lot
since then.
As soon as I could read, I read a lot. I loved books about faraway places and unusual people.
And I read the local newspaper whenever I found one lying around. The stories were so
interesting, the photos amazing.
Starting in grammar school, I had penpals, including my best friend from kindergarten - funnily
enough, she only lived about a mile away. In fourth grade, I started a class newsletter; in high
school, I was editor of the yearbook and worked on the school paper. The habit just stuck.
I went to Binghamton University, in upstate New York, for undergraduate studies. A professor
there encouraged me to read foreign authors like Ayn Rand (he was a bit of a radical prof!),
Dostoyevsky and even Christa Wolf. I did, and it was then that I knew that I wanted to go abroad
for a while. So after college, I got an internship at the Deutsche Welle in Cologne, Germany, and
got into journalism there. A reporter from Wyoming named Erin Condit, who worked there, really
encouraged me to become a journalist and gave me the courage to do so. I would say,
though, that it’s an achievement that anyone can still make a living as a journalist in today’s
times, honestly! Not much value is placed on writing anymore.
I have been working as a journalist for well over 20 years. Now that I have lived in Germany for so
long (I’ve moved here a total of three times in my life!), I can also write in German, so I work as a
freelance journalist for both English and German-language publications. I have edited several
books and ghostwritten one as well. I also wrote a book in German about women in the
economy. That was an incredible challenge. A lot of words…
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