How did you get into journalism?
Both my parents paid a lot of attention to the news. I also loved reading books, and I figured out that I wanted to be a writer pretty early. But I knew that for the few novelists that are very wealthy, there are a lot that are struggling, and I wanted more of a day-to-day existence, to make a living as a writer. So I thought about being a journalist.
How do you do what you do? Describe your process.
Every week is different--sometimes you'll have a piece you've been working on for weeks and sometimes a piece will just explode. You never know. Sometimes you pitch a story that you are interested in doing to an editor, and other times an editor comes to you and asks: "Will you do this?" When you finish writing a story, it disappears for a little bit, then comes back to you after two rounds of editing. You get to give input on the story before the final round. I do my own reporting, too, which is a lot of researching, calling sources, having interviews.
How many people are involved in what you do?
It varies. Sometimes you are doing a story on your own with the editing team and sometimes it's a big project with many different reporters feeding things to writers.
What do you like most or dislike most about your work?
I love the license to be curious and even nosy and to spend your life thinking of smart ways to tell a story. Everybody has things that they dislike about their specific job, but there is nothing about the business that I dislike.
What was high school like? Were you into journalism?
I worked on the student newspaper and picked a college--Stanford--that had a good journalism program.
Did your college major relate to your work?
I think you can look at college as a way to bring some other sort of expertise to your writing. So if you want to do science journalism, get a bio degree, or if you want to do design journalism, get an architecture degree. I had these very romantic ideas of covering wars and figured that International Relations was a great degree to have, so that's what I got. It's funny because my career has taken a decidedly domestic slant.
I think there is a place for journalism programs. But journalism is so much a repetitive skill--getting better at writing questions, writing stories, and writing quickly--that you learn on the job more than in a journalism class.
Tell us about your article on Al Gore for salon.com.
I did a story at the very end of the U.S. presidential campaign about Al Gore and the grumbling that was going on in the black community. It had its genesis in a lot of stuff I was hearing from African-Americans associated with the campaign when I was covering the election for Time. They weren't really happy with the way the campaign was approaching the black community.
Read the article: "O brother, where art thou?"
