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When media reporter Sarah Ellison arrived at The Post in January, she'd already written a long piece at Vanity Fair magazine about Matt Lauer's power at NBC as well as covered his November firing for sexual misconduct. Now she wanted to tackle something more ambitious. "What I was trying to figure out," she said, "was why didn't people feel they could come forward."
As she reported the story over the next three months, she interviewed three dozen people about the workplace environment at NBC, discovering what she described as "a pattern of more powerful men seeking relationships with younger women." It was challenging reporting, even amid the #MeToo movement.
"I was surprised at how difficult it was to get women to talk about it," said Ellison, who is based in New York and worked on the story with Style editor Richard Leiby. She was careful not to pressure anyone. "You have to let them know you're there to listen if they want to tell their story," she said. "In sexual harassment reporting, you can't retraumatize them."
Two women, one by name and the other anonymously, described harassing encounters in the 1990s with former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw — charges Brokaw vigorously denies. Ellison said she was pushed by Post editors to "substantiate and nail down the evidence" for every allegation; otherwise, they were jettisoned. She worked on draft after draft to get the story right. "It's my first real editing experience" at The Post," she said. "It was really rigorous. That's the reason I wanted to come here — to be put through the wringer." She was, and her blockbuster story was stronger for it.
— Lynda Robinson, Local Enterprise Editor
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