Though New Yorker writer Tad Friend files the “Letter from California” from Brooklyn Heights, it is his gift for being able to knowingly capture a time and place that led editor David Remnick to tap him for the job in 2002. From San Quentin’s Death Row and televised car chases in Los Angeles to suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge and the inner workings at William Morris, Friend gets in there in a way that makes you think, “How did he do that?”

Friend grew up in Buffalo, NY and Swarthmore, PA (his father was the president of the college), went to Harvard and got a job at Steve Brill’s The American Lawyer out of school. Next came stints at Spy, Esquire, Vogue, New York, and Outside, before landing at The New Yorker in 1998.

One of Friend’s most resonant pieces for The New Yorker was “The Playhouse,” an intimate look at his mother, Elizabeth Pierson Friend. Out of that came the idea to write a book for Little, Brown on his family and WASPs, with a focus on the themes of ambivalence and dissatisfaction. Now Friend is in the middle of his year-long book leave, which gives him more time with his 18-month-old twins and for pursuing his plans for world domination.

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Name: Tad Friend
Position: Staff writer
Publication: The New Yorker
Education: “Some”
Hometown: Buffalo, New York
First job: Reporter, The American Lawyer
Previous three jobs: Contributing editor to Outside; editor-at-large at New York; contributing editor to Esquire
Birthdate: September 25, 1962
Marital status: Married, two children.
Favorite TV show: American Idol
Last book read: The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz
Most interesting media story right now: Coverage of the Times‘ story on John McCain and the lobbyist
First section of your Sunday paper: A1
Guilty pleasure: The Wire

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What’s your typical day like?
It varies a lot, depending on whether I’m reporting or writing. I cover California for the magazine, so if I’m out there reporting, I’ll spend about 10 hours a day reporting, either hanging around with the person I’m writing about or driving around to conduct interviews. For a longer, 8- to 10,000-word story, I usually fly out from Brooklyn two or three times; the last piece I did, about executions at San Quentin prison, I went out three times across the course of nine months. The writing part has changed since my wife and I had twins 18 months ago. I used to just write monotonously all day and night long for 10 days in a row and then turn something in. Now there’s a lot more time where I have to be — and am happy to be — taking care of our kids, so it’s harder to find the uninterrupted swaths of time I need to make real headway. Some people write by polishing each sentence as they go, like a jeweler. I tend to spend lots of time painstakingly making an outline that I realize, a dozen paragraphs in, makes no sense, and then I put my head down and type nouns and verbs and quotes in a kind of grumpy blur, hammering out an extremely rough, totally un-publishable draft that I then go over and over and over before I hand it in.

Do you tape interviews or take notes?
I carry a recorder with me, always, but I mostly take notes, particularly if I’m spending days and days with someone. I tape if I’m only going to be seeing someone once or twice, or when a number of people are talking at once — a meeting, for instance — or if someone has an idiosyncratic vernacular.

How do you write that fast?
If someone says a number of interesting things in a row, and I’m falling behind, I’ll say something like, “I’m sorry, but your brain is faster than my hand. Can you hold on a second while I catch up?” But most of the time it’s not a problem, because not everything people tell you is a candidate for inclusion in the piece, and you start writing only during the periods when the “this is interesting” bell is ringing in your head.

How many people do you typically interview for a profile?
For a long piece, I probably have 60 to 100 conversations.

Are you serious? Wow. And a lot of that is just background — people you’re not even going to quote?
Yeah, a lot of it. I over-report so that I feel confident, when I sit down to write, that I know what I’m talking about. That confidence may be misplaced, of course, but I need to feel it. We have a bit of a luxury at The New Yorker in that you can take some time — two to three months — with certain kinds of stories and try to be authoritative.

How do you figure out who to talk to?
At the end of an interview, I always say, “Who else should I talk to?” And then they tell you two people and then those people tell you two people, and at a certain point everyone’s telling you the same people you’ve already talked to and you think, “OK, I’ve kind of got it.” Or everyone’s telling you things you already know, which is comforting. You could probably write a profile that’s three-quarters as good about two weeks in, but I like the feeling of knowing more, of giving myself more choices and collecting the little nuance-y details that encourage the reader to relax and trust you as a guide and companion. There is also the possibility that I’m just neurotic.

And I imagine probably some of the interviews you do are probably a complete wash — you talk to some people and they really don’t give you anything interesting.
When I was spending time at San Quentin, I talked to a number of correctional officers who weren’t that helpful because they either didn’t want to be that helpful or didn’t know how to be. They’re trained in their job not to talk to anyone, really, particularly to the inmates — if they reveal any personal details to inmates, it’s an offense called “overfamiliarity.” So I’d have to talk to them for hours before they’d give you much beyond, “Officer Johnson, C block, Sir!”

That leads me to another question, which is what happens when you’re talking with someone who’s either boring or rambling or evasive — do you have certain tricks you use to get them to open up, or is it just by nature of hanging in there?
I sure hope that person isn’t a profile subject, because there would have to be an incredibly compelling, Jack-Bauer-lives-are-at-stake reason to spend all that time with someone who is deeply boring. I try not to profile someone who I’m going to be bored by because that would be deadly for me and probably not fair to them because I wouldn’t be doing my best to figure them out. And it wouldn’t be any picnic for the reader, either.

For a secondary source, you can always use what seems to me the classic way of shutting down an interview: “Is there anything else I should have asked you?” Usually people say no because they can’t think of anything; they’re not used to being asked to think like an interviewer, suddenly. And then you’re done. But it’s also a good question to ask at the end of a useful interview, because sometimes people will say, “Well, actually we never talked about Bob’s childhood and how he reacted to coming down with polio,” which you never knew about. So it works both ways.

Getting past the guardians [of celebrities] is part of the challenge, and once you do that you can start to tell a real story about what someone actually does.

Do you feel that you’re a good interviewer?
Um, I do, actually, though it feels unseemly to say so. Mostly, being a good interviewer consists of keeping your mouth shut and really paying attention to what people are saying, while asking an occasional clarifying question. It’s the same thing therapists do, not to compare journalists to therapists lest I get a stern letter from Janet Malcolm.

More theoretically, in a longer profile, the interview process with a subject often changes about halfway through the reporting. I think of it as a pivot point. In the first half, people tell you what they want to tell you about their lives: the authorized, resume version. And it’s not that you’re sitting there waiting to go, “Gotcha!” or expose them as a fraud, but the truth is that most of our friends, let alone our enemies, don’t see us the way we see ourselves. So you talk to a lot of other people around the subject and they tell you things that they don’t necessarily know they’re not supposed to tell you, or just stories and insights they have. And then when you go back to the subject and discuss some of those things — well, the pivot comes when the person you’re writing about realizes, not always consciously, that you know a lot more about them then they thought you were going to know. And then they begin saying, “What Larry told you only makes sense if you understand these following three things,” and suddenly they begin to enlist you, trying to tell you the full backdrop so you’ll have the context necessary to understand why they did what they did. So they often go from not wanting to tell you too much to wanting you to know everything.

What’s the pitching or assigning process at like at The New Yorker — do you come to them with ideas or they assign them?
I would say of the last 10 long stories I’ve done, probably nine of them have been my ideas. And I think most writers will tell you they’re happier working on a story that’s their own idea because they’re passionate about it and convinced it’s going to work — and because they’re not trying to simply service someone else’s concept, one that the reporting may not bear out. The New Yorker editors are wide-ranging and culturally omnivorous and they have lots of very good ideas, but for me it seems to work out well to pursue my own hobbyhorses. Of course, I have to convince the editors of the value of my story idea before I start to work.

When you’re dealing with the entertainment industry, because you cover that a lot, I would imagine the subjects are notoriously image-focused and media-savvy. Can you tell me if you’ve had a really challenging interview — is it hard to get people to open up and be real?
Behind-the-scenes entertainment stories often take much more time than any other kind of story because the people you need to speak to are very busy, usually have big egos, and almost always erect sizeable barriers to entry — if you want two minutes with the guy who played Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter you have to go through his publicist and then you’ve got to send a fax or an email saying why you want to talk to them, and the publicist may or may not get back to you three weeks later. It’s a very complicated, annoying, time-consuming process, and it helps to explain why many of the stories written about the entertainment industry are fairly puffy, or else conversely are just shock video of Britney Spears yelling at the cops. Getting past the guardians is part of the challenge of it, and once you do that you can start to tell a real story about what someone actually does — as opposed to a celebrity “profile” that consists of six questions over coffee at Peet’s.

As to a really hard interview: I did a piece a couple years ago about an agent at William Morris. He was great, but I also had a number of conversations with the powerful and cagey former agent Mike Ovitz. There was a lot of slaloming on and off the record because he was very knowing about how it all works and he kept saying he just wanted to talk to me so I would be smarter, which is a big Hollywood thing you hear, you know, “I’ll talk to you out of the goodness of my heart, but I make it a policy not to be on the record,” which is sometimes more or less true but often means, “I want to find out what you know and how I’m going to look, and then steer you in a direction that will be useful to me.” So this was all followed by at least four subsequent conversations in which I tried to pull him back on the record on certain points, which he finally agreed to — and then he would call me from the ski slope or late at night when I was trying to have dinner with my wife seeking to take his remarks back off the record, and I would end up saying, “Mike, Mike, you’re being crazy — Mike, do you not have a life? Would you like me to try to find someone for you to talk to about some of these issues?” Because we both kind of saw the humor of it even as we were playing out this bafflingly intense, low-stakes chess game.

And speaking of Britney Spears, what’s your take on the current media culture, specifically entertainment coverage, like all the video and the paparazzi and insane intrusiveness of it all?
It makes my job harder because people in the entertainment industry feel routinely violated by the press — by a wing of the press that I don’t happen to associate myself with — but nonetheless by the press. A half-century ago, when Lillian Ross wrote a great piece for The New Yorker about the making of The Red Badge of Courage, directed by John Huston, my sense is she was able to go out to Hollywood, tell them what she wanted to do, and start doing it. That is, she could hang around endlessly, spend all this time with the stars, the director, the producers, and the studio executives and no one was worried about it — indeed, they were flattered by the attention. Because no one had really been doing that before, no one thought it was that interesting. And so she could do that and write a wonderful piece that became the book Picture and there were no publicists constantly holding her hand, and no one was worried about her taking a cell phone video of John Huston drunk that would end up on TMZ.

Writer Vanessa Grigoriadis has said that since you wrote that Dave Wirtschafter [president of William Morris Agency] profile she’s gotten resistance when she tries to do Hollywood stories because people are a lot more wary. When you were doing that story, did you have any idea it would be controversial?
It seems to be there’s always a little two-day kerfuffle when a Hollywood piece comes out, so I thought it would just be that. And I hoped readers would like the piece, because I was proud of it. I was surprised the reaction got as big as it did, simply because Dave committed the sin of being candid about the box-office power of some of the stars who were represented by William Morris — information that everyone in Los Angeles knew, and that the stars themselves knew, though they may not have wanted to hear it to their faces. I thought it was interesting how divergent the reactions were. People who were not in LA who read the piece usually told me something like, “Dave Wirtschafter is a great agent. I’d love to have him represent me.” People in the entertainment industry in LA who read it said, “I can’t believe Dave would talk to a reporter.”

I know people at William Morris urged Dave to do the classic thing and blame the reporter, that is, me, saying that he was misquoted or this and that conversation was off the record, because a couple of clients ultimately did leave William Morris — partly because other agencies made it their business to wave the red flag in front of the bull and try to cherry-pick clients [and] inflame the situation, which is what agencies do every day, anyway. And Dave said, “No, I said all that stuff. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I totally did that,” which I thought was a stand-up, menschy thing of him to do. As far as consequences, when I’ve gone back to Hollywood since then, people sometimes joke about it, saying “Why should I talk to you?” But I think I have a reputation for being fair and not screwing people over, and these things do eventually blow over. Vanessa Grigoriadis seems to still be working, and so am I.

To what extent do you keep in touch with subjects or sources — do you have relationships with them? And I’m not even talking about notable people, just regular people you’ve covered.
Yeah, quite often we stay in touch. I go back to people, particularly sources who I think are knowledgeable, and some of them in the entertainment industry have been helpful on a number of different stories. As far as subjects of profiles, I’m not friends with any of them, but I’ve certainly stayed in touch with some of them. The ones who felt like the story was not entirely positive may be less inclined to stay in touch.

Do you hear from them in those instances — do you get a call or a nasty email?
I’ve never gotten a really nasty call or a really nasty email from someone because I believe in no surprises. I feel like it’s dishonest to have spent all this time with someone and write something where they have no idea you were going to say X or mention Y. If there’s some bombshell that someone else told me about the subject, it’s my duty to check it out with the subject to get his or her response, which alerts them that it’s going to be in the piece. And I make sure they know about the difficult stuff, both because of the no-surprises rule and because I want and need to get their response to it. And we also have a very thoroughgoing fact-checking process that goes over everything for the third or fourth time. So I think people can read about themselves and feel like there’s more emphasis on X than they would have hoped or even than they personally may feel is justified, but I’ve never had anyone complain about being totally submarined.

