Eleanor Beardsley
Eleanor Beardsley is a correspondent based in Paris covering French society, politics, economics, culture and gastronomy for National Public Radio. She has been reporting for NPR from France since 2004. Early life. Beardsley was raised in Columbia, South Carolina, where her father was a history professor at the University of South Carolina. She learned French by reading the "Asterix" comic books in their original language. Commentators including Rod Dreher have remarked on how unusual it is to hear a Southern accent like Beardsley's coming from a national broadcaster. Ben Yagoda describes her pronunciation of "lawl" (for law ) as "redolent of her native South Carolina." She has a B.A. in French from Furman University. Career. Beardsley worked on Senator Strom Thurmond's staff early in her career. In 2003 she was a spokesperson for the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. Beardsley reported from Kosovo during the Kosovo War. She has covered the Arab Spring in Tunisia and presidential elections in France. She also covered the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015. As of February 2022, Beardsley, in her capacity as a National Public Radio correspondent, has regularly reported on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine  (a continuation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in February 2014 with Russia's illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula) from on the ground inside Ukraine.