The slave fishing project was especially personal for Robin McDowell because it tied together the very countries she covered during her two-decade career in Southeast Asia. In Thailand, where for many poor men the brutal human trafficking trade began, she helped launch The Associated Press' first regional editing desk. In Cambodia and Myanmar, home to most of the victims, she reported on the difficulties young democracies face after emerging from military rule, civil strife and horrific rights abuses. And in Indonesia, where men were trapped for years, sometimes decades, she oversaw a busy bureau as it responded to everything from earthquakes and tsunamis to terrorist attacks. McDowell went to Washington University in St. Louis and, after a few years in book publishing, to Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
