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The bikini affair isn't the only thing I remember about Jo Becker, but it is the first thing.
Becker and Mike Elrick covered the State House for the Monitor in 1996, when, for the first time in history, New Hampshire elected a woman to be governor.
Becker and Elrick set out to profile Jeanne Shaheen before her inauguration. While reporting the story, Becker asked Billy Shaheen, the soon-to-be first first husband, to share family photos of his wife. He offered her a bunch of snapshots. One of them pictured Jeanne Shaheen in a bikini.
The next day the photo was on my desk, and Becker, Elrick and the local editors gathered round to help decide whether we should publish it.
Such enterprise has been a hallmark of Becker's illustrious career. Her ambition has carried her to three of the country's great metropolitan papers, including the New York Times, where she is an investigative reporter. It also helped her win the Pulitzer Prize.
Becker will return to Concord tomorrow to speak and answer questions about her new book, Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality. The book tells the story of the court fight against Proposition 8, the California anti-gay marriage referendum.
Becker spent nearly three years at the Monitor and regularly won statewide and regional reporting prizes.
At the St. Petersburg Times, her reporting on lethal prison conditions and other issues brought her more awards. At the Washington Post, she shared a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for a probing profile of Vice President Dick Cheney. She led the New York Times investigative team's coverage of the Penn State sex abuse scandal.