Since you’ve been on book leave, have there been stories you’ve seen or news developments you really wish you could have tackled, that you were sorry you missed out on?
Since I’ve been on book leave, I’ve actually kind of kept my head down. I was relieved not to have had to write about the writers strike because I couldn’t figure out a way to make that interesting: “What’s it like being a writer who now has all this time to check email, here at Starbucks?” When I’m normally working, I’m reading a lot of papers online, the various Bees, Sacramento and Fresno, and the Chronicle and the LA Times and a couple other California sources, so I have a little more input tickling me and making me wonder about stuff, but I’ve actually not been doing that since I’ve been on leave.

What’s your typical day like in terms of media consumption?
The papers I mentioned earlier. I read The New York Times — in an actual papyrus version. I guess I check out Romenesko like everyone else. I watch Jon Stewart sometimes, because it’s the only filter through which I can stand to see video of George Bush.

You’re an old pro, but do you still have embarrassing moments — I was going to say when your recorder doesn’t work, although you take notes — or getting someone’s name wrong during an interview?
I was writing a feature about police pursuits in Los Angeles and how people watch them on TV. I was talking to a head of a local news channel and he said, “You should talk to so-and-so” — he’s the guy who came up with idea for America’s Most Wanted. And he was reading from his Rolodex, and he said, “Linder Michael — call him.” And so I called the number and asked for Linder Michael, and kept calling him Linder when we met, and when he gave me his card at the end of the interview I realized that his name was Michael Linder. In other words, “Linder, comma, Michael.” I guess he thought it was some stuffy last-name-only thing I did, but he was very nice about it.

You’re married to New York Times journalist Amanda Hesser — do you read each other’s work, bounce ideas off each other? [Editor’s note: Hesser left the Times after this interview was conducted.]
We do. It’s all part of our plan for world domination.

How’s that coming?
Not as well as we would have hoped. We haven’t really expanded our empire beyond Brooklyn Heights. But, yeah, we read each other’s stuff before anyone else does, and it’s very helpful to me to have her read a draft and tell me, “I don’t understand what’s going on in this part,” or “you could cut this whole section that you worked on for so long.” I think it’s fortunate that while we work in the same general field, we’re not in the same area. She’s on book leave now too, but when she’s at the Times, she writes many shorter things and I write fewer longer things. And she writes about food and I don’t. So we’re not direct competitors, and there’s none of that “Get out of my way” feeling of striving for priority, which would probably be deadly.

Among journalists, writers and bloggers, who do you admire?
In the department of ass-covering-but-genuine log-rolling, I like the work of a lot of my colleagues at The New Yorker. Mark Leibovich at the Times is funny and deft. Ditto Jennifer Steinhauer, who actually set up Amanda and me on our first date. In Hollywood, I think Lynn Hirschberg can be very knowing about the internal forces that an actor has to struggle with. Online, Nikki Finke has been very good on the writers strike. And Michael Cieply has been a real addition to the Times Hollywood coverage. But lately I’ve been reading a lot of books, with particular admiration for writers such as J. Anthony Lukas and Rian Malan who can gracefully weave together a complex narrative.

Do you rely on any certain tools in your work? I know people are really passionate about their chair or their notebook.
I’m weirdly addicted to my blue medium-point Paper Mate pens. Not so much for their line as for the fact that I like to chew them. It would be great if they gave me an endorsement deal and sent them over by the crate, since I chew them out of usefulness pretty quickly. I’m not doing it in public and grossing people out, but when I’m writing, that’s my little tic or oral need, chewing pens to ribbons. I have a sofa in my home office where I write with a laptop on my lap while listening to bad 70s music. Having “Chevy Van” or “Afternoon Delight” blaring in my ears as I write really helps because I’ve heard them so many times, I don’t really hear them, but they keep the bad things out of my head.

That’s interesting because a lot of people need complete quiet.
There’s two camps of people: There’s the fire-watcher-on-a-mountain-top camp and the drowner-outers. And I’m firmly with the drowner-outers.

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Julie Haire is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.

It may have slipped Jonathan Alter’s mind to go to law school or enter the public service, but this Newsweek veteran didn’t exactly stumble into journalism. As a young boy, Alter graced his neighbors with the editorial enthusiasm of his very own “little newspaper” — acting as the sole reporter, writer, and oftentimes main subject.

Now, nearly 30 years after graduating from Harvard University, Alter boasts a resume that includes The Washington Monthly, NBC, author, and senior editor and columnist at Newsweek. This year marks his seventh round of election coverage, 25 years at Newsweek, and surpassing 50 covers at the news magazine.

Whether through his weekly column, posting online, appearing on NPR, or frequenting NBC as a talking head, Alter says he aims to help his audience think outside the box. We chatted with this seasoned journalist about the 2008 election, what it’s like to break news, the “YouTube factor,” and how to posture yourself for success in the business.

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Name: Jonathan Alter
Position: Senior editor and columnist, Newsweek; Analyst and contributing correspondent, NBC News.
Resume: The Washington Monthly, 1981-1983. Newsweek, 1983-present. Author, The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope.
Birthday: October 6, 1957
Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
Education: Harvard University
Marital status: Married to Emily Lazar. Three children: Charlotte, 18; Tommy, 16; and Molly, 14
First section of Sunday Times: Week in Review
Favorite TV show: The Colbert Report
Last books read: Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America, by Donna Foote
Guilty pleasure: Walnut chocolate cookies

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Describe your start in journalism. What did you want to do initially and why?
I was interested in journalism as a kid. I used to make up a little newspaper about what was going on the neighborhood and distribute it. Usually I was the only reporter and the primary subject of the story. I remember one headline was “John loses baseballs one summer.” In high school, I worked for the school paper and then I worked for the Harvard Crimson. After I got out of college, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. I thought about public service and law school, but that all slipped my mind. I ended up traveling, landed in Washington, and then started to do freelance for various newspapers and magazines. By that time I had fallen in love with The Washington Monthly and, after considerable effort, I was reluctantly hired in 1981. I did everything from taking the garbage out to writing cover stories. By the time I started there, I had appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic and a couple of other magazines, so I had a fairly good file of pieces going. About four years after I had graduated from college, I was hired by Newsweek and I’ve been there ever since — for 25 years.

Given the media landscape these days, what’s important for a journalist starting out who wants to follow a similar path to yours?
It’s not a one-size-fits-all business. I think the Internet opens up a lot of career opportunities for people but I do think that writing for a lot of different publications is a good way to put together the clips you need to get hired. I really believe that you only need about five to 10 really good clips, it’s not like you need to have 40 articles. You just need some that show you have strengths in different areas. This is a merit-based business, so what you’ve written tells a lot. If you can write stories and tell them in a thoughtful way, then there’s going to be a place for you.

You joined Newsweek as an associate editor after being an editor at The Washington Monthly. What was it like moving from a monthly to a weekly?
It was an interesting jump. I was 25 years old and I was hired in Katharine Grahams’ office in Washington. It was steady for me at the time. A weekly was ironically less stressful because there were about a hundred times as many people who worked at Newsweek than worked at The Washington Monthly.

You recently celebrated your 25th anniversary with Newsweek. What has kept you there for so long?
I would say it’s the people and the company. Newsweek has always been open to my ideas and interests. Also, starting in the 1980s, the editors realized that it was helpful to Newsweek to have people from the magazine appear on television. So I’ve been able to use Newsweek as a wonderful base for a wide-ranging career in journalism. Basically, I do online, television, magazines, radio, and book writing. Another reason I’ve been able to stay here so long is that news magazines allow you to meld reporting and analysis in a way that’s proven to be very appealing to me over the years.

I think bloggers are answerable to other bloggers and to their readers. My belief is that the age of no accountability is over.

I come from the school of journalism where you go out and do your reporting and collect facts, and then you owe it to your readers to provide some kind of context and even to give them some ways of thinking that maybe hadn’t occurred to them before. I don’t think I would’ve been able to stay at a newspaper this long, and I don’t think I would’ve been able to stay within the confines of television storytelling for this long. News magazines basically give you a lot of freedom in the way that you cover the world.

As you said, you’ve worked within multiple mediums — print, television, radio, and the Web. Do certain mediums require you to rely more on particular skills than others?

I signed with NBC News in 1996 and I’ve been with them for nearly 12 years on a part-time basis. When it came to producing two-minute television pieces, I was good at certain parts, like script-writing, and not so good at other parts, like stand-ups. Now I do more of the talking head end of the business, for which there’s a large appetite. That transition hasn’t been that difficult.

In the 1980s, you were Newsweek‘s media critic and were among the first in the mainstream media to hold news organizations accountable for their coverage. That role is now filled by blogs. What has the emergence of the blogosphere meant for publications like Newsweek?

When I started covering the media in 1984, there were very few media critics in the United States. At one point, I was named one of the top ten media critics in America and my parents were very pleased — but I had to tell them that there were only ten media critics in America. So the honor wasn’t tremendously meaningful because that aspect of the business was tremendously underdeveloped. The media just basically wasn’t held accountable. Today, the blogosphere does a good job of holding the media accountable for its mistakes and its misinterpretations. This means that there’s one less thing for Time and Newsweek to have to do, which is fine because we can always use the space for something else. But yes, there was a time when news organizations didn’t have to answer to anybody. And I thought that was wrong. So I wrote a lot of pieces that don’t actually look a lot different than blog entries today. I’m actually going to have a collection of my media columns put together sometime later this year, going back 20 years. I also put out another paperback recently, actually.

That’s the book called Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, right?
Yeah, it’s going to be a movie.

Wasn’t that the book Kurt Vonnegut said was like crack-cocaine for his generation?
Yeah, isn’t that a great quote? He called me up a month before he died and invited me out for dinner. The only agenda was to talk about Roosevelt. I really had a great time with him.

Back to blogosphere, how is Newsweek keeping pace with the demand for online content?
I think we’re doing well. Like I said, just a few minutes ago I posted a story on Newsweek.com about how some Democrat is urging Hillary Clinton to run for governor of New York when this presidential thing ends. It gives me a chance to put things out there without waiting until the following week. For the first 15 years that I worked at Newsweek, we didn’t have an online presence so there wasn’t the opportunity to do that. It also means more work for everybody. We have many fewer employees than we used to and we also do more work. I think that’s something that’s shared across the business right now. People are working harder. The beast is always hungry.

At a recent New York University media event, you and the other panelists addressed the issue of credentialing and accountability. How does that factor into the blogosphere?
I think bloggers are answerable to other bloggers and to their readers. My belief is that the age of no accountability is over. I think the lack of credentialing is a good thing — I’m an anti-credentialist. Credentialing has run amok in America. In many instances, credentials are just barriers to entry and they’re ways for people who are already in a particular craft or profession to keep other people out. I think it’s insane that Bill Gates can’t go into a public school in the United States and teach a computer science class because he hasn’t got some Mickey Mouse teacher’s credential. I think it’s wrong that I can’t teach journalism in a school. You should be judged on what you can do and what you know, not by whether you have a piece of sheepskin.

It used to be that when something didn’t make the evening news, it didn’t happen. Now when something doesn’t really make it on YouTube, it didn’t happen.

So I don’t have a problem with the lack of credentialing. Where I do have a problem, is a lack of standards. There are certain standards in our business, like calling the subject of a story for comment, providing some elemental sense of fairness in the criticisms at some level, avoiding cheap shots and kicking people when they’re down. I’m talking about picking up the phone once and a while, which is something that, unfortunately, a lot of self-styled journalists and bloggers just don’t do. There’s a slippage in the basic standards. Having said that, there’s a lot of great stuff that’s being done outside the mainstream media. For example, I look at things like Talking Points Memo, I think they should figure out how to give Josh Marshall a Pulitzer Prize — but of course online content isn’t eligible, but that’s a different story.

On that note, which blogs do you read regularly?
I read Talking Points Memo, Ben Smith’s, and some of the other political blogs depending on the day. I read Drudge, Huffington Post, and Real Clear Politics. I’m a little bit skewed to the campaign and election content right now. I’m pretty obsessed with the campaign. I do read some media blogs like Romenesko, mediabistro.com, and TVNewser.

