Pop Quiz: Jason Leopold
Today’s interviewee is Jason Leopold, currently in the news for his cancelled book Off the Record, which heavily critiques journalists as well as his own past. He has written investigative pieces for publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, Time magazine, and the New York Times.
1. As a reporter, you’ve broken the news on several stories with your investigative writing. Do you have any advice for writers hoping to get a scoop?
It’s tedious work, but the place to find a scoop is by reading every bit of information contained within documents. For example, if you’re a business reporter assigned to a company or industry you should pore over the company’s past and present SEC filings. That takes time, though. You could be reading hundreds of pages of jargon but then you might stumble upon a footnote that shows how a company is either taking a charge against earnings for something that wasn’t disclosed to its shareholders or paying a CEO tens of millions of dollars in bonuses. Usually, these types of issues are not discussed by a company publicly because it could negatively affect their stock price. But a company is required to report it to the SEC so the company will include the information in their quarterly reports but it’s hidden and 99 percent of the time no one ever spots it. That’s why it’s crucial to read everything and not just skip it and get a statement or quote from a spokesman or CEO. The same goes with politics. Unless you’ve got some great sources that are going to feed you information you should be reading every budget bill and every piece of legislation that comes down the pike.
Many times, senators and congressman and even the president will put an item in a bill that may result in a tax increase, budget cut, etc., and no one will know about it. It’s your job as a reporter to spot that kind of stuff. Usually, that means reading five hundred pages of boring legislation but the payoff is you find something juicy that no one else knows about. Another good way to find a political scoop is to check out past stories on a particular topic. You may find that in the past a lawmaker was firmly against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and now, suddenly, he or she supports the issue. It may very well be the case that the lawmaker in question has accepted a campaign contribution from a company who will benefit from such legislation and changed his stance on the issue because he or she wants to be reelected. Those are the types of things you can find in past stories written by other reporters. But to really land a great scoop you’ve got to work your sources hard and no everything that is going on around your beat. That means pounding the pavement and questioning the local grocer, the cop, the librarian, anyone who may be in the know.
2. What’s been your favorite story to date that you’ve covered?
I have to say my favorite story is the phony Enron trading floor story. That’s a story that I stumbled upon while doing another Enron story. I was on the phone interviewing an Enron source about the layoffs and she asked me if I thought it was “strange” that in 1997 Enron asked secretaries to pose as traders and act as if they were busy buying and selling electricity and natural gas contracts. She told me this wild story about a ruse to fool Wall Street ratings agencies into believing that one of Enron’s subsidiaries was a bustling operation. When she told me that the phones these secretaries were using weren’t even plugged in I knew I was onto something HUGE! I told her NOT to tell any other reporter about what she told me because I sensed that if anyone else in the media got the tip I would be scooped. I started making calls to other Enron sources and inquired about the phony trading floor. They casually told me about the charade thinking it wasn’t a big deal. When I finally put the story together, a month or so later, it came out on the Dow Jones Newswires and was quickly picked up by the Wall Street Journal, and other newspapers and magazines. I really didn’t understand why it was considered such a big story but an editor told me it was because it said all you needed to know about Enron. It was the biggest story I’ve ever written and some colleagues told me it’s one of the most remembered stories about the Enron scandal. I don’t know about that.
3. Have there been other memoirs by reporters and journalists that you’ve enjoyed?
I read this book a couple of years back by Nathan McCall, a former reporter for the Washington Post called Makes Me Wanna Holler. It’s an amazing story about redemption. McCall served time in prison for armed robbery and while he was incarcerated he started writing, got interested in journalism, got his college degree and went on to become a top-notch reporter. It’s a story about a man who, against all odds, transformed himself from street thug to a good person to award winning newsman. It proves to me that everyone deserves a second chance.
4. Did the drugs you took while you were manic affect your writing style, or just the quality or output of your work?
Drugs did nothing for my writing. When I was snorting cocaine it made me pump out more stories and I worked harder, like 12 or 13 hours a day. But it also messed up my judgment and caused me to make stupid errors, like spelling a name wrong, in my news reports.
5. What tips would you give to a new reporter assigned to cover the White House on what to expect from a Bush press secretary?
First thing is don’t expect to get anything newsworthy from a White House press briefing and don’t expect that the press secretary is going to give you any kind of scoop. If anything, the press secretary is going to steer you away from writing anything that will cast the Bush administration in a negative light. He is going to make you think that your story is wrong. He’ll make you doubt the accuracy of your story. Be wary. The press secretary’s job is to spin, to make his boss, the president, look good no matter what and if that means lying to you well than that’s what he will do.
I know this from first hand experience. Lots of other reporters do too. The only thing you should expect of the press secretary is getting a last minute quote when you’re close to deadline and getting access to the White House, otherwise expect that he won’t give you anything important. His quote is there only to give balance to your story, to show that you tried to get the administration to comment on your report. And as far as covering the White House, go in there with the understanding that these people are not your friends, they’re not going to give you great information to report unless it benefits the administration. But you should still befriend them and you should show these people that you have an excellent understanding of the administration’s policies. You have to be skeptical and you have to have a thick skin because when the time comes for you to report something positive or negative about the administration you’re going to get skewered by the public, you’re competition at other newspapers or TV stations and the White House. That’s just the way it is today. But make sure your and your story will withstand scrutiny. If one little thing in a story is wrong it WILL destroy you and the veracity of the story. The White House views the press this way: You’re either with us or you’re against us.
Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our 
