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INTERVIEW: Eden Lane, first transgender ‘mainstream’ TV journalist

INTERVIEW: Eden Lane, first transgender ‘mainstream’ TV journalist

Eden Lane is a pioneer for those who want to live authentically and rise to the top of their fields, serving as a shining example.  When she said yes to an interview for Gay Ambition Podcast after I met her at the Out Front Power Party in October, I couldn’t wait to get started.

 

What was your favorite part about hosting the Out Front Power Party?

The fact that before the evening begins I have an excuse to walk around the entire room and say hello to people, ask what group they are from and who they are there to honor or do they know some of the honorees. That part of it — playing “hostess” — that was my most enjoyable aspect of the evening — because otherwise I probably would have been too shy and just sat at my table like a lump.

You are a trailblazer. You are marked as the first mainstream transgender television journalist. What does that mean to you and do you think that’s true?

I do think it’s true in that there may have been other transgender men or women who were television journalists before me but they weren’t necessarily out. I don’t know who that may or may have not have been. I didn’t realize it until someone else told me.

When I started covering for Colorado Public Television politics it didn’t occur to me that no one else who was transgender had done it before, nor did it occur to me to keep it quiet. It wasn’t on my ‘credentials,’ but it wasn’t a secret either — and it never occurred to me until later when there was some bad press about some of the interviews, some of the politicians who sat down with me got some flack not only for what they said but for sitting down with the “transsexual journalist.” And I thought, I’m not really sure how that’s relevant, and that’s when I was told: the reason it’s relevant is because you are the first.

Was that when you were covering the 2008 convention?

Yep, during the Democratic National Convention there were a few murmurs about ‘ohhh, ohhh.’ So I heard that I might be doing something new, but again, I was so focused on getting the story and not being the story that I didn’t really internalize that in any way.

When it really became what you would call a negative issue was during the campaign for governor and senator in Colorado. Then-Mayor John Hickenlooper was running for governor against Tom Tacredo among others, and he gave me an interview in which he made an inartful statement and the conservative press was making hay with it trying to win points against him and then included the fact that he sat down with this “transsexual.”

Ken Buck, Republican Senate candidate, even a Tea Party Republican at that, had given me a couple of interviews and he was really brilliant and wonderful and personable and was given a little flack for having given an interview to a ‘transsexual journalist,’ by the conservative press. That got used in the campaign against John Hickenlooper and Ken Buck and I became sort of an issue for a moment, a white hot moment. It didn’t really hurt either of those candidates but it did hurt me.

Well thank you for taking on that role. I think that you serve as an inspiration for others who might want to follow in your footsteps.

I think it’s other people that inspire me, rather than me inspiring them. When I hear from young LGBT kids, students, teens, sometimes parents — when they contact me and ask me for advice whether they want to be in television or not or they just site my work as evidence that they have so many more avenues than they thought, that’s inspiring to me. I don’t think of myself as doing any work that’s inspiring anyone — I’m just doing my work. I’m just being a journalist.

Was television a lifelong dream for you, or did you stumble into it later in life?

For me, television as a journalist was a second chapter. My early career in the entertainment field was in the theater and in dance and in New York and I had a very different career. It was fairly successful at the time. The challenge for me is that I can’t really cite any of those achievements because  that raises a whole other set of questions about oh that’s who you used to be, but that’s who you really are — that kind of thing. That’s something that happens to transgender people that doesn’t necessarily happen to gay and lesbian people. No one tries to undermine your current identity and cite it as something less-than-legitimate by referring to your previous identity as your ‘real’ name or your real work.

What have you learned since you came out as transgender as a journalist, and what advice would you give to someone who might be aspiring to be a journalist — whether they are transgender, straight or LGB?

It’s funny that you say ‘came out as transgender,’ because I didn’t ‘come out’ in that it was never a secret — but when it became an issue, when it became something that people focused on, that was a big surprise to me. I guess I was very naïve; I just didn’t think of it. The advice I would give is: if you want to be a journalist make sure that you learn your craft, you learn the ethics of journalism, you really hone those skills, especially writing.

Even if you’re working in television, writing is important, although the writing style can be very different. But the other thing is what’s exciting now is you don’t have to wait for someone to give you permission to be a journalist, you don’t have to wait for someone to give you permission to work on television or film no matter who you are because you can find equipment readily available and you can just make it and you can start publishing it. If you’re in J school you should still start publishing your own work even if it’s just for a tiny audience of your family so you have that diverse experience of doing the work and getting it out there and getting the feedback from people who read it or watch it or listen to it. I would say just roll up your sleeves and do the work.

Click here to find the full interview on Gay Ambition Podcast.

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