Life in the Wrong Lane: Why Journalists Go in When Everyone Else Wants Out

by Greg Dobbs

The book is called Life in the Wrong Lane because that's where journalists in the one lane heading toward a catastrophe. Everyone who's normal is in the other lane, any other lane, going the other way. They're getting out. Although Dobbs's travels, first for ABC News and now for HDNet Television, have taken him to many troubled corners of the country and the world, Life in the Wrong Lane isn't a travel guide about exotic places or a contemporary history of the events he covered. Rather, it's about all the funny, bizarre, scary, stupid, dangerous, distasteful, unwise, and unbelievable things that journalists experience just getting to the point of reporting a story, experiences that possibly are even more interesting than the stories being covered, but which never become part of the stories they finally report to their audiences.

240 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2009

Reviews

[Brent Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

For many years I have had the privilege of watching parts of this book unfold as Greg Dobbs dispatched his personal reports of worldwide travels to family and friends, sharing remarkable stories behind the stories he was covering. Some of these reports were written close to the bone as Greg returned from distant locations, often exhausted, with details and back-story vivid in his mind. As I read his harrowing chronicles of a reporter covering Hurricane Katrina, cocaine trafficking in Columbia and bewildering third-world inconveniences of Russia today, I realized how little I understood about the enormous responsibilities and challenges of a heretofore romantic and mysterious profession known as "foreign correspondent."

These are stories of a special breed of men and women who lunge into the middle of major news unfolding, often risking personal security and safety in their quest for truthful witness and reporting of major events shaping our lives. These are stories of fortitude, daring, irony, inconvenience, risk, exhilaration and unlimited curiosity. These are stories that provide surprising and entertaining insights into the operations and demands of modern news media, a true and unvarnished presentation of how "freedom of the press" finds contemporary realization with instantaneous, satellite- and internet-delivered, 24/7/365 electronic news coverage.

This finely written book not only presents the craft of a seasoned writer and journalist, making it an inspiring and fun-to-read page-turner, it also provides an insider's glimpse into what it really takes to be a world-class journalist -- the personal qualities that go beyond mere skill at gathering information, interviewing, assembling, editing and delivering the news before a camera. Greg Dobbs' accounts demonstrate raw ingredients of success, not only in journalism, but in all professional endeavors, qualities such as tenacity, risk-taking and finely honed competitive instincts.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

My cousin Greg wrote this book about his experiences working as a foreign correspondent for ABC News. It is amazing the crazy stuff he has survived (aka many dodged bullets) and the incredible stories he's reported.

[Mindy Hanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun to hear some behind the scenes of what life is like for a war correspondant. Greg is a great, story teller!