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tough soil? Does it wither when transplanted? After a few months, Dima moved out and went to stay with my mother in New Jersey to try to launch a photography career in New York. But despite surviving Moscow all those years, Dima found life in New Jersey to be rough and he couldn’t stand my mother’s dogs. Lori took him in. She had been prophetic when she called him “our” problem. He arrived just before Lori moved from New York to Texas. Dima took over her apartment and telephone, displaying a huge sense of entitlement typical of many Russians, acting as though everything that was Lori’s, was his. Despite her patience, she had limits: she sent Dima back to Atlanta, where he moved into an apartment down the street from me. I helped him get photography jobs so that he could set up a life for himself in America. He took to it well. Being a talented photographer helped, but that was only part of it. Dima was a restless soul, the kind of person who was held back by the unreasonable restrictions on ordinary life in the Soviet Union and who flourished in the West. He has since had a great career as a photographer, and now travels in and out of Russia freely. Once he got a green card, allowing him to work in the USA, we divorced. Technically we had been married eight years, most of the time living on separate continents.
    While working, I made friends with many of the unusual characters who turned up at CNN. Christiane Amanpour, who laterbecame a star correspondent, was one of my first friends in Atlanta with a common background in Europe. We had both traveled extensively, and we commiserated over the provinciality of the place and our inability to find a decent croissant or bagel. Christiane was a secretary then, but she was ambitious, and willing to work hard for a chance at being a correspondent, giving up her vacation time to cover stories. Her determination eventually paid off.
    My career at CNN was also blossoming. Because the company was young, it was easy to move up the ranks. Speaking Russian helped propel me from my lowly job logging tape to the International Assignment Desk, where overseas coverage was coordinated. I spent most of my time on the phone with reporters who were out chasing stories. We would work out how and when they would get their material sent by satellite or shipment to Atlanta from whatever far-flung location they were covering. I would listen to their adventures, marveling at how they had arrived at some ferry crash or student riot and filed a story within hours. I longed to trade places with them. I was again on the overnight shift, but I decided the best way to ever do what they did was to learn how to be a producer, so I started coming in during the daytime as well to train. Before long I had my first job as a producer, working on what was simultaneously the world’s most boring and most fascinating news program. It was called
World Report
, a show in which few others at CNN were interested. But it was perfect for me.
    A creation of CNN chairman Ted Turner,
World Report
invited broadcasters from countries all over the world to send reports to CNN each week, talking about their countries from their own perspectives. Instead of the usual CNN reporting, where a staff correspondent, often an American, drops into a country to become an instant “expert,” these were stories from native reporters. It might sound like an obvious idea, but it was quite unusual. Most newsorganizations rely heavily on their journalists, who know how to prepare news for their audience, and CNN is no exception. The broadcasts that came into
World Report
were often unpolished and raw, and sometimes they simply represented the view of a government, since many news organizations in small or poor countries are state-run. Many of my colleagues at CNN felt that
World Report
was being used as a propaganda device for third-world countries. And some were certainly doing that. But no matter how heavy-handed the reporting was, it