This is the seventh time you’ve covered an election season. How does this one compare to the previous ones in terms of coverage you’re seeing across media outlets, access, appetite for the news etc?
This campaign is the most compelling of any of the seven that I’ve covered. There’s the freshness of change and possibility in the United States. Arguably, the most fun was 2000, mostly because of the aftermath and because early in the season John McCain gave us unprecedented access that we’d never seen before and that I don’t think we’ll ever see again. 1992 was a lot of fun too, I covered a lot of the Clinton campaign that year. I think people kept waiting for the first real Internet election, and I think 2008 is the year. The Internet has transformed fundraising. It’s taken power away from the fat cats and given it to average people. The YouTube factor is also huge. It used to be that evening news programs were the spine of a campaign. Now YouTube is the spine of the campaign. It used to be that when something didn’t make the evening news, it didn’t happen. Now when something doesn’t really make it on YouTube, it didn’t happen. Obama gave a speech yesterday in economics. It was important to a lot of people, but it wasn’t important to the horserace. Whereas his speech on race was. It’s like when a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it — it’s like it never happened. The same goes for when something doesn’t register on YouTube.

Would you say that Obama has best capitalized on what YouTube has to offer?
I think he’s been more viral and more attune to the Internet than other candidates. Although Mike Huckabee was too. YouTube has also hurt Obama. If the Reverend Wright issue had happened and you just heard about it on the nightly news, it wouldn’t have been so powerful or so harmful to Obama.

In your experience with this year’s candidates, what distinguishes them in how they interact with the press?
McCain is still more open than the others. I think he probably gets an easier ride for that reason. Hillary started very inaccessible and she has gotten more accessible in direct proportion to her decline in the polls and in the primaries. I think she recognized after Iowa that she had to open herself up more to reporters. That’s usually the way that it works �- the frontrunner usually starts off the most inaccessible and then gradually opens up as the campaign goes on. Obama isn’t inaccessible, but he’s less accessible than the other candidates.

So you were on The Colbert Report in 2006…
Yeah, my wife works there.
What’s your take on the role of “fake news shows” in the election season?
I love “fake news” — it helps pay my mortgage. I think the idea that we should be wringing our hands because people are getting their news from Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert is ridiculous. If people watching those shows hadn’t already consumed the news from other sources, people wouldn’t get the jokes. The news that they get from other sources is parodied and contextualized in a humorous and often brilliant way. And there are ways in which being the subject of ribbing by late-night comedians can elevate a candidate.

Moving back to election night 2000, you went on NBC News to break the story of a problem with “butterfly ballots” in Palm Beach County, Florida. What does it feel like to be the first one reporting national news on that scale?
That was kind of a fun moment for me. I was one of dozens of NBC people who were on standby on election night. It was hard to get on the air unless you had something fresh. I saw that Florida had shifted from Al Gore to “too close to call” which is kind of unusual after a state is called for a candidate. So I phoned the Miami Herald and asked, “what’s going on in Florida?” and he said, “I don’t know, but I think something’s going on in Palm Beach County.” Then I called the Palm Beach Post and they said that there had been irregularities because people were voting for Pat Buchanan when they thought they were voting for Al Gore. Nowadays, they would’ve posted that on their Web site and everybody would’ve known about it. But at that time, they were still in the rhythm of old-media thinking and they were holding it for the next day’s paper. So it turned out for them to be a mistake that they told me. I went on the air immediately with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric and I told the world that there was a serious problem in Palm Beach County with something called the “butterfly ballot.” I explained what that was. After that, it was off to the races.

I suppose the Post might have regretted passing along that information before it hit the paper the next day�

I’m not sure they even knew that they had a scoop because they probably thought that a lot of other people had the story too. That’s a strange story and one of the highlights of my career that wasn’t exactly a lot of hard digging, but sometimes things fall on your lap when you make a few phone calls.

What are some other stories that you’ve done that stick out as highlights in your career?
I’ve been a columnist for 17 years now. One of the more memorable stories that I’ve reported was in 1986 when a colleague at Newsweek and I broke a story on the cover that there was what we called a civil war at CBS. The board of directors was unhappy with the way things were going inside the company and there was an overhaul at CBS. In the 1980s, that was a big media story that we broke. Several years ago, someone at The Washington Monthly, Josh Green, and I broke a story about William Bennett’s gambling jones. In 2006, I was the first person to say that it was likely that Barack Obama was going to run for president.

How did you acquire that information and when did you feel confident to break with that news?
I posted it online in late September of 2006, maybe early October. I heard from somebody he was running. They were trying to keep the cat from getting out of the bag so they said it was only “fifty-fifty” that he would run. I posted that it was only fifty-fifty, but that was about 49 percent more likely than anybody had admitted to at that time. I first got onto that when I saw Obama in September around Labor Day and I said “so are you not going to run if Hillary Clinton runs?” and he told me on background that I shouldn’t make that assumption. That was the first time that I got the sense that he was going to run and later I was able to confirm it. In retrospect, I wish I had written it harder and just said “he is going to run.” I think I could have done that. I think I could have been a little bit bolder because I had good authority that he was making plans to run. But part of the reason was that Michelle Obama wasn’t entirely on board so there was a slight chance that he was not going to run.

Eventually the deadline comes around and you just have to do it. Nothing concentrates the mind like feeling that you’re going to leave a big hole in the magazine if you don’t get it done.

I think another interesting story that I broke was in the last year — that Ted Kennedy had harsh words with Bill Clinton on the phone after New Hampshire telling him to tone it down and that he was introducing race into the campaign, and that Ted Kennedy was likely to endorse Obama. In the time since then, people have gone “well so what, Obama didn’t carry Massachusetts,” but if you talk to the Obama people they’ll tell you that the endorsement of the Kennedys was instrumental in their success so far because it came at a point when they needed it after New Hampshire.

How did you get wind that Kennedy made that call?
I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you.

Moving right along then�What kind of story do you find most difficult to pursue and why? Is it a political story? A breaking story?

I’m not as nearly as good at breaking stories as someone like Michael Isikoff, and I’m not nearly as good at writing cover stories as Evan Thomas — although I’ve written a lot of them over the years. I’m most comfortable trying to get at subtext of events in a column form but it’s sometimes difficult for me to get it out. Sometimes it takes me an hour to write a column and sometimes it takes me 12 hours. It varies. I can’t really explain why, except that sometimes I’m not pulling my thoughts together in the way I’d like to or sometimes the re-write didn’t go as well I’d hoped. I strongly believe that re-writing makes for good writing. Other times it comes more easily.

In those times that it takes you longer to get the column going and you find yourself frustrated, how do you move beyond that?
Eventually the deadline comes around and you just have to do it. Sometimes it pays not to start too early. Nothing so concentrates the mind as contemplating one’s own impending execution, so I think it’s also true that nothing concentrates the mind like feeling that you’re going to leave a big hole in the magazine if you don’t get it done. The trick is to make it look like you dashed it off, to make it look easy and casual. There are some people who are so wonderful at that like Maureen Dowd or Gail Collins. They have an informal style that makes it look like they dashed it off and that it didn’t take tremendous effort. I think that’s part of the challenge is to make it look like it’s not labored — but you have to labor at it to make it look unlabored.

Back to the campaign, what is your impression of Senator Hillary Clinton and how she’s running her campaign? How does it reflect what you saw of her when you had access to Bill Clinton starting in 1992?
Well, I had a lot of access to Bill Clinton. I interviewed him as much as anybody else when he was president. And then I was granted the first interview he gave after he left the presidency. In terms of Hillary’s campaign, on tactical and strategic grounds, I’d say that she’s a better candidate than the campaign would suggest. She’s a good candidate but her people have not been running a good campaign.

How did you gain such close access to Bill Clinton?
I met him in 1984. In the years after that, we connected on a policy basis. He has different relationships with different people. With some people he has golf relationships with, with some he has political gossip relationships with, with me he always boiled down the policy issues that both of us were interested in — whether it was welfare or relations with China, we connected and talked easily on many occasions. I wouldn’t say that now would be one of those times when we would be connecting very well because of what I’ve been writing lately. But one thing that I really respect about Bill Clinton is that he’s made so many mistakes himself and requires so much forgiveness that he’s very forgiving toward other people.

It came up at the New York University media event that some people credit the writers’ strike for the unprecedented election coverage. Do you think that a lull in regular television programming had anything to do with viewers’ appetite for election coverage?
I don’t think so. I think the appetite started earlier. It’s an unprecedented situation. First major female candidate, first African American candidate, growing involvement of the youth voters �- all of those things are much more important than the writer’s strike. Though it was frustrating in my family because my wife is not a member of the guild and when Colbert went back on the air, it was hard to keep the quality of the show high when they were so short-staffed. For our family, the strike was a big deal, and it affected the writing of the movie of my FDR book.

Speaking of books, in general do you believe all the doom and gloom about the print industry? What is your take on that?
I think that there is a big issue because old media is so much more expensive to get into the hands of readers. There’s a basic economic issue there. But having said that, the history of the media in the United States is that new media does not destroy old media. It simply pushes it into an often lesser niche entirely. When radio came in, people thought it was going to be the death of newspapers. When television came in, people thought it would be the death of radio and movies. Reading a magazine in your hands is a different experience than reading online so I think there will always be some taste for that tactile experience of reading a magazine. Newspapers are a greater peril because a lot of what they do, from classified advertisements to breaking news, is done so much more easily through other media. They will survive as long as long as baby boomers survive, which is another forty years or so.

Thinking back to your fifty Newsweek covers, of which one are you the most proud?
I would say that the very first one I did on a homeless American in 1983 showed me that I can take a social problem and bring attention to it. That showed me what a news magazine cover could do. I’m still proud of that one and it sticks out in my mind because it was my first one. I’ve done many stories over the years on things like mentoring and the problems of at-risk youth — I’m very proud of those stories. I guess I’m proud of the historical context I bring to a lot of different stories. I think it’s really important to the understanding of an event to have historical context.

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Kathryn Carlson is an editorial intern at mediabistro.com and a graduate journalism student at New York University.

A year after joining the Educational Broadcasting Corp. (licensee of New York’s WNET and WLIW, the first- and third-most-watched public stations in the country, respectively) as president, Neal Shapiro was named its CEO in February. However, Shapiro is hardly a product of public broadcasting: He spent 25 years at ABC and NBC News, where he served as president from 2001 to 2005. At MSNBC, also under his purview, he developed Keith Olbermann’s Countdown. Shapiro quickly made the transition from commercial TV to PBS. He spoke recently with mediabistro.com about how he’s handling the inevitable slowdown between the news channels and public television, his placement on the talent scale relative to Alistair Cook and George Clooney, and more.

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A headline in The New York Times Feb. 17 asked ‘Is PBS Still Necessary?’ Your response?

I suppose I could cherry-pick The New York Times: Why have a big news hole when you can get information from other sources? Why have real estate listings when you can get them other places? There are plenty of ways that public TV is relevant and innovative…

Masterpiece Theatre probably got a lot more people interested in Jane Austen. Who else is going to do a Jane Austen festival? Who else is going to broadcast a New York Philharmonic concert from North Korea? Only PBS. Who else is going to devote an hour in prime-time to issues in education? Nobody.

Even with 500 channels on, there are plenty of things we do that no one else does.

The article doesn’t get me upset. It’s perfectly appropriate. No institution should be afraid to ask, “What are we doing and how can we do it better?” It shouldn’t be defensive, it should be proud. I’m proud of who we are and the great things we put on the air. Along with that, we need to keep changing and innovating.

What is the best part of your job?

Dealing with ideas and content. I have not devoted one nanosecond of my working life to keeping track of whether Lindsay Lohan is in or out of rehab. That’s a pleasure. I get to worry about how to deal with some of the biggest issues of the day or with history or with how best to take advantage of this city.

The worst part?

There isn’t one.

After 25 years in commercial television, what’s it like having to raise money?

It hasn’t been hard at all. I worried about it, going in. I had never done it before, and I knew it was a big part of the job. I ask for money for projects I believe in. It’s not that much different from NBC — we had to defend a show to the news division and explain why we needed money.

You’ve always worked behind the camera. Why are you the host of SundayArts, (CQ) your new cultural-programming block that launched March 23?

Hosting wasn’t my idea. The show was my idea. A lot of people said I should host it for the first year, to show I’m committed to it. They said I should brand it. I said, if that’s what’s required, I’ll do it. I’m still getting used to being on the air.

For 25 years, I’ve been whispering into the IFB, telling other people what to do. Now I’m a lot more sympathetic. When a producer tells me, “Let’s just try it again,” it’s not very helpful. I’m grateful for any advice I can get. I’m a novice. I’ve always had great respect for people who can do this on camera.

How would you rate yourself as talent?

I think I’m OK. On a scale of one to 10, I’d give myself an eight compared to all the presidents and general managers in public broadcasting who go on the air for pledge [drives.] Compared to Alistair Cook, I’m a five. Compared to George Clooney, I’m a three.

Would you ever want to go full time?

Absolutely not. I’ve got plenty of other things to do. I’m happy to go on the air and help the station, but it’s not my strength. I’m much better at coming up with ideas and executing them. We have plenty of on-camera talent.

