Journalist Frank Bruni shares life, travels

Frank Bruni, a 1986 graduate of UNC, former Morehead Scholar and New York Times Magazine staff writer, will be speaking about his “An Extraordinary Journalistic Adventure” at 4 p.m. today.

He has written three books, including his memoir, “Born Round.”

Bruni has covered topics ranging from presidential races to the Vatican.

He will also speak at “The Mind-Body Solution: Women’s Mental Health and Wellness Conference” on Saturday at noon about his fight against eating disorders.

DTH: How did you get from Chapel Hill to where you are today?

Frank Bruni: Well, I had a fairly unremarkable, normal past. I decided at Chapel Hill that I’d like to try my hand at journalism.

I started with smaller jobs and traded them for bigger jobs. After I left Chapel Hill, I took a year off. During that year I did a lot of freelance work and traveling. Then I went to graduate school at Columbia University.

Then I kept trading jobs.

I started out at the New York Post. I worked there for a year and a half, then I went to the Detroit Free Press, where I worked for 5 years and did a more variety of things. I covered the first Persian Gulf War for them.

All that work got the attention from larger news organizations and the Times offered me a job in 1995, and I’ve been with them ever since. I was the Rome Euro Chief for two years and now I’m a restaurant critic.

DTH: What was it like to cover the Vatican?

FB: The Vatican is an odd institution to cover because it’s not really a publicly accountable institution in the way that the government is.

So it’s a very closed society, and yet there are many Catholics worldwide that want to know what’s going on there.

So you keep an eye on the pope, you report on what he says. When I was there, it was still Pope John Paul II — he was very old, very frail.

So a lot of covering the Vatican at the time was chronicling his health, and how close he seemed to be to not being able to be pope anymore.

DTH: What was your favorite restaurant when you were here?

FB: My favorite restaurant when I was there, where I hung out a lot — I don’t know if it’s even still there anymore — there was a vegetarian restaurant called Pyewacket.

It was the first place I tried hummus and a whisky sour, which for a while was a drink I liked a lot.

DTH: What message will you be sharing with students?

FB: When I talk to the eating disorder conference, two messages I want to get across are A, there are a great many men out there in addition to women that struggle with body image and food compulsions, and in our society I think we mostly hear women’s struggles, but I think there are a lot of men out there that go through similar experiences.

Also, my story is a very unusual one because I went from being really tormented by food my entire life to someone who made it my professional focus for five-and-a-half years.

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.