GIFT GUIDE: NBC reporter Jen Maxfield details unforgettable stories in new book
Photo: Jen Maxfield is a reporter with NBC New York and author of More After the Break. Photo courtesy of the author / Provided by press rep with permission.
Jen Maxfield has been an acclaimed journalist with NBC New York for almost a decade, and throughout the years, she has interviewed a long list of New Yorkers for a variety of stories, many of them tragic and featuring families facing the unthinkable. The professional life of a broadcast journalist who needs to “find the story” on a daily basis is grueling and nonstop, and the journalistic output is lightning quick, with most segments running 90-120 seconds on the evening news.
Maxfield, an Emmy winner who also worked for ABC7 Eyewitness News, recently wanted to hit the pause button — like so many people during the pandemic — and go deeper with some of her past subjects. She set out to write a book that detailed 10 “unforgettable stories” from her career, and this time around, she sat down and conversed with the families for a longer time. The broadcast journalist wanted to provide context and detail, which can sometimes be lacking in a nonstop newscast.
Her efforts paid off with the well-received book More After the Break: A Reporter Returns to Ten Unforgettable News Stories, released earlier this year by Greenleaf Book Group. The book makes for a quality addition to any holiday shopping list, providing readers a meaningful look behind the curtain on local news and allowing the public to travel more in-depth with everyday stories of struggle and triumph.
Earlier this year Maxfield talked with Hollywood Soapbox about the new book and these 10 stories. Here’s what she had to say …
On how the idea for the book first came about …
I had the idea to write a book for several years, and I didn’t really have the idea crystalized. But I have this feeling on some really impactful stories that I cover. Just to set the stage here, the way it works in local news in New York is we pitch ideas in the morning, and then our assignment desk also will receive tips or notices about court cases, whatever it is. So we go out in the live van with a photographer. We cover a story. We might cover two stories, and whatever we’re working on that day airs at 4, 5 or 6 [p.m.]. We do the live shot, and that’s it. So the story that airs might only be 90 seconds long, two minutes maybe if it’s a slow news day. So you can understand why on some of these stories I just felt at the end of those days that we hadn’t done enough. There was more to the story. There was more than what I could tell the viewer about in 90 seconds, but the pace is so relentless in New York news that the next day we’d move on and cover another and another, and so on and so on.
On figuring out what happened to the people she covered for a news story …
So this book is really borne out of my genuine curiosity about what happened to the people that were in some of these news stories and also my belief that if I was genuinely curious about it that readers would be, too. I think what really the blessing of the book is, and I know what readers are taking away from it is that, look, we all face adversity in our lives in some form, and the 10 people who are featured in my book, they’re not celebrities. They didn’t ask to be in the spotlight. They didn’t ask to be on the news. They were thrust into this situation due to circumstances they couldn’t control, and yet now that we have the time that’s elapsed between the original news event and the book being written, you can really get a sense of how these people have gotten through the adversity and triumphed, and how they have managed to get their lives back on track, and how they’ve managed to do incredible things in the wake of tragedy. That’s really the thread that runs through all 10 stories in the book is how amazing these people are who’ve been asked to deal with some really tough stuff and had done it with so much grace and bravery.
On how she chose the subjects for the book …
That was what drove the research in the beginning. Who am I still thinking about? Whose neighborhood do I drive through, and I remember the corner I interviewed them on? Or who am I still dreaming about, or … my kids are the same age as some of the kids I covered in the book. So as my son starts high school is that child starting high school today? So it’s really all of those things through the years. I connected with these people on a deep level on the day of the initial news story, and now being able to return to them all these years later. There’s a great quote that says, “News is the first rough draft of history,” and I do feel that’s a very accurate description on what we’re doing day one on these stories. But now having the opportunity to go back after all these years, you really do have the context and you understand more the purpose behind some of the actions that the people in the book took over the years.
On the universal themes brought up in More After the Break …
People definitely identify with some of the issues, and more broadly people seem to be reading the book and feeling a sense of gratitude for the blessings in their own lives. … I had someone tell me last week, “The book made me put my own problems in perspective. It made me appreciate the small things in my life when I read about people suffering through adversity.” And, yes, it’s certainly helped people who may, for example, have a history of domestic violence in their family or someone who has lost a child, or different people with different experiences might connect with chapters in different ways. But I would also say in several of the cases, of the 10 people who are featured in the book, the larger purpose of them agreeing to be a part of this project was to share their story with the broader community in the hopes that it would help somebody else.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
More After the Break: A Reporter Returns to Ten Unforgettable News Stories by Jen Maxfield is now available from Greenleaf Book Group. Click here for more information.