Speaking of which, are you trying to recruit any talent from your old shop?

I talk to people all the time.

Of all your new initiatives, which would say is the most bold?

When we did local projects as a companion to Ken Burns’ The War. We didn’t have much time. Ken Burns’ epic was coming down the pike. It was my first big effort. I hadn’t raised the money yet to do it. Generally, the view here was to have the money before you started shooting. I took a big chance.

We did three incredibly successful hours [and raised more than $450,000]. I did a promo with my father, who’s 84 and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. I choked up the first few times. As a kid, I always asked him to tell me war stories. He never did. It was an incredible experience.

Isn’t it risky to start projects before they’re funded?

It’s more cautious and certainly wiser to have the funds first. You don’t want to be out there and suddenly say, “Wow, I need $500,000.” But sometimes you need to get projects going in a timely manner.

Speaking of funding, with Congress always threatening to cut PBS’s, what is the future for public television?

The pros tell me that this is the dance we’ve been going through for seven years. Cross my fingers, we’ll be OK. The future is bright. The qualities of intelligence and integrity seem to be found less and less in other channels. Our name still stands for quality.

At the same time, we need movement in the system. We need to try new and different things while maintaining the brand qualities.

As a hard-news guy, do you get impatient with PBS’s, shall we say, leisurely pace?

Occasionally, I’ll put on my news hat, and it seems slow. But this is great fun for me. We’ve done things relatively quickly. Revamping our Saturday night movie lineup [to include recent independent films as well as classics] only took a couple of months, from start to finish. You can select movies online and anyone can send in short films. We’re getting great feedback, especially from younger viewers.

Aside from your friends, do you miss anything about NBC?

I’m pretty engaged where I am. I have a great relationship with my board. They’re totally supportive. I couldn’t be happier.

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Shapiro’s tips for success
1. Make allies of the smart, qualified and experienced people in your
new company
2. Focus your vision: Make it clear that quality and integrity are imperative
3. Bring the best from your previous career to your new job

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Gail Shister is a columnist for TVNewser.

Ann Compton is currently serving a one-year term as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and led the way in planning this year’s Apr. 26 dinner. Compton has covered six presidents for ABC News and eight presidential campaigns. Compton was also the president of the Radio TV Correspondents Association twenty years. Ann shared an Emmy Award for her coverage as the only broadcaster aboard Air Force One on Sept. 11, 2001. Ann lives in Washington, D.C. and is the mother of four children. Still, the only thing that’s ever impressed her husband, Dr. William Hughes, was when she was Number 12 Down in the Sunday New York Times crossword in March 2007.

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Name: Ann Compton
Position: White House correspondent for ABC News
Resume: First assigned to this job by ABC in 1974, after Watergate. Compton claims she was 11 at the time.
Birthdate: January 19, 1947
Hometown: Glencoe, Illinois
Education: B.A. from Hollins College, Virginia
Marital status: Married, 29 years
First section of the Sunday Times: Front page
Favorite television show: Grey’s Anatomy
Last book read: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, to her 4 year old niece
Guilty pleasure: Sleeping past 5:30 a.m.

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Tell us a little bit about what the job of White House Correspondents’ Association president entails. What are your primary responsibilities?

I was stunned to discover how engaged the WHCA has become with WH operations. Some weeks I spend hours on selecting charter aircraft for press travel with the President, consultations on upcoming domestic trips, complaints about access and coverage at the White House and that’s before you start stressing over the spring dinner.

Why did you decide to pursue this position? What have/are you hoping to accomplish during your tenure?

Blame Steve Scully of C-SPAN who asked me to run… I cannot say no to him. He did all the heavy lifting of remodeling the press briefing room. But we are going to quintuple the amount of cash tuition grants to journalism students because the annual dinner has become so successful.

Is it a fairly competitive position to get? And is it challenging to keep so many reporters satisfied and in sync?

Some years the June election is a crowded race, sometimes not. The term on the board in three years so reporters have to believe they will be on the WH beat that long in order to run. As for satisfaction — put 50 reporters in one room and you will get 80 opinions. Satisfaction is not always possible.

Some of the highlight moments over the last seven years certainly have been the President’s effort to surprise us.

When did you start preparing for this year’s dinner and what were some of the first things you needed to accomplish to assure a successful one?

I started obsessing about the dinner nearly two years ago. Two big factors — can you find an entertainer who will live up to the best expectations? And, will the President come? I arranged for the entertainer on Super Tuesday. President Bush had already told me he would attend. Vice President Cheney is coming, too, which is not typical to have both of them at one dinner.

How much do you work with the White House on this? Do they get excited about the dinner or is it more a chore for them?
The White House staff actually has no role — this is totally a journalists’ affair. The junior staff unfortunately tends to get overlooked on invitations — which we have tried to correct and get as many to the table as possible. The President can be forgiven for thinking this isn’t really something he wants to do every year. But some of the highlight moments over the last seven years certainly have been the President’s effort to surprise us.

President Bush’s administration frequently gets knocked for being anti-press. What’s been your experience?

Are there some things you’d like to see the White House do differently with regards to press relations? Every president I have covered has been anti-press, to an extent. All I ask of these, and future administrations is straight answers and appropriate access to decisions and events which affect the lives of Americans.

How do you think Craig Ferguson will walk the delicate line of poking fun of the president? Will he be more polite or prodding?

I know a lot has been written about how we as journalists try to pick someone who will not offend (Imus was not a WHCA dinner, remember). Truth is I went looking for someone fresh and even outside the box. During the writers’ strike I started TiVo’ing Craig Ferguson on the Late Late Show because believe me I don’t stay up that late. I found him enchanting. And when his producers told me he was about to become a US citizen, that cinched it — who better in this season to feature at the dinner than a first-time, uncommitted voter?

What do you say to the charges made by some news organizations that the annual dinner has become too cozy, too bloated and too Hollywood-centric?
Cozy? The old days were cozy, with reporters and campaign advisors drinking late into the night. Bloated? Hey, call it successful. In recent years we haven’t come close to meeting demand for tables, and we are the largest press dinner of the year with 2800 seated guests. And the more Hollywood guests, the more requests for tables the next year. Only regular members who cover the WH, and news organizations which cover Washington and are associate members, can purchase tables. No lobbyists, corporations, foreign governments, or um, blogs.

Have you tried to change the minds of news organizations that have pulled out of the dinner ( The New York Times, for instance)?
The New York Times is the only regular member of the association who made it a policy this year not to purchase a table, a decision I respect and did not challenge. The bureau chief did, however, write to say the Times will continue to be engaged, support our scholarships at the same level it did before, and a NY Times staffer is on our board and will be at the head table.

What role do you see this dinner playing in Washington’s Press/Politician dance?

I don’t really think the dinner itself has a role — and that’s why the angst over relationships with sources kind of puzzles me. I promise the next presidential press conference will not show any traces of lingering dinner comity.

Has online journalism changed this event’s profile? In good ways or bad?

That’s a great question. Online journalism is changing us. Our news organizations push us to file for our dot-com operations. The question I have is how will the WHCA adapt to engage something like Google, which is a tremendous force, run by very talented people, and clearly our paths converge. Since Google does not cover the White House, how can Google and the WHCA strike up a working relationship? We should.

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Patrick W. Gavin is editor of FishbowlDC.

“China can overwhelm,” writes Chris Johns in his editor’s letter welcoming readers to National Geographic‘s May 2008 special issue devoted to the rapidly changing nation. Indeed, “overwhelming” describes most of the broad, global topics that National Geographic has tackled since its first yellow-bordered issues came off the presses in 1888. Similarly consistent are the magazine’s efforts — through integrated research, writing, photography, and graphics — to ensure that such topics don’t result in overwhelming bundles of linked information, but in stories that provide readers with context on important issues and, along the way, inspiration to better appreciate and understand the world around them.

The magazine has refined this mission under the leadership of Chris Johns, who spent 17 years as a National Geographic contributing photographer before becoming editor-in-chief in January 2005. During Johns’ tenure, the magazine has undergone an extensive redesign, published a slate of popular single-topic issues, and built a strong, engaged community of online readers and photographers. mediabistro.com spoke with Johns about how he’s seen National Geographic change over the past 25 years, the magazine’s five 2008 National Magazine Award nominations, and how to make the Mayans and the Aztecs relevant to the iPod generation — without overwhelming the reader.

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Name: Chris Johns
Position: Editor-in-chief, National Geographic
Resume: Joined Topeka Capital-Journal as a staff photographer in 1975 and in 1979 was named National Newspaper Photographer of the Year; worked as picture editor and special photographer at the Seattle Times (1980-1983); embarked on a freelance career in 1983 and worked for Life, Time, and National Geographic; became National Geographic contract photographer in 1985; and joined the magazine staff in 1995, serving as senior editor for illustrations and associate editor before becoming editor-in-chief in 2005. As a photographer, he produced more than 20 articles for National Geographic, eight of which were cover stories.
Birthdate: April 15
Hometown: Central Point, Oregon
Education: Bachelor’s degree from Oregon State University, graduate work in journalism at the University of Minnesota
Marital status: Married
First section of the Sunday Times: The Week in Review
Favorite TV show: “I watch a lot of sports with my children, so ESPN. I live in a household of sports fanatics.”
Last book read: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Guilty pleasure: Sports cars

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How did you get your start in journalism?
I was originally a pre-med major at Oregon State University, and then I took a journalism class and was blessed with a wonderful teacher. All my life, I’ve been a voracious reader, enjoyed writing, and just thoroughly fell in love with this class. About the same time, I became interested in photography and took a photography class and was hooked. It was also a time when journalism had really reached a state of relevancy that was terribly important to a lot of us that had to do with Watergate and the power of dogged reporting and good writing, and the ability as a journalist to make the world a better place to live. I think that really struck a chord of idealism with many of us who started in journalism in the early to mid-70’s. I think most of us haven’t lost that idealism. We’ve proven again and again that good, solid journalism that’s relevant has tremendous power.

And how did you go from that life-changing class to editor-in-chief of National Geographic?
When I was at Oregon State, I worked part-time at a couple of very good small- to medium-sized newspapers. Then I went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota, which had an extremely good journalism program at the time. When I left the University of Minnesota, I went to work at the Topeka Capital-Journal in Kansas, which at the time was an excellent newspaper, especially for aspiring young photographers. And there we did really emphasize photojournalism, meaning the photographer would often write his own stories and do picture pages, write heds, captions for pictures, and was really expected to be a contributor in the newsroom on par with everybody else. That was, of course, invaluable. It was a great way for me to learn about all the different nuances of journalism.

I was in the newspaper business for about 10 years and started increasingly freelancing [as a photojournalist] for magazines and conceded the long-form journalism that really excited me was at National Geographic, and then the subject matter that National Geographic covers I felt was terribly important for the world and of great interest to me.

As someone who has been involved with National Geographic for now over 25 years, what do you see as the mission and the focus of the magazine today, and do you think that it has changed over the years?
Our mission is to help people to better understand and appreciate the world around us. Through that, I think that part of our mission as well is to inspire people, inspire them to make the world a better place and inspire people to really care about the planet. From my perspective as editor of the magazine, I don’t think we’ve changed that, but I think we’ve refined it, and of course, that gives us a very wonderful canvas to operate on. Some of the most important stories that we’re facing in the world right now fall in that category, and in many ways, they’re under-covered in journalism. We feel that’s a great opportunity for us to provide the context of some of the most important issues that are facing and us and facing future generations. So I think while we haven’t changed the topics that we know are important to our readers, we’ve probably made them more relevant and been very successful at that.

The Web’s been extremely healthy for us.

And what are some of those issues and topics that you mentioned as particularly important to your coverage and that may be uncovered in the broader world of journalism?
Environmental coverage in particular is one of our stock-in-trades — helping people to understand the complexity of environmental issues. So one obvious one: for more than 10 years, we’ve been covering global climate change, and realized initially how incredibly important this story was and how this story will certainly develop. There, we have been able to provide context, and because we were so early to covering global climate change, we had great credibility in the scientific community, we had great accessibility to the smartest scientists out there, and we stuck to the facts. We’ve never had an agenda. We’ve provided unbiased, factual information, and have been really at the forefront of making the story fresh and understandable. Related to global change of course is energy, and our energy stories have talked about how energy affects our daily lives, how it will affect our future, and how it’s connected, for example, to global climate change.

How do you approach more historical topics and make them interesting to today’s readers?
I think that we have become much more accomplished at making these stories fascinating and relevant so that people can really see how even an ancient civilization like the Mayans, for example, one of our best-selling single topic issues, that some of the challenges they faced in their civilization are not that different from some of the challenges we face today. Archaeology is another one of our core topics. Ancient civilizations like the Aztecs, for example, would be another core topic where we would give you contextual information. It’s not inside what the latest dig is. We’ll certainly be current on that, but we’ll also explain how that latest dig provides real insight into life today.

