Allam spoke to students, faculty, and visiting reporters at this year's annual McGill lecture about her experience as the 25-year-old Chief of the Baghdad Bureau for Knight Ridder--later to become McClatchy.
Allam worked alongside Grady graduate Tom Lassiter whom she called a "tenacious, fearless reporter." She held training sessions for her sixteen staff members on how to treat others punctured lungs, and checked for car bombs on a daily basis along with doing her job, according to Janice Hume in her introduction.
Allam stressed the importance of reporting the facts rather than the political spin in foreign reporting. She was thankful that her editors put more faith in her observations than in generals' briefs.
"This is the time for more eyes," Allam said, in reference to journalists' job as watchdogs.
Allam acknowledged that newspapers were cutting back their foreign reporting in order to cut costs, but she felt it was important to give papers a choice beyond the Associated Press. Foreign reporters have had to adapt and do several extra tasks including blogging and taking pictures with the photojournalist has been fired.
Allam wrote about humanity in her war zones, covering topics like the life of an Iraqi fashion model, the opening of a new opera house, and the amount of women with breast implants. Allam hopes to return to her bureau abroad after her time at Harvard, as long as that bureau still exists.
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