The first thing you'll hear from Rachel Wolfe upon meeting her is "You pronounce it Nyew Ah Lee-ans, ya'all . . ."
For she is a child of the South, born and bred and matriculated south of the Mason Dixon Line. Her parents dropped her off at a Winn-Dixie as a six-year-old child and left her to fend for herself for the next twenty years. She did just fine -- or, rather, 'jest fie-en.'
She peddled hush puppies to work her way through the Meddling Journalism School of Upper Sandusky, Ohio, where she received a Phi Beta Kapa bottle opener for her brilliant efforts on the school newspaper. She wrote a series of searing exposes on why the Dean of the school was not really named Dean at all, but Jerald. This blew the whole rotten academic structure sky high.
On her crawfish farm in Baton Down the Hatches, Louisiana, she likes to play badminton with live peacocks. In addition to her newspaper work, she is vice chairperson of the Milburn Drysdale Window Putty Association, which provides chaise longues to deserving young couch potatoes.
At the Wall Street Journal she is celebrated for her incisive bedside manner. She will sit with a sick story for days on end, nursing it back to relevance with a combination of liver bitters and endless reruns of Ernest Saves Christmas.
She has received so many awards in the past few years that she now has an active eBay business selling them as paper weights.
Her advice to young journalists just starting out is: "A good editor will never stab you in the back -- only in the front!"
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