This year, National Geographic is nominated for National Magazine Awards in the categories of general excellence, reporting, photography, photojournalism, and interactive feature. Let’s start with photojournalism, for which the magazine was nominated for “Bedlam in the Blood,” a feature about malaria. How do you go about putting a story like that together in terms of conceptualizing and planning it?
Well, this story is one that I wanted to do quite badly. I’ve had malaria. Twice. The second time quite seriously. I’d run into Patty Stonesifer at the Gates Foundation [where she has served as chief executive officer since 1997], and a story like that requires a period of percolation. You’ve really got to think creatively: How are we going to tell this story and make it fascinating and interesting? So it’s not a lecture, it’s a real story about real people and a real problem, but a problem that does definitely have a solution. Once you’ve decided you’re committed to the story and want to do the story, the second most important thing you can do is put an incredibly talented team on the story. And we certainly did have a talented team on that story, and a team with great passion to tell the story of malaria, great reporting skills — and that goes not just to [writer] Mike Finkel and the researchers he worked with, but also to John Stanmeyer, the photographer. John is as strong a reporter as virtually any of our reporters whose expertise is in writing. I think that’s consistently true on all of our stories. We really take photojournalism seriously, and “journalism” is in boldface.

Having committed to the story and assembled the team, where do you go from there?
From the outset, the team starts to talk about how they can tell this story in a way that will be incredibly exciting to readers. Then they will work in concert on mapping, on information graphics, on photographic coverage, knowing that there are some parts of the story that will make extremely strong passages of text but may not make such strong pictures and vice-versa, some of the pictures may be incredibly powerful yet might not be as inclined to have that power with the written word. So the text and the photographs complement each other, and in turn the mapping, information graphics, and art complement the whole package.

As you create that multi-part package, how collaborative is the process?
We think of it very much as a story team concept and a package concept and put a great deal of time and effort into the research, and then also have the flexibility through the story process to change. We really encourage discovery as we go through the process as well. Then when we come back to lay it out, after we’ve been monitoring the coverage throughout the process, we find that everybody’s been talking to each other and then the layout and design is really solely to bring the content to life on the pages of the magazine — and, I might add, on the Web. This is another exciting opportunity for us in storytelling. On the front end, we’re thinking, let’s shoot video, let’s get high-quality audio, and make this an exciting Web presence as well.

How did National Geographic go about developing a web presence, and how did you decide to add such social networking features as My Shot” (launched in March), which allows readers to upload their own photographs for possible publication in the print magazine and online?
When I became editor, I felt that we needed a much stronger Web presence. I’m a big believer in photography, of course, and the power of photography, and not only the power of photography, but the great pleasure that photography has certainly given me over the years. So we wanted to build out photography much more on the Web, and I’m also a big believer in community on the Web. What better way to establish that community than through photography? I love making pictures, and I love looking at pictures, and I’m certainly not alone at National Geographic in that passion. So we felt that, with all the good that has come out of digital photography, this was a natural time for us to really exploit digital photography and community on the Web and in turn, we know that our readers are incredibly engaged with our photography and have been more than 100 years. Rob Covey [managing editor and creative director of ngm.com] shared that same vision with me and is masterful with his experience in how to build a strong Web community and have it mesh seamlessly with the magazine.

How has ngm.com affected the print magazine?
The Web’s been extremely healthy for us. The National Geographic Society started in 1888 has a community-based organization, so it was absolutely natural for us. You always have become a member of the National Geographic — it meant that you were part of an organization that was nonprofit that shared your values and your appreciation for the world. So for us then to move into photography was one more extension of community, meaning I want to hear what our readers are thinking. I want to see what they’re seeing. So if you take that long relationship and build on it, it makes us a stronger ink-on-paper magazine as well, because we’re better connected with readers. And of course we find that what drives our traffic are the core areas that they expect from us in the magazine. We can refine our approach to those core areas and push the perimeter of those core areas some on the Web. And then you’ve got much more instant feedback.

We have had such high-quality photographs submitted [via the Web] that we’ve elected to not only put those high-quality photos in “My Shot,” we’ve put them in “Visions of Earth,” which is consistently one of the most popular parts of our magazine with readers. We’ve run readers’ photographs in other places in the magazine, because some of these photographs are so exciting and so good. So it’s been a great complementary effort.

National Geographic‘s May 2008 issue is devoted to China, and the “China’s Instant Cities” feature published last June was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the reporting category. What do you think made that piece so compelling?
Well, I’m a big believer in talent, and [writer] Pete Hessler is not only extremely talented, but he is extremely committed to his stories. As you can see in our China issue, his commitment to his students, his commitment to change and documenting change in China, is an inspiration to all of us as journalists. Pete is our newest contributing writer to National Geographic, and it’s been neat, because as a former photographer who’s been a reader since grade school, I’ve somehow been able to increase the quality of writing in the magazine, and Pete Hessler is a perfect example of that.

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Stephanie Murg is an editor of UnBeige.

Greg Gutfeld has spent a lifetime in the media industry, and he has the stories to prove it. Beginning his career in magazines, he traversed a career path through various publications from the US to the UK, from Prevention (while smoking heavily) to Stuff (where he hired several little people to cause a commotion and create buzz at the 2003 Magazine Publishers of America conference). He’s a published author, with his newest book,
Lessons From the Land of Pork Scratchings, detailing his time in England (and now out in paperback). He’s a regular blogger at The Daily Gut, his own site, and formerly of The Huffington Post. But the shock jock of the magazine world’s current gig may be the most surprising — host of Red Eye, on Fox News Channel. The program, airing weeknights at 3 a.m., allows Gutfeld and his varied cast of characters to discuss the news in a way unseen in any other arena. It’s the counter-est of counter-programming, but 300 shows in, Red Eye‘s still going strong, providing an outlet for Gutfeld’s brand of humor, bar chat atmosphere, and a place for FNC anchors including Julie Banderas, Alan Colmes, and Brian Kilmeade, to show a different side of their personalities.

We caught up with Gutfeld last week in his Fox News office, a spot littered with books and magazines, a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor and, yes (for fans of the show), some stuffed unicorns.

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Name: Greg Gutfeld
Position: Host, Fox News Channel’s Red Eye
Resume: Former fitness editor for Prevention, editor-in-chief at Men’s Health, Stuff, and Maxim UK, author, and TV host.
Birthdate: September 12, 1964
Hometown: San Mateo, CA
Education: “Serra High School, home to Barry Bonds and Tom Brady, Lynn Swann. I’m going to say them all. And UC Berkeley.”
Marital Status: Married
First section you read in the Sunday Times: “I don’t read the Sunday Times, I read the New York Post.”
Favorite TV Show: “Could I name like three? Right now Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares is awesome. He’s the most hypnotic, magnetic character on television. He goes into a restaurant and he looks how things have gone wrong and he gives them three pieces of advice: Simplify the menu, fresh ingredients, affordable. These three things are integral in everything you do in life, whether it’s a magazine or a meal. Fresh, cheap, simple. I love The Wire but that’s such a clich�. I love Project Runway but that’s because my wife forces me to watch it. Plus you get to see those guys walking up and down Ninth Avenue, wandering around looking for work. There’s one on the O Channel, Nighty Night. It’s probably the darkest TV show ever made. It’s probably my favorite show of all time.”
Last Book Read: “I’m reading Michael Yon’s book Moment of Truth in Iraq because I got it for free. I read it on a plane.”
Guilty Pleasure: “It’s so easy to say unicorns and houseboys. I like hearing people staple things. I like the sounds of shuffling papers and stapling. I’m probably the only person that enjoys Kinkos. Going in there and just hearing that is kind of an ear orgasm. It’s not really a guilty pleasure, it’s more of a disorder.”

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You’ve spent the majority of your career in media in the magazine industry, first at Men’s Health, then at Stuff, and finally at Maxim UK. Can you describe your experience in that world?

Well you left out the most important one of all which is my first, Prevention, which is the largest health magazine in the world aimed at middle-aged divorced women with four cats. Prevention was my first writing gig, and I did nothing but serious health news, generally focused on women problems: estrogen, endometriosis. I knew everything about it. And I knew that the only way I could do that, I had a picture of my mom on the desk, because you have to write for your audience. How do you write health stuff for a 70-year-old lady? So every time I’d look at her and go, “Okay how do I explain hemoglobin? It’s this stuff in your veins.” You actually have to write like that. It was an amazing way how to learn to write concisely. I was a fitness editor at Prevention, that’s when I started smoking heavily. The high point was I did a fitness cruise. You know how magazines do cruises? They get their fans on a cruise, they last like three days — this one went to the Bahamas. So I had to do fitness seminars, where I’d do stretchbands, do curls with like 30- or 40-year-old people, and I was drunk the entire time, because that was the only way I could get through it. That’s when I decided it was time to leave. I went from there to Men’s Health, which was an interesting contrast because it’s a very straight magazine and I’m a little skewed in my point of view. But it helped because I was able to translate really boring health stuff into something that’s unique and unusual. Then I left to go to Stuff, which was, for 18 months, I think the greatest magazine ever. It was a magazine that pretended to be something that it wasn’t. I mean you thought it was a girly mag, but when you opened it up it was the most twisted creation, a mixture of homo-eroticism and deviant humor. And when people got it they’d go, “Oh my god I can’t believe this exists.”

“Television is like a completely different planet — you have to know what you’re doing, and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

It sounds like Red Eye.

[Laughs] Exactly, exactly. And I had my mom, both at Men’s Health and Stuff, as a columnist. Then they converted me to director of brand development — that was after the midget incident at the Magazine Publishing Association. There are always these little turning points and the midget thing was the thing that, three weeks later, I was promoted. Stuff was very successful, we nearly doubled the circulation, but still I think I was considered a bit unpredictable, because of the midget thing. So they made me director of brand development which meant “send me as far away from the magazine as possible to LA” where I pitched TV shows and got a few done and then the Maxim job came up in London, and I moved out there.

The first day on the job I met my wife — she was the photo editor for Russian Maxim. When I went there, the Lad Mag thing was over, I mean it was going down, and I knew it. So I decided to do a magazine that was kind of so subversive and so non-Men’s Mag that it basically shocked the hell out of people and it was so much fun. I really enjoyed it.

It was when I was writing my book that I flew over to meet John Moody and we talked about a show, and they liked me and there wasn’t much about the planning or how this was going to look or the staffing or anything like that. I guess that’s how it’s done. I wrote up a proposal, I don’t think anybody read it, and the next thing you know, I showed up. It scared the living hell out of me because I had absolutely no experience. Television is like a completely different planet — you have to know what you’re doing, and I don’t know what I’m doing, and it was clear, I think, it still is clear. But they didn’t care, they liked something in me, so they said, “Call up people you know,” and we started doing rehearsals in a tech lounge. We were allowed to smoke, and we drank, and we did these really primitive rehearsals that were called “Wasteland,” and it transformed into Red Eye. Now we’ve done 300 shows, I don’t think I’ve done anything 300 times. [Laughs] I just gave you the quickest rundown of my life, it’s like reading Wikipedia.

Yes, but, if I was reading Wikipedia, or another article about you, it may have gone a little differently. According to reports, it went “fired, fired, contract not renewed…”

Oh I don’t dispute anything, but I prefer to say, “promoted” because I was. After Maxim, my contract wasn’t renewed, but that to me wasn’t being fired. I will not dispute the fact that the numbers went down at Maxim, as they did with every single monthly, and it was just because, once the weeklies came in it made monthlies irrelevant. I took the biggest risk, which was changing the magazine to humor-based, subversive, rather than breasts, breasts, breasts because the weeklies, Zoo and Nuts, were selling them for a pound a week and they’re really good magazines in terms of delivering what the average punter wants and likes. When you’re a monthly, you can’t do sports. They’re getting all the girls. It was basically no matter what you did, you just saw your audience go away. I had to find a new audience. The unfortunate thing about it is we never told them. So that was a shame.

It seems like the nature of the industry. Especially now, you’re seeing cuts all across. Do you think it’s still getting worse?

Oh it’s horrible, I mean, the thing is a magazine has to be about something or it’s gone. That’s kind of been the innate success of Men’s Health, and service oriented magazines. You look on the cover and you go, “I’m going to get stress, sex, a better body, abs.” You don’t need an editor, you just need a marketer, and that’s what you did every month. All those Men’s Health cover lines had been written for the last 10 years, the exact same. If your magazine is kind of this vague collection of, “Isn’t it great to be a guy?” you don’t really need that, and I think you have to stake out a territory and deliver this really unique perspective.

Red Eye is certainly pushing the envelope for all of cable news, but when I’ve talked to people who have seen the show, the almost universal initial reaction is, “How is this on Fox News?” So, how is this on Fox News?

