Nebraska Public Media: Nebraska Stories: “Seven Years a Correspondent,” (Barney McCoy), May 18, 2023

Watch the mini-documentary or listen to the radio teaser to Barney McCoy’s “Seven Years a Correspondent,” the story of Beverly Deepe Keever, the US woman reporter who arrived the earliest and stayed the longest during the war in Vietnam. (I appear briefly a couple of times.) Aired May 18.

Barney McCoy reported and produced “Seven Years a Correspondent,” as 10-minute mini-documentary about the Vietnam reporting of Beverly Deepe. The piece first aired on Nebraska Public Media at 8pm  Thursday, May 18, 2023. Deepe, later Beverly Deepe Keever, stayed in Vietnam during the conflict the longest of any American correspondent Born in Hebron, Nebraska, she graduated from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1957 with a double major in journalism and political science, worked in Nebraska and then did the masters program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Later, she earned her doctorate and taught journalism in Hawaii.

Deepe in Vietnam

Deepe Kneever today

In February 1962, at twenty-six, a post-graduation trip around the world took her to Saigon. She stayed seven years. She worked as a freelancer throughout, except for the brief period during which the New York Herald Tribune named her its correspondent. Alas, this was not long before the paper went out of business in 1966. Deepe’s stories also appeared on the AP wire, and other publications, including The Christian Science Monitor, which nominated her for a Pulitzer Prize for her story on the Battle of Khe Sahn.

Fragment of a letter Deepe wrote not long after her arrival in Vietnam, courtesy of Barney McCoy

Deepe appears briefly in Undaunted, which focuses on other correspondents of the period, including Frankie FitzGerald, Gloria Emerson, Elizabeth Becker, and Sylvana Foa. I provided some general commentary for McCoy’s piece.

https://video.nebraskapublicmedia.org/livestream/