20 Under 40 - 2000 Profile: Stephanie Simon

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 2000

Talking to Stephanie Simon is like talking to Forest Gump. Just like Hollywood's ubiquitous Mr. Gump, the national reporter for the Los Angeles Times seemingly has been everywhere and seen everything.

With numerous reporting internships to her name and fluency in Russian, she graduated from Yale University and headed for Moscow to work. She taught English for a year and a half before landing a similar internship in the Moscow bureau of the Times. Sure enough, she was there, filing stories and lining up to buy black-market eggs for her landlady as the Soviet Union disintegrated.

Back in Los Angeles, Simon reported in Ventura County, where the O.J. Simpson trials were among her assignments. She also produced a quickie book on the criminal trial for the newspaper. Another assignment: the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.

When the St. Louis Post-Dispatch hired her political-cartoonist husband John Sherffius, she went with him. She now works out of her home as one of two Midwest correspondents; the other, Eric Slater, is based in Chicago. The two cover 13 states and, unless there is breaking news, they pursue stories based on their individual interests rather than a geographic split.

Why would Los Angeles Times readers care? "We have bureaus all over the country, in Denver, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., and other places. Our job is to explain the rest of the country to California," Simon says.

In October, she returned to work after taking leave for the birth of her second child. She regularly combs 20 newspapers daily for potential story ideas as she pedals away on her exercise bike. "I usually work on several stories at once."

Education: 1991, B.A., English, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Career: 1987-88, reporter intern, The Middlesex (N.J.) News; 1989, reporter intern, The Boston Globe; 1990, reporter intern, Chicago Tribune; 1991, reporter intern, The Wall Street Journal. 1992-present, reporter intern; Moscow bureau; staff writer, Ventura County edition; general-assignment reporter; civil-courts reporter; roving state reporter; national correspondent, Midwest bureau, Los Angeles Times.
Personal: Age, 30. Born, Bethesda, Md. Married, husband John Sherffius, one daughter, one son.
Diversions: "Reading to and playing with my kids," working out, and developing variations on vegetarian dishes.
Connections: c/o Los Angeles Times, 202 W. First St., Los Angeles, Calif. 90012. E-mail, stephanie.simon@latimes.com; phone, (636) 386-3974; fax, (636) 527-8981.