I’ve got to tell you, this is the most subversive, surreal piece of programming ever to be on TV, and it’s on Fox News. Now, what does that say? It says that Fox News has more balls than any network, and it can only be on Fox News because if it was on any other network, they would be diluting it. If it was on Comedy Central, you’d have to have comedians; they would have to put their own imprint on it. This is how Fox launched their network, I think they launched Fox News in six months. They go, “We’re putting out a news network and we’re going to find the people that want fair and balanced.” They figure if you put out a show, see how it works, if it doesn’t work, eh, if it works great and that’s how you got this show. It’s the gutsiest thing I’ve ever seen. I am surprised and eternally grateful that I got this opportunity, it is pretty amazing. I mean the first review we got was from Troy Patterson at Slate, and he writes this glowing review saying this is the most surreal, abstract piece of media ever on television. And he’s right. It’s such an unusual beast. I will say this, the show has challenges. When people first come to Red Eye, it’s a three step process: confusion, revulsion, then love. And you see this in the letters, because the letters are basically, “What the hell is this doing on Fox,” “I hate you,” “I get it.” That’s how it works. You will get it. It’s a different way of talking; it’s a different way of presenting news. Everything about it is different.

One of the things, if you’re a regular viewer is, it’s different every night, but, like the rapport you have with Andy Levy and Bill Shultz, you’re sort of a part of getting the “in” jokes. How do you know Bill Shultz and Andy Levy, and how did they become involved?

Well, first of all, I think it lends itself more to a radio thing. It’s like a morning radio, when you had Stuttering John and Howard Stern. Howard Stern is really the genius behind a lot of this. I think he’s the first guy to kind of create a community with the people on his show and with his viewers, so they got the joke. He’s a genius for that. I think you also run the risk of getting too insider-y and turning off people. Bill was one of the first people I met at Stuff, I think he was my associate editor or features editor, and the first time I met him he said, “I’m the guy you’re going to fire,” which is what I liked about him. And he had long hair, and I think he had like 16 beers in the span that I had four, and I thought “Who is this crazy person?” And then Andy, when I was blogging at The Huffington Post and eliciting all this rage, he would be leaving comments that would actually kind of fuel it but in a really weird way by agreeing with them, and I thought it was really clever what he did. When I started doing The Daily Gut, I had him blogging there, and I met him and I realized, well he’s not deformed, I can actually put him on TV. I mean how rare is it that there’s a blogger who’s not hideously ugly, because 95 percent are mostly just hideous people who live in their basement. I kid.

I guess I’m headed that direction. Actually you brought up Huffington Post, and you obviously left a different impression than other bloggers there. You had a post asking when fellow blogger John Seery would die, with the line: “He’s asking you to submit a number — the larger the better — which is perfectly appropriate for The Huffington Post — where hoping for the worst is the only hope allowed,” and you ended with a July 2007 post suggesting we eat Al Gore. Can you tell me about your time at the The Huffington Post?

Well it was something that kind of happened purely by accident. Matt Labash, who’s a great writer for the Weekly Standard, had told me about it and suggested if I would be amenable, Arianna would email me and invite me to come on to The Huffington Post. I don’t think she had any idea who I was, I’m sure she didn’t. So the way I look at The Huffington Post, the way I thought about it was, these missives should be exactly like weird letters you get from your aunt. You know everybody has a weird aunt that writes about things and sends you 20 dollars, and I feel that’s what blogs should be. So my first one was a lemon square recipe. I was the first of, I think, three bloggers on that day, and you had this serious thing about “Bush is stupid” and then something else about the war, and then I had a recipe on lemon squares. My next one was about finding a missing butt plug on my front lawn after a party that involved certain commentators at The Huffington Post, and I dropped their names so it created this universe that we all hung out together and did horrible things. And it was so confusing to the people there that I knew that it worked.

How about HuffPo Kidz?

Those were stories from a left-wing perspective that basically told you life sucked so you could read them to your kids so they’re prepared about how sucky life is. That was fun. I also liked my abortion joke page, my Roe v. Wade joke page. They didn’t get it, but it was good. I really enjoyed doing that, because you actually get to create a sputtering rage where people can’t even respond and are threatening you, and I learned from that, but I kind of already knew because I went to Berkeley, that the most tolerant people on the planet are also the most intolerant. They talk about peace and love, but if you disagree with them, they’ll kill you. And that was when I started to get really weird, sinister emails from people attacking me and my family, and I thought, “You know I don’t need this crap,” but I kept doing it anyway and I kept confronting them in blogs to watch them get angrier and angrier, and it was really fun. But then I had to stop because I had to write a book and I thought, “They’re not paying me, I had my fun.” Sometimes I think about going back.

Do you have any suggestions for The Huffington Post?

I think they realized that their own anger and intolerance towards other points of views was marginalizing them, they were becoming a joke. I honestly think it would help them to have a little bit more variety, but if they wanted that they already would have had it. I think they engage the lunatic left, and they’re going to stay with it.

“It’s much harder to say something smart than say something shocking.”

Starpulse recently named you one of the top five most underrated hosts on television. What do you think of the compliment and what do you think of the time slot that may cause you to fly under-the-radar?

I was pleased. Like I said, I don’t know what I’m doing, the only good thing is I’ve done it 300 times. It’s like going to the gym, every day you get a little better, but… you could always do better I guess. Such a stupid metaphor, I have to come up with something better. Maybe it’s like bowling; if you bowl 300 times you’re bound to get better. Anyway, that was really cool. I was in between Chris Rock and Chelsea Handler, which is an interesting kind of sandwich, depending on who you’re facing.

The time slot thing: During the summertime last year we were at 2 a.m. — our ratings were really, really great. Because of the political season they moved us another hour because they wanted more political coverage which makes sense — this is a news station. I really didn’t mind going to three. But it is a problem, asking people to stay up from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. is one thing, but 3 a.m. to 4 a.m., you’re asking a lot. And we have a lot of people that DVR it. We’re one of the most DVRed shows. That’s not a surprise. I think it is hard, and I would love to have a better time slot. However, at the same time, this time slot has allowed us to do stuff that no other show has done. So I have really mixed feelings. The freedom and knowing that you can just do this stuff, it’s great, but then you’re going, “If only more people could watch us,” but then you can’t do what you do. I think there’s a happy medium we have to find.

Let me ask you about one of the things you may be able to do since it’s 3 a.m. You drew some heat recently for your comments about The Pregnant Man, Thomas Beatie, and your “apology” was actually an indictment of the PC Police. Do you think the media is too politically correct?

Yeah I could care less about Thomas Beatie. What pissed me off were the headlines calling him a pregnant man. I’m like, okay, are we now going to say we have the world’s first pregnant man, because that’s just an absolute lie and no journalist would ever use that same kind of thinking in any other kind of medium. It’s clearly a woman, and if you’re a journalist you can’t just call it a man. And that’s what I was getting at. I guess what they were afraid of was offending this transgender community. I’m talking about language. This is a really stupid step to take to just make this assumption and then try to explain to people, “Yeah, he’s actually a man.” Then how can he be a man if he has a vagina and he’s having a child? Basically I asked Dr. Baden and said, “You’re a coroner, and a body comes in, what do you mark on the sheet, male or female?” And he goes, “Well it’s a female.” I was interested in seeing how much outrage it would cause by actually saying the truth and I wasn’t surprised. Everybody gets pissed off, however all the outrage had no argument with what I said, but the fact that I said it. So I was somehow wrong for actually saying the truth, but they didn’t dispute what I said. And I love that. That makes me happy how idiotic people are in their own reactions. If they had to actually respond, they’d agree with me but they can’t.

We talked about Bill and Andy, but your other sort of sidekick is your mother. As you talked about, she used to write for the magazines as well, and she makes frequent appearances on Red Eye. What was your childhood like, and what caused you to have her be part of your projects?

Well, I’ve been raised by women. I have three sisters and my mom. My dad died when I was young, so that probably had something to do with it. When I was in magazines, I noticed when my mom would fly out to visit, we’d go drinking with my mom and my friends always liked her more than they liked me. She’s just more entertaining then I am. When you’re an old lady, and you’re a widow, you just don’t care. You’re happy to be around, you say what’s on your mind, you don’t give a rat’s ass if people like you or hate you, and it comes out really clear with her. There’s no filter.

Are there any topics that are off-limits for Red Eye?

I think that we have covered every single thing, from bestiality to incest. There has to be a central truth behind everything you do to make it worth covering. It can’t just be a joke. I talk a lot about cannibalism, but I always tie it to rabid environmentalism. The underpinnings behind rabid environmentalism is the hatred of humanity and if you follow the logical course of environmentalism it would be getting rid of humans to help the earth, and that would be self-fueling by cannibalism. That’s a pretty offensive idea, but it’s got a moral underpinning. With Dr. Baden, we’ve talked about every single kind of criminal deviancy, but we talk the truth behind it. So I don’t think there’s anything off limits, I just try to stay away from stuff that’s gratuitously filthy, because that’s just too easy. I hate comedians that swear. I hate writers that swear. You see that a lot on Bill Maher. Bill Maher is painful because you have this audience of clapping seals. When anybody swears they’re like, “Ah I hear a swear word, that’s great.” [clapping] And that’s never going to be on our show. It’s much harder to say something smart than say something shocking.

Well let’s test the limits here. Your former boss Felix Dennis claimed, then unclaimed, to have killed a man. What’s your take, and how excited are you to possibly be deposed?

Here’s an interesting thing. In the Independent, Felix Dennis called me Darth Vader, in an interview he did two years ago. So how cool is it that a confessed murderer thinks I’m evil? That’s like the most awesome thing ever. Uh, he’s definitely not a killer, but he craves attention and when he drinks… During my job interview at Keanes in 2000 he confessed to me his crack addiction. I was with Andy Clerkson and Andy Turnbull, we’re sitting at a table in Keanes. Felix didn’t like me to begin with, and I don’t think he wanted me to be the editor and he thought maybe I was a bad egg or troublemaker, and he started telling me about his crack addiction. How he’d hide in this room with hookers all day and do crack. And he leaves, and I look at the two Andy’s and I go, “Wow that’s really weird,” and Andy goes, “Mate we’ve never heard that before in our lives.” I’m like, “You’re kidding me?” It turns out it’s true. He has a desire to speak, he loves attention and he also drinks. So I think he was pushing the envelope with this lady and now he regrets it. I don’t think it’s going to get as far as a deposition [laughs].

Last one testing the limits here. Do you miss working with your former colleague Rachel Marsden, or are you having more fun following her life post-Red Eye ?

[Laughs] It’s more fun following her life.

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Steve Krakauer is associate editor of TVNewser.

Award-winning NPR foreign correspondent Ivan Watson is no stranger to frontline reporting. Fresh out of college, Watson ditched the management consulting route and stumbled into journalism by way of a small FM radio station. After three years in Moscow’s CBS News and CNN bureaus, Watson reported from West Africa, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. While he’s been based in Istanbul, Turkey, for the past five years, Watson headed back to Iraq earlier this month. Before jetting off to the Middle East, he sat down with mediabistro.com to talk about reporting in conflict zones, the ups and downs of foreign correspondence, and how he feels about returning to Iraq.

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How did you get into journalism? Was it something you always wanted to do?
No, actually I hadn’t really imagined being a journalist. When I failed at getting a management consultant job, I interned at a little FM radio station at Martha’s Vineyard. Bill Clinton came to town and I followed him around as an intern. I thought it was the coolest thing. Things went from there.

You were a producer in CNN’s Moscow bureau in your 20s. What was it like to be abroad at a relatively young age?
It was an adventure. It was really exciting. I went on a trip to Russia and was getting job offers out of nowhere. I flew out there and found that you could call up bureaus and get meetings with bureau chiefs, whereas here in America I couldn’t even get past the door.

Describe your transition from working in television to radio. What spurred you to shift your professional direction in this way?
It was liberating. On the one hand, I felt a bit insecure because I lost the entourage of the sound man, the camera, and all that added infrastructure. Radio is very much a one-man band, it’s just you and a little microphone and ear buds. That was a real adjustment. Also, people react differently to the lens. Without the camera, people don’t act out as much. People are more relaxed and you can be much more discreet, and there are countries where that can help a lot. It gives you more freedom to move around and be a fly on the wall.

How has radio been affected by the rise of online journalism? What role does the Internet play in how you package your stories?
I can tell you where radio is now: I can be in some little village, interviewing somebody with my microphone, recorder, notebook, pen, and camera. I’m trying to juggle all these things at once. We’re already multitasking on such a level that it’s quite a challenge. But in some ways, it’s really fulfilling because you get to add images, print, and video to your radio report. Now when I see a story with a visual component, I get that much more excited because I know there’s the outlet for it now. We’ve hired a couple videographers and photographers here at NPR, which is funny for an organization called ‘National Public Radio.’

