January 10, 2012
By Adam McCauley '12
Cracking through the static of damaged telephone lines and spotty Internet coverage, Marine Olivesi’s '09 voice is calm and measured as she describes a half-naked Moammar Gadhafi laying dead in a private home outside Misrata, Libya. She paints the euphoria of other visitors at the viewing, jostling for photos and a sense of closure in a city that had suffered some of the worst violence during the conflict.
“It has a specific meaning to them that the body was brought here,” Olivesi reported on NPR’s All Things Considered on Oct 20. “They have been waiting for that moment for so long.”
So had Olivesi, 27, who was one of the first western journalists to report one of the year’s biggest stories: the death of a dictator. Born in Nice, France, Olivesi graduated from Columbia Journalism School in 2009, worked for WNYC as an intern, and later as an associate producer before finding her way to Libya as an independent radio producer.
The road to reporting from Misrata was bumpy, she said, but she’s finally doing what she was meant to do.
Drawn to radio and the topic of immigration, colleagues advised Olivesi to work as an independent journalist, seeking out the stories that appealed to her and of interest to international publications. Olivesi soon packed her bags for Greece, before settling in French-speaking Tunisia.
With three months in North Africa, writing stories about the influx of Libyan refugees to the region, Olivesi grew familiar with the lifestyle of a freelancer: amassing experience and the confidence to shift across Tunisia’s eastern border into conflict-ridden Libya.
“I was in Tripoli a few hours after rebels entered the capital in August but I was barely able to work because I wasn’t properly equipped,” she said. “I spent 90 percent of my time trying to figure out how to get safely to a place, or how to get my reporting out.”
Marine Olivesi, right, reports from Libya's Nefusa Mountains in May 2011. Photo/Gaia Anderson.
Olivesi quickly settled into the routine, meeting important contacts and learning to assess her own comfort level from the seasoned cadre of conflict reporters.
“You have to compute the risks and logistics factors,” she said. Prudence can be your most valuable asset some days, and opportunities for great stories can be found where they're least expected.
Olivesi decided to avoid Libya’s embattled streets and report from a local hospital the morning Gadhafi was killed. At the hospital Libyan rebels, toting camera phones replete with images of the captured Gadhafi soon arrived. Identifying herself as a journalist, she was told to “go to this car, they’ll take you to this house.” Olivesi did exactly what she’d learned during her time at Columbia: report out the story.
“You have to talk to people,” she said. Getting comfortable speaking to anyone and everyone was something she had learned from Assistant Professor Mirta Ojito while taking her Reporting and Writing class in the fall of 2008. Her time at Columbia also taught her to follow her instincts: a lesson that continues to inform her career path, she said.
Having been pinned down by gunfire with a colleague while reporting from Libya, Olivesi said she understands that close calls and moments of fear are important parts of the job description, but she also said that few experiences can compare to being on the ground doing what you love.
“‘Getting the story’ often involves making a very personal decision about whether you feel it's worth the risk.” she said. “I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
Read more news from the Journalism School
