39 Years: How Does It Feel?

Sheila Norman-Culp ’80 reflects on her career working for the Associated Press. 

The Associated Press (AP) probably publishes a story a day on topics related to retirement: Do this, do that, whatever you do, avoid doing XYZ. But Bob Dylan knows the right question to ask: “How does it feel, to be on your own?”

I can’t say I know yet. Thirty-nine years of working with colleagues — as we try to make sense of wars, plane crashes, Olympics, elections, genocide, royal weddings, royal funerals, and even the 9/11 terror attacks — has bonded me like superglue to these folks at AP.

It will take a while to decompress.

But, at least for the AP’s Europe team, we have been exhausted by two years of covering the coronavirus pandemic then a year of reporting on the war in Ukraine. The modern equivalent of the Black Death followed by Attila the Hun. The AP journalists on the ground have my utmost respect: covering death, fear, and sadness with a mystery virus, then walking through war crimes scenes, photographing mass graves, and talking to people with cigarette burns on their backs who were tortured by Russian soldiers.

Even those of us just editing the text, videos, or photos have been traumatized to our core. We have read stories and seen videos and photos that cannot be unseen.

As the first order of retirement, I would like to sleep for a month, preferably without nightmares.

I would also like more time with my grandchildren, although I am not sure how wise that will be. The 1-year-old gave me COVID-19 in May and the 3-year-old doused me with RSV in October. I limped to the AP finish line coughing my lungs out.

“These people raised me,” Ed Sheeran sings — and that’s how I feel about my AP colleagues.

I came to AP’s New York headquarters still wearing braids. There is an ocean between wanting to do great journalism and actually doing it. It took me years to climb AP’s speed wall and send out breaking news in real time, with fingers and the brain flowing to distill momentous events to their essence. And always working as part of a team.

Yet, let’s just also acknowledge that the good ole days weren’t always so good.

Long before the #MeToo era, some members of the sports department were making bets on my bra size, and then asking me for the answer to determine a winner. When I was in AP’s corporate communications department and went to industry conferences to sell AP news equipment, I had to plant young technicians on either side of me at work dinners so I would not be pawed over by lecherous newspaper publishers. When a senior AP executive joked that AP would get better press coverage if I just slept with the editor of Editor & Publisher, I fled corporate communications to AP’s news side.

It was better, but not by a lot. At FIFA’s glitzy annual gala in Zurich, where female sports reporters were as scarce as soccer officials not on the take, a senior FIFA official commented “Sie ist die Hündin von AP” (“She is the b**** from AP”) as I walked past, unaware that I knew basic German.

I may carve that description on my grave.

And my working life included about 30 years of subpar managers, present one excluded.

A week after burying my first husband from cancer (no family leave laws yet), my boss put me on a six-day, 10-hour overnight shift for the 1991 Gulf War, starting the next day. When I protested, he said “AP can’t go around making exceptions for widows with toddlers.”  I thought that would be a good place to start. Still, I found a babysitter within hours and wrote AP’s global war roundup for weeks.

A few years later, the same manager refused to give me my wedding day off. He gave the groom and five guests the day off, but I had the least seniority. I had to trade shifts with one of the few colleagues I did not invite and work eight overnight shifts in a row just to appear at my own wedding.

In 2014, I asked a vice president why no female editors were being sent to work at the Sochi Winter Olympics, where about half of the competitors were women. He told me that the men he was sending were “very diverse” — from different countries and speaking different languages. Hmm.

How refreshing the situation is now. AP’s management team involves a president, a managing editor, a Nerve Center leader, and Washington bureau chief who are all women; there is a growing awareness that overnight shifts are a highway to cancer; photographers and video folks are not second-class citizens anymore; and with the democratic effect of Zoom meetings, the opinions of younger staffers can reach up to top executives.

My daughter and other 30-somethings are shocked at my stories. She asks, “Mom, why didn’t you just leave?”

The basic reason is that AP has one of the world’s greatest mission statements: It brings unbiased news to the world. It’s impossible not to be proud of that.

I also got to be involved in some of the world’s biggest events. I co-wrote the breaking 9/11 story, line by line, with contributions from dozens of folks — a 13-hour urgent series. I took dictation from a reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for covering genocide in Rwanda. I sent the news flash about Queen Elizabeth II dying, and happier stories about her grandsons’ royal weddings. London’s 2012 Summer Olympics was a joyous AP team effort that stretched far beyond the world of sports. Our “Dirty Game” global investigation into match-fixing in soccer stands the test of time.

But despite my deep pride at being a part of AP, it was time to leave. 

I am older than I think I am, dammit. It’s the blinders that we all wear, shaving 15 years off the actual clock. Working 10 days in a row, 20-hour stints for elections, 21-day marathons for Olympics, overnights topped off by a 75-minute commute are too much for me now. 

And the time ahead is too short.

Now the spotlight must be on my family. I am more at peace with this change of the seasons than I ever thought I would be. I just had my AP Zoom retirement call and it was the sweetest hour ever. 

Sheila Norman-Culp ’80 retired at the end of 2022 after 39 years at The Associated Press. Along the way, she won an Associated Press Managing Editors feature writing award; worked in Cheyenne, New York, Zurich, and London; and mentored scores of journalists. From 2008–19, Colgate students in the London Study Group visited her at the AP’s global TV newsroom, where
she taught them how news is made. She can be reached at snormanculp@ gmail.com.