Does it move the market?

Bloomberg News Israel bureau chief Gwen Ackerman reflects on over 25 years in the field.

By ABRAHAM COOPER
Gwen Ackerman (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Gwen Ackerman
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Over the more than 25 years Gwen Ackerman has been working as a journalist in Israel, the landscape has changed dramatically.
Ackerman, 49, has seen seven prime ministers, two intifadas and a handful of wars since she first began her career as a desk and field producer for ABC News. Since then she’s worked for AP, Reuters and The Jerusalem Post, before she began as a reporter with Bloomberg in 2004. She worked her way up the ladder there to become the agency’s bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian Territories in 2011.
Today, Ackerman manages Bloomberg’s 10 full-time staff and three stringers in Israel, and covers technology and cyber-security stories for the wire service.
Ackerman, a mom of three, sat down with the Magazine earlier this month to discuss her life as a foreign correspondent here, and the advances women have made in the field. This is a condensed and edited transcript of that conversation.
Did you always want to be a journalist? I wanted to be a writer, but I knew I needed to make money. So I thought, this is my compromise, because I can write and tell stories and have a profession that would make money.
That’s why I went into journalism, and I haven’t really regretted it – not one day. I don’t think I’d ever want to do anything else.
What does a typical day look like for you? I don’t really have a typical day, since what I try to do – because I really like to report – is to mush all the administrative stuff and meetings together, so I have some chunks of time to do stories. I write the stories that interest me, the tech stuff, or stories where there’s no one else to do them. If I am able, I always try to make time to write, because it makes me feel whole.
As a foreign news agency how do you decide what to cover? It seems that when, let’s say, there’s a bomb in Tel Aviv, if it’s criminal, nobody covers it internationally, and if it’s terror-related, it gets widespread coverage.
With Bloomberg, one of the main guidelines is: Is it going to move the market? And of course terrorist attacks move the market, which criminal attacks might not do. The shooting in the bank a couple years ago [at a Beersheba branch of Bank Hapoalim in 2013], we did cover. It was really interesting, because these sorts of things don’t really happen in Israel, they’re anomalies.
If we have the manpower and it’s an interesting story, we do do it, but our main guideline is, “Does something move the market?” What stories stand out to you as the most memorable over your career? The most memorable ones are when I was first starting out, because they were the most exciting. The shootings on the Temple Mount [by Israeli security forces in 1990] stand out for me. Same with some of the suicide bombings, particularly the double suicide bombings at the market [in Jerusalem in 1997] during the second intifada. I got there and people were all bloody, and there was this young man who looked just like my son, and someone was massaging his heart and I was just standing there.
And of course the assassination of [prime minister Yitzhak] Rabin [in 1995], after the heady days of the Oslo Accords.
Wars are just kind of exhausting. You can see why now, I really like the tech stories. It’s exciting when someone buys Waze! Did you have any female mentors guiding you throughout your career? For me, my mentors have always been men. It wasn’t that there weren’t any women in managing positions, but there weren’t that many, and if they were in managerial positions, they weren’t really mentoring – particularly in journalism.
Is that different today? Absolutely. Technology has made it a lot easier for women to move up in the journalism ladder because you can answer an email on the go, especially with smartphones. You can edit a story, you can work from home, it has made the work more flexible. You don’t have to be in the office for hours and hours, and as a result, I think it’s easier now for women to move up and become managers because it just makes it more flexible. I think it’s a really big change and it’s a really good change, and I think going forward there will be a lot more women mentors.
Someone said to me once: “Gwen, you’re really, really good, but I can’t count on you because when you have to pick up your kids from kindergarten, you’re going to have to leave.”
I think there still might be some of that out there, but I think that it’s less and less.
How did having children without the benefit of those technological advancements affect your career? I remember when I had the kids there was this very big kind of mobile phone, and you only took it out when you went out in the territories and you might get stoned. I think at some point I got a laptop, but it really wasn’t something you did – you didn’t work at home, you stayed until your story was edited. I often chose shifts that weren’t reporting shifts, I would take desk shifts from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., because I knew that I would be able to be there then.
Did that hold you back? It definitely did. I even turned down jobs; I turned them down because I didn’t think I could do them and take care of my kids properly, because there wasn’t a flexibility, and also just because I thought it would be too stressful. But looking back, I think taking those ‘desk shifts,’ the monitoring shifts, I got so much experience running an office. I did put off advancement, but once I decided to take on the advancement, I had all the tools that I needed – and it ended up being beneficial in the long run.
With fervently religious factions among the Jewish and Muslim populations here, has it ever been difficult for you to cover a story as a woman? It’s not really an issue, you just have to respect other people’s ways of life, and be sensitive to other people’s sensitivities. You just have to be aware that if you want to cover a yeshiva – then I would send a man to do that part of the story.
If you go into Gaza and you’re going to interview the head of Hamas, you cover your hair.
Where else in the Middle East have you traveled for work? I primarily go to Dubai because the Bloomberg News headquarters in the region is there, and those trips are usually for office things and not for doing interviews. I’ve been to Jordan and I also go to the Palestinian Authority a fair amount, to interview politicians and people connected to the economy. I used to go a lot to Gaza but I haven’t been going much recently, since it’s hard for foreign journalists to get in and out.
Did becoming a mother change your attitude toward this type of travel? When my kids were young it was during the first intifada, and then I was primarily traveling to the West Bank and Gaza, and it did make me stop. You would get tear-gassed, you would get stoned and you would get shot at.
Once I had the kids, I did less and less of it; you don’t really think about the dangers until you have somebody else to worry about. And that’s an impact on women for sure. I do know some women who continue to go out and take those risks anyway, but I think they’re probably fewer than others.
Are female journalists treated well in Israel? I’ve always felt comfortable, sometimes there might be snide remarks, but overall I’ve felt really comfortable. I think even though Israel is perhaps not the most equal place, there’s never a feeling that the man gets to speak first or gets the question first. There have always been a few Israeli women [journalists] who are really strong, and I think that kind of sets the tone.
I think it’s also how you relate to it. A very prominent venture capitalist once said to me: ‘What was on the agenda was my professionalism, and not the fact that I was a woman.’ I’m just going to show them that I’m a professional, and then I think people will treat you that way.
Were there times you felt being a woman made you less objective? I think maybe as women we’re more compassionate, and that when we cover stories which have to do with children being hurt or maimed or killed – on either side of the conflict – that impacts on us more strongly. Even before I had kids, when children were killed in the intifada – on both sides, or American children here on those summer programs, one of them was killed – it really makes you extremely upset.