What do you think is the future of radio?
As long as there’s a society that’s trapped in cars for hours a day, we have a captive audience. A lot of people are asking what’s going to happen and a lot of people are nervous. We have a bit of a buffer, but things could change drastically. I should also say that I have a number of friends who have lost their jobs with newspapers because many [of them] have cut their foreign operations.

I feel a little bit more responsible because if I don’t report something that I see in a country, then I know that it will go unregistered.

The fear is that at a time where it seems we need more information about the world, there’s less of it out there. Sometimes I feel like the foreign correspondent is a dying breed. Even freelancers are having a harder time making ends meet because the newspapers don’t have the freelance budgets anymore. I’m by myself almost all the time now in these countries. It’s lonelier; you don’t have someone to bounce ideas off of or to share enthusiasm with. I feel a little bit more responsible because if I don’t report something that I see in a country then I know that it will go unregistered.

Which types of stories do you think are better told by radio than by a visual medium like television or Web video?
I’ll give you an example. One of the most intense moments of my career was when I was in a southern Iraqi town called Najaf. I was interviewing a man during Friday prayers next to a mosque. In the middle of the interview, a car bomb went off about a hundred feet from us. We captured that on audio as the tape was rolling. There’s something different about hearing the explosion and imagining it in your head. You have the sounds to guide you. You hear that spontaneous scream from the crowd. You hear — in the immediate moments afterwards — myself and the translator communicating and checking to make sure that we’re okay and that there’s no holes in us from the shrapnel. It’s one of the most terrifying pieces of media to listen to.

Some parts of the world are more tense, and it’s just easier to get into these places with a discreet microphone. You’re not as bogged down with all the technical aspects of production. In some ways, you can tell a very rich story because of that. You can find a very rich piece of audio texture — someone washing dishes or cleaning their gun — and then you fill in the space between that and someone talking. It’s just a different way of telling a story.

When have you been most afraid for your own personal safety while reporting abroad?

There was one incident about a year after that car bomb. I was driving to Najaf through Baghdad — through the so-called “triangle of death.” We had to drive through some very dangerous towns where journalists had just been kidnapped doing the same trip. To get to Najaf safely, or as safely as possible, my guide hid me under dirty laundry in the back seat. At some point on that journey, we came upon the aftermath of an ambush. A couple of Red Crescent trucks had been attacked and set on fire, right next to an empty police station. For some very terrifying minutes, I was convinced the car was going to come to a stop and I was going to be pulled out. I would be utterly powerless. It was an awful feeling. We moved through without being stopped and I went on to cover a battle where Marines were fighting Iraqi militants. That felt safer because I could judge the threat, I could see what was going on. In the car, I was just trapped in the back seat. That was a terrifying moment. After that tour, I asked not to go back to Baghdad. I didn’t really go back for two years, though I actually go back next week.

Sometimes when I stumble across a story that I know is important, I will contact other reporters and let them know that there is a humanitarian disaster going on. Otherwise, these stories won’t be on the radar.

How do you feel about going back?
My colleagues have been working there, and it’s my turn to do it again. It’s an important story. I guess I just have to trust myself and not take any stupid risks. I’m not sure what to expect this time because I think Baghdad transforms every year. The last time I was there, I was very surprised to see that private companies were driving around in these pickup trucks with gun carriers and armor. That hadn’t been there the year before. The city evolves as the threat evolves.

How do you insulate yourself from letting fear inhibit your work?
The curiosity and excitement motivates me — and it’s not all dangerous stuff. Sometimes you’re going to beautiful places and talking to interesting people. Just because you end up in a foreign country doesn’t mean it’s all dangerous. It’s also exotic and different. You get to try to communicate some of that culture back to America where people may not understand what it’s like in these countries.

How do you blow off steam when you’re working on a story far from home?
I run a lot. I found some pick-up soccer games here and there. In Kabul, I used to go horseback riding. I also used to go in Africa. I’m not much of a horseback-rider and I nearly killed myself a couple times. There was one time where I was galloping down this beach in the Ivory Coast at full speed, and then my saddle fell apart. I flew off of it and, fortunately, a wave was coming in and I landed in some water. In Afghanistan, there was a scene of me totally out of control, riding around this soccer field and Afghans staring at me.

Describe when your interactions with other foreign correspondents are friendliest, as well as when they are most competitive.
The correspondents are your lifeline, social network, and colleagues — all at the same time. I’m very dear friends with some of the correspondents in the places I’ve been. There’s so few foreign reporters in the countries I travel through that there isn’t that sort of competition. If anything, sometimes when I stumble across a story that I know is important, I will often contact other reporters and let them know that there is a humanitarian disaster going on. I’ll contact wire agencies. Otherwise, these stories won’t be on the radar back at the news hubs in the U.S. I will make a concerted effort to try to get other people to pay attention.

‘Journalists overseas are a kind of fraternity,’ you’ve said, indicating that you turn to them, rather than embassies, consulates, or even family and friends, in times of uncertainty or stress. Describe how foreign correspondents help one another abroad.
In the dangerous stuff, when you’re exploring places or when there’s a fluid situation with fighting, journalists are the people you consult with and talk with. Often when I’m going to a country that I haven’t been to or that I haven’t been to in a while, I’ll contact journalists there. There was actually a very interesting situation during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I was in northern Iraq, and journalists were spread out along a very long front. We would text message each other saying things like, ‘Iraqi artillery being fired here,’ ‘Americans conducting air-strikes here,’ and ‘Heading back to town, want to meet for lunch?’ It was very strange.

You have said that covering conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq have provided you with “on-the-job training.” Describe how that’s influenced how you report things out in your stories.
The best on-the-job training I had was being by myself in West Africa. That helped me deal with places like Afghanistan where you had no infrastructure, no electricity, and no telephones. It’s very different being in the field in the middle of nowhere versus being in a developed country where there are spokesmen and press releases.

I try to pick up very quickly what works and what doesn’t in terms of body language. There are also subjects you don’t want to address the wrong way.

The best lesson I was ever taught was when my boss said at one point during the Afghan war, ‘Forget the press releases and the press conferences coming out of the Pentagon, just report what you see. You’re the eyes and ears on the ground.’ That’s been a good rule to work with.

Upon joining NPR in December 2001 as a West Africa correspondent, how did you adjust the way you approached your work, versus how you worked while at CNN?
It was actually kind of scary at first because I had never been to Africa before. There was the race factor — the fact that I was the only white person anywhere for the first few days. I was scared to get out of the car. But then very quickly I got used to it, and it was great. It was more fun than Russia. Nigerians are great. They have a great sense of humor. That was an adjustment for sure. There’s cultural differences in all these places. I try to pick up very quickly what works and what doesn’t in terms of body language. There are also subjects you don’t want to address the wrong way. In polarized societies, you have to be really careful about saying the wrong thing about religion or a political group, or this or that. You kind of learn to fine-tune very quickly.

What was it like covering Central Asia and the Middle East for NPR following Sept. 11?
I just watched this sort of collision course between U.S. foreign policy and countries in the region escalate. This was not so much in terms of Afghanistan, but with Iraq. It just polarized everything and poisoned the atmosphere.

Can you describe what that looked like?
It looked like crowds burning American flags. It looked like the footage played on local television stations of Americans busting down doors in Iraq and kicking Iraqi people. Those images were played again, and again, and again in these Arab and Muslim countries. In Central Asia and the former Soviet Union, the word ‘democracy’ has become almost a joke. The U.S. invasion of Iraq seemed to give the go-ahead to every tin-pot dictator in the world to do whatever they want.

‘After Afghanistan, being in Northern Iraq seemed like a vacation,’ you’ve said. Exactly how did the two conflict zones differ so drastically?
Northern Iraq seemed like a vacation because it had more infrastructure. It had paved roads, it had kind of a service industry, it had some imports, and literacy rates were higher. It was just more comfortable.

When you were in Iraq, what was your relationship with American forces? How did your access to them play into your coverage?
During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, they were trying to be discreet and hide from the press. Later on, they weren’t as worried and we could sit next to the Special Forces. We could actually watch them call in air-strikes without being embedded. At that point, there wasn’t an embed option there. But if you just asked, “Hey can I stick around?” sometimes those guys were very cooperative. Later on, the whole thing became more structured and the embed system was set up.

What do you think are the pros and cons of embedding?
When you’re embedded, you’re looking through the lens of the U.S. military in a foreign country. You’re on a base with them, driving around in their vehicles. You’re in armor with an armed group. It’s a very different perspective — just like if I were running around with an Iraqi insurgent group or militia, or if I was staying with an Iraqi family, I would see the world from a very different perspective.

Hopefully the public trusts us that we don’t have an agenda. We’re just trying to tell you about this really complicated world and bring it home to people.

Do you find it difficult to keep from letting your political views infiltrate your reporting? Why or why not?
You always have to try to be as objective as possible. I think I’m conservative about the language I use, and I try to let the people speak for themselves. We also have a pretty rigorous editing process. If I slip up in one place or another, I have an editor who will be very quick to tell me if something’s inappropriate. Fortunately that doesn’t happen too much. You have to be conscious of your biases and try to paint as balanced a picture as possible. Hopefully the public trusts us that we don’t have an agenda — we’re just trying to tell you about this really complicated world and bring it home to people.

What does a typical day look like when you’re covering a foreign country?
For example in Libya, the government assigns you a translator-guide. I would start the day trying to get some newspaper articles from the Internet and then start working the phones — trying desperately to set up interviews with everyone from academics to government officials to people from the United Nations. Libya is a very closed-off society so it was very difficult to get somebody to talk to me there. And then it was just running out, drinking endless coffee and tea, talking to this person or that person. I just try to figure out a country that’s very different from my own and then explain it to folks at home.

What do your editors at NPR do that helps you most while you’re out in the field covering stories?
They’ve had some really good ideas. They’ve spent decades reporting in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. They’ve seen a lot and done a lot. Experience is vital to avoid certain traps. I’ve picked up some skills along the way as well. When you get to a country you want to be as open minded as possible and just start talking to people — from the laborer down the street, to the businessman who has a European passport and will offer you a Scotch, to the priest who is very conservative, to a woman. It’s tough in societies where you’re not allowed to approach one group or another because of various restrictions. I’ve been invited into homes in Iraq, where you sit down in the living room with the husband. He’ll go to the kitchen door and a hand will come out and pass him some tea. You’re not even allowed to see this woman, and yet this guy is playing Jay-Z in his car when he’s driving around.

What are the major issues you cover now that you’re based in Turkey?
There is the constant dilemma of the role that religion and Islam play in a country that is officially supposed to be a secular republic. There’s a clash between an elected government that wants more religious freedom for Muslims, and a bureaucratic elite that’s closely associated with the military that views any religion, especially Islam, with distrust. Right now, the secularists are trying to ban the governing political party from politics for the next five years. Turkey is interesting because it is a Muslim-populated country that has been going through changes and reform, not at the barrel of a gun but through a democratically elected party that is tied to Islam.

Do you foresee being there for the next few years?
I’ve been there for the past five years. My boss has proposed other posts, but it’s a very beautiful city. Istanbul is a tough city to leave.

Will you ever report from America?

I went on a reporting trip last month to southern Missouri and met with a family that I’m doing a profile of. It was like visiting a foreign country where everybody speaks my language. It was very fascinating. I’d like to do some more of that.

What do you consider the highlight of your journalism career so far?
A highlight would be running into Kabul the morning after the Taliban fled town — that was pretty incredible. It was also exciting to be with the Kurds when Saddam was overthrown. It’s also the funny moments that stick out — like coming across a guy in Libya with a Castro beard and a Che Guevara beret who’s a hydraulic geologist expert.

Another highlight was during the Israeli-Hezbollah war. One day, we went to a town that had just been hit by a series of air-strikes. I watched bodies get pulled out of flattened buildings. We got to the third of three buildings and somebody said, “There’s someone alive down there. She’s stuck.” The rescue workers just kept digging and digging. I was over the hole with a microphone and I could hear her screaming. I stayed there for hours. Sure enough, close to sunset, they managed to pull this woman out. I had seen so much death and destruction for those six weeks that this woman being pulled out was somewhere deep down very symbolic for me. I just thought, “There’s still hope in the world.”

One of the saddest points of my career was writing Marla Ruzicka’s obituary after she died in a suicide bombing. This was a young woman who went to Afghanistan and Iraq to help war victims. She went on her own dime and on her own savings. In writing her obituary, I listened to some of the audio from some of the interviews we’d done and heard her incredible will power to change the world for the better. She made a huge impact on a lot of people.

Watson’s tips for success
1. Forget the press releases and spokespeople: Be the eyes and ears on the ground
2. Be open-minded: Talk to as many people as you can
3. Be conscious of your biases: Paint as balanced a picture as possible
4. Look for a visual component:: Given the rise of online journalism, be sure to complement a radio piece with images
5. Remember that it’s not all dangerous: It’s also exotic and exciting

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Kathryn Carlson is an editorial intern at mediabistro.com and a graduate journalism student at New York University.

