Ok, so maybe he hasn’t gotten his Neptune dateline yet, but New Yorker media writer Ken Auletta has covered pretty much every other corner of the media galaxy. His recent profile of Lou Dobbs, for example, pegged the outspoken anchor’s yearly compensation at $6 million — a figure that has been the subject of guesswork for years — and Auletta says he triple-sourced it through means he won’t disclose.

From today’s Auletta interview:

If you weren’t writing about media, what would you be doing?
Visiting some other planet as a journalist.

How do you choose your subjects?
I consult a medium.

What kind of story do you find most satisfying?
Profiles of complex people through whom you can tell a larger story.