Eleanor Beardsley is a journalist and correspondent based in Paris who covers French society, politics, economics, culture, history, business affairs, sport, and gastronomy for National Public Radio.
[8] Before landing her current job and developing her career as NPR's Paris correspondent, Beardsley held various positions across an array of sectors.
She has remarked on her varied work experience, telling Columbia Metropolitan's Maxwell in 2018: "When I look at my rather unplanned life and all the different and disparate jobs I’ve had, the only constant through it all has been my interest in France and desire to speak French fluently one day.
[9] This gave her firsthand experience in politics that, along with her ability to speak French, led to a subsequent job as a producer at the Washington, D.C., bureau of Télévision française 1 (often shortened to TF1), which is France's oldest and most popular television network by market share.
She again began writing stories on a freelance basis and pitching her reports to news outlets that included The Christian Science Monitor, The World, and Marketplace.
By now, though, she had gained considerable experience and credibility as a reporter, owing in large part to her work in Kosovo, having already written front-page features in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.
Columnist Rod Dreher of The American Conservative and other commentators have remarked on how unusual it is to hear a Southern accent like Beardsley's coming from a national broadcaster.
[15] Ben Yagoda, a writer and professor of journalism and English at the University of Delaware, describes her pronunciation of words like law (a bit like "lawl") as "redolent of her native South Carolina".