By ZANDER KEAN and NENE KAMATE
CNJ216
Posted on Dec. 6, 2007

Michelle Kaufman vividly recalls the first time she stepped into a professional football locker room as a reporter. She looked around and found that she was the only woman inside.

“I sometimes feel like I’ve crashed a bachelor’s party,” she said.

Kaufman studied journalism at the University of Miami in the 1980s and got her first job as a sports reporter for the St. Petersburg Times at the age of 23.

She said it was difficult to gain the respect of the athletes that she covered, many of whom were her peers. “I wanted to fit in.  I wanted to be one of the guys. I didn’t want to rock the boat,” she said. “So for the most part I took a lot of crap that I didn’t have to take.”

When she was covering the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, one player told her that he wouldn’t give her an interview unless she unbuttoned one more button on her shirt. She did not give in.

“I was younger than most of the players I was covering. I felt out of place and I had a lot of bad locker room experiences with the players,” she said.

Kaufman said colleagues and editors also made it harder for her on the job because of her gender. ”Men have to prove that they know how to write, but they don’t have to prove that they know sports,” she said.

Kaufman struggled to show her audience that she was a capable sports reporter. She said she did not receive much encouragement at first.

“You’ll get mail sometimes from people, especially older men. Instead of just disagreeing with your opinion, they’ll say, ‘What are you doing writing sports anyway?’” she said. “I got one letter saying, ‘You never played in the NFL, you never donned the armor.’”

Kaufman’s husband, Dave Barry, who has contributed to the Miami Herald since 1983, said that she has developed a tenacity that gives her credibility in the field.  “If she’s writing a 20-inch story, she will gather enough information for a 200-inch story,” Barry said. “She wants to talk to everyone about everything.”

Barry also praised Kafuman’s thoroughness. “She’s obsessive, which is a good quality in a journalist. She doesn’t do anything halfway.”

That thoroughness, with time, has enabled her to earn respect from those she covers in the sports world.

“She’s always been fair. She doesn’t always write what I want, but she’s fair. She is a very accountable person,” Paul Dee, University of Miami athletic director, said.

She said that she has established her own identity in her circle of journalists but must sometimes concede to being known as “Dave Barry’s wife.”

“When we go to events and I’m there as Dave’s wife, people call me Mrs. Barry and we get invitations addressed to Dave and Michelle Barry,” she said.

Despite having to take a backseat to her husband in public, Kaufman said that being married to a journalist benefits her writing. “We’re each other’s best editors,” she said.

While some husbands wouldn’t like their wives traveling for weeks at a time, Barry understands her commitment to her reporting.

“When she goes away, it’s a chance for me to hang out with our daughter. Obviously I miss her, but she loves what she’s doing,” Barry said.

Kaufman and Barry have a 7-year-old daughter, Sophie. Kaufman said that being a sports reporter has let her spend time with her daughter when most other parents are working. Because sporting events often begin in the evening, she works different hours from other journalists.

“If I’m covering a game that starts at 7 p.m., it’s nice that I can chaperone her field trips and take her to soccer practice during the day,” she said.

Kaufman has brought her reporting skills into her family life. She writes a newsletter for her daughter’s traveling soccer team after every game.

“I always include every girl’s name in the newsletter so they can be proud of being in the paper.”