I had known that Jill Abramson was coming to the office for awhile. Don made it a point in the e-mails leading up to our arrival to let us know that a managing editor of The New York Times was coming to visit. It was breaking news every day for the entire week: “JILL ABRAMSON IS COMING.”  Everyone on the Institute’s staff was going crazy before she arrived –  they kept nagging us and saying “you have to do this, and you have to do that.”

I’m sure most of us don’t need an intro to who Jill Abramson is; after all she is a managing editor for the top newspaper in the world. But for those who don’t, I’d like to introduce her through my point of view. She’s the woman who came into the office wearing the white Dillard sweatshirt and, let me tell you, she was proud to have been wearing that sweatshirt. When she first walked into the office she was briefly introduced, and then she quietly sat down. I thought to myself “This is my opportunity to speak to her. After all a few days before she came I had e-mailed her.  She hadn’t responded so it was the perfect conversation starter.”

I walked up to her and said “Ms. Abramson, I e-mailed you about my story and you didn’t e-mail me back.” She said she didn’t get my e-mail because she has this crazy e-mail system that tosses out messages sometimes. It was all right, because she was ready for me anyway.

For the next hour I had what I would call an “intense” one-on-one session with Jill, something that most journalists (excluding those at Yale ,where she sometimes teaches, and those she works with) don’t get to have. We talked about the research that I had done and it took her no more than two minutes to write an outline for a story that I had been working a week on. I know you’re probably thinking, “Are you serious? Two minutes?” It was probably more than two minutes but my point is that she’s amazing. She not only saved me hours and hours of time but she also gave me firsthand experience on what a reporter at The Times might go through. Sometimes, Don told me, editors will write the outline for stories for journalist as long as the writer is able to back the outline up with understanding and sources.

To add to my experience with Jill, she invited me and another journalist, Phillip Lucas, to tag along with her on a meeting with Councilwoman Stacey Head. She came to get Phil and me   at 8:30 a.m. The least I can say about the journey to the Community Coffee House on Magazine Street is that it was an adventure. It was raining, we were lost, and a few minutes late to our meeting with the councilwoman. Of course everything worked out: We arrived at the coffee shop and there was Stacey Head, a woman who I had learned a little about during my short stint in New Orleans. I’m working on a story that involves race relations and Councilwoman Head is the perfect source for my story. Little to my and Phil’s knowledge, Jill wasn’t going to be staying for long. She soon left us to go to another meeting. It was fine, though, because we did what we do best. I probably won’t see her again for a long time but I hope next time I send her an e-mail she gets it.

This may not sound like the most interesting story, especially if you’re not a journalist. I can say that having one-on-one time with Jill Abramson is like an aspiring basketball player playing one-on-one with Michael Jordan. So just imagine how big of a deal this was for me. Meeting Jill was the icing on the cake that was already iced.