Born and raised in New England and a hardcore Boston Red Sox fan, Seth Meyers has immersed himself firmly within New York‘s media scene. As a cast member on Saturday Night Live for seven seasons, Meyers wraps up his second as the show’s head writer this weekend. He spoke at the Time 100 Gala, and next month he’ll host the 12th annual Webby Awards Celebration — the culmination of Internet Week New York. Meyers was also one of the most visible stars on the picket line in New York during the two-month writer’s strike last winter.
On Saturday, Meyers will grace the “Weekend Update” set for the last time during SNL‘s 33rd season, as the strike-shortened season comes to a close. We spoke with Meyers earlier this week about the show, the strike and the Jimmy Fallon late-night news.

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Name: Seth Meyers
Position: Head writer and cast member, Saturday Night Live
Resume: Joined the SNL cast in 2001 and became co-head writer with Tina Fey in January 2006. Became head writer in September 2006.
Birthdate: December 28, 1973
Hometown: Bedford, NH
Education: Northwestern University
Marital Status: Single
First section of the Sunday Times: Sports
Favorite TV show: The Wire or Battlestar Galactica
Last book read: Scoop by Evelyn Waugh
Guilty Pleasure: FIFA 2008 on Xbox

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SNL has become part of the history of the 2008 presidential primary season, as the show was credited with originally helping Hillary Clinton by pointing out the media’s favoritism of Barack Obama. Then this week, SNL had a biting portrayal of Clinton that’s already being called an Obama booster. What do you think about how SNL has become part of the political process this year?
We do a show a week and there is this sense to parse it a little thin and be like, “Oh my god, they’re supporting Hillary,” when of course we just go with the flow of what’s happening that week. We did feel that there was comedy to come from the fact that the media was being really hard on her early on, and we do think there’s comedy now from the fact that she’s staying in the race. So we were always confident throughout the whole process that we would go where we thought the story was. You know, media parses this election so thinly it’s like bowling scores. So I’m not surprised that they threw us [SNL] in as well.

It seems like there’s certainly a lot of material for you guys.
Well I think that’s why. The microscope is so uncaring these days. In every given week, there’s just a totally new story that we poke fun at, so it’s been great.

The season finale is on Saturday, and it will be the last time SNL can go on record on the Democratic race. At the very least there’ll be a candidate chosen by the time the next show is aired in September. Is there any idea of wanting to leave one final mark on the primary election?
Unfortunately, just because it’s our season finale doesn’t mean that there’s anything else final about what’s happening right now. So you more want to do the show like you do every other week, which is what happens from Monday through Saturday of this week. So I think that will be what we’ll do. I don’t think there will be any resolution by next Saturday.

One of the things I read was about this term “clapter” that Tina Fey said you coined, where the audience is applauding rather than laughing, and the fact that you want to avoid that. How do you avoid that when you’re performing and writing political comedy?
You know, sometimes you can’t. Sometimes you write a really good joke and unfortunately — well, not unfortunately — but sometimes you write a really good joke and it hits to the bone of the way people feel, and they will applaud. I think the goal is, you also hope it’s funny enough that they laugh as well. That refers to the times when we would write something that only hits that part of people where they agree, and misses the funny bone. You try to hit both at the same time, both people’s passion for it and also the part of the brain that makes them laugh.

When you’re sitting around the “Weekend Update” table, are you able to get the feeling of what will get the “clapter” and what will just be laughter?
Sure. Well to begin, we all have certain points of view, too. Sometimes you’ll look at a joke and you’ll feel so strongly about the point it’s making that you’ll go, “Well I’d really like to do this one.” And someone will point out, “Well you won’t get a response, it might just seem like playing to the audience.” And obviously we try to play to the audience as far as making them laugh, but you try to avoid that if you can. It’s unavoidable, by the way. The worst time is when you say something negative about someone and the audience gets on board with applause. If it’s not equally funny, sometimes it feels a little mean-spirited. But you just try to stay vigilant towards it and I think we do a pretty decent job.

The Internet seems to have had an impact on SNL starting a couple years ago, with digital shorts added as a regular fixture. Then SNL moved out of YouTube and into embeddable clips this year, and last week it introduced the SNL Politics Web site. What do you think of SNL‘s involvement with the Internet?

Well in a lot of ways, some of it happened naturally. We hired three funny guys who made their hay making Internet videos, and that sort of happened for us, which is really nice. But also — as the Internet developed — I think SNL pieces are the perfect size for the Internet. So I think there’s a marriage that was meant to happen, and it was just a matter of having the technology kept up. I have to tip my cap to Hulu — I think it’s a great site. The nice thing about working for a place like NBC is that they put the effort behind us to make the show as well-set for the future as possible.

I listen to NPR in the morning because it’s a news source you can listen to while you play video games. So I can merge two of my worlds in one awesome newsgathering and entertainment-playing moment.

It seems, with the embeddable videos, that SNL‘s almost asking for blogs to pick up these videos and post them on their sites.
It’s great, and embeddable clips with ads are kind of genius.

During the writer’s strike, you were one of the most visible stars on the picket line from start to finish — you were even handed the “perfect attendance award.” Looking back, what are your thoughts on the outcome?
You know, unfortunately the outcome with all strikes is nobody wins. Anybody who looks at the final tally would see it’s a really hard time for everybody. There were a lot of innocent victims on either side — our crews and whatnot — that got hurt by our time on the picket lines. So it’s an unfortunate time. I hope that the agreement is at least a move in the right direction for the future of online content. The nice thing for us was, if you ever needed a reason to appreciate our jobs more than we did, the strike certainly was it. Coming back was an incredible relief, and it’s just nice to be with the show again.

An effect of the strike was that this season was shortened to 12 episodes, eight fewer than usual. Were there any talks to add more episodes?
Once the schedule is set, it’s hard to mess around with it. The good news for us is we’re coming back earlier in the fall. And we’ll hopefully do some more shows next year, so I think we’ll make it up that way. But it does feel like an antiquated season. It’s been unfortunate. On the upside, I was really happy with the eight weeks we had after the strike.

It seems like you really jumped right into the fray as far as getting involved in what’s being talked about.
Yeah, well I think across television now, you’re seeing now what people wrote after the strike. And I feel like everyone was really ready to get back to work.

Can you tell me a little about the process behind “Weekend Update”? What sort of resources does the “Weekend Update” staff employ in gathering the stories and jokes for the show? Where do you go for your media consumption?
Different people do it different places. I listen to NPR in the morning because it’s a news source you can listen to while you play video games. So I can merge two of my worlds in one awesome newsgathering and entertainment-playing moment. I certainly search on the Web. I’m a New York Times guy, Salon, Slate, are Web sites I read pretty regularly.

There’s a separate staff of writers specifically for Weekend Update that work on the show. How does the process evolve during the week, as it gets closer to the show on Saturday?
Well, again, we have part of the Weekend Update team that’s constantly working on what are the stories of the week, both the big ones and the small minutiae ones. And they’re writing jokes for everyday news. Then, on Friday night, Amy [Poehler] and I will sit around with the Update writers and read about 800 jokes, and we’ll probably like 100. Then, our Update producer Charlie Grandy goes off and picks the 30 we’re going to do at dress rehearsal. But there are also the 70 we didn’t pick, and if Amy and I feel strongly about those, we can sometimes try to slide one of those in. And the number of jokes that get in by air is about 16 to 20. But sometimes they’ll be one big story that we haven’t hit or something that happens Friday night. The joke writers for “Update” are so talented, it’s rare that we’re going to miss anything.

I consider myself competition with Anderson Cooper. He’s a fellow anchor. I know he might think I’m some fake news guy, but I do consider us now competing for market share.

What if something breaks Saturday at 9:30 p.m.? Is there a push to try to get that into the live show?
The one thing about it is, there’s a push to alert people. I’ll say what happens more than anything else is with like Game 7’s of World Series: Those are the things that happen late at night, and sometimes we try to find a way to put it in. And it’s weird to make a joke about something that usually the audience would not know, depending on where they’d been during the night. But it is fun sometimes to tell people, “the Yankees won” and make a joke about it. Although, delightfully for me, the Yankees have not won a World Series since I’ve been at Saturday Night Live.

And your Red Sox have won a couple.
They have. Two, technically.

I’m curious about the mood of writing for SNL. You’ve been a member of the cast and the writing team for seven years now. There are a lot of different places where your sketch could be cut from the show — if it goes well in rehearsals, then at dress gets no response and is cut; or , if it killed at dress, but was cut during the live show because of a time issue. Can you describe what that process is like?
Sure. We do the table read on Wednesday with about 45 pieces, and pick about 12 to produce. And then we perform them at dress rehearsal, at eight o’clock [p.m.] on Saturday. And I’d say of those 12, we probably have to cut it down to about eight elements for the show. And I will say, the longer I’ve been on the show there’s this relief when something gets cut. Like when you say something killed at dress and doesn’t make it to the show — that doesn’t happen that frequently. The best stuff does make it. Every now and then, on a super-hot show, you might lose a piece that you really liked. But it can live again. If it was that good, it usually finds a way to come back. But the other thing is, when you get a piece in the show that you’re worried about, that played soft at dress but for some reason made it to the live show — I realize when I first started on the show, [I was] just so desperate to get on air. But now, in my seventh season, I’d rather see it not get on than get on if I don’t think it’s going to play.

As head writer now, your screen time has gone way down. Do you ever secretly wish Anderson Cooper[whom Meyers impersonates on SNL] gets in some scandal so you can get on the air more in sketches?
No, I have to say I’ve found of my acting style [that] it works very well behind a desk. I guess for Anderson Cooper, that works as well. Now I consider myself competition with Anderson Cooper. He’s a fellow anchor. I know he might think I’m some fake news guy, but I do consider us now competing for market share.

How do you think your career would be different if John Kerry [whom Meyers also plays on SNL] had become president?
I don’t think about it that often, just like an hour in the morning when I wake up and for an hour before bed. The main thing is, I really think I would have had a shot to go to the White House, and that really would have been pretty awesome. But it just wasn’t meant to be. I will say that outside of the Kerry family, I’m probably the most disappointed at the way it turned out. I did recently run into Senator Kerry at a Red Sox-Cleveland ALCS game. And the Red Sox took it in Cleveland. And we were saying it was nice to be standing there watching someone from Massachusetts beat a team from Ohio.

I guess he couldn’t be doing that if he was President.
That’s true. At least he got to go to a game.

You are working for SNL at the end of its 33rd season. Is the history intimidating, or is it exciting? What is it like being at a show with such a rich history?
It’s really all those things at once. You’re constantly competing with people’s memories of the show, but at the same time it’s the excitement of being surrounded by so much history. It’s also one of the last bastions of what live television used to be. So it’s not just the history of the show, but its nice to sort of be at the beginning of television and that thrill of running around at the last minute-type TV thing. But ultimately, you just don’t have time for it because of how intense the schedule is. Maybe in the long summer months, you sort of think every now and then about how you measure up to the past, but while you’re doing the show, there’s just not enough time.

When you took over “Weekend Update” two seasons ago, the cast underwent a major makeover, being trimmed down for the first time in a while. What do you think of the idea of having a trimmer cast and — I’m not sure how much you’re allowed to say — with the finale approaching is there anyone you’d like to say might be cleaning out their dressing room for the last time?
[Laughs] I think everybody we have this year is going to be back next year. But I will say that the upside of a leaner cast is that there’s more responsibility that everybody shares. When you have 15, 16 people, you can disappear for a week, and it would not be a big deal. But now there really is this sense that we’re going to need everybody, every week, and I think that has brought the best out of everybody.

Last thing to settle an IMDB/Wikipedia question — the movie Key Party which you’re writing and starring in, apparently… is that happening? What’s the status with that?
I just submitted another draft. So that’s sort of where it’s at right now.

And it’s based on the sketch with you and Amy Poehler, right?
It’s inspired by: I don’t want people to think I’m trying to turn a four-minute sketch into a feature-length movie. I didn’t have stage directions — basically it’s a lot more stage directions.

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Steve Krakauer is associate editor of TVNewser.

As the 2008 political season heats up, networks turn to their anchors and correspondents with experience covering political races and the political system. They inundate the airwaves with politicians and advisors who can explain the twists and turns of the presidential race. ABC News does one better — they have an anchor with both kinds of experience.

Every Sunday morning, viewers watch George Stephanopoulos, This Week‘s anchor. He has been in the national spotlight ever since bursting onto the scene as a 31-year-old member of Bill Clinton’s ’92 presidential campaign. When he moved away from the White House and onto the airwaves in 1997, he jumped from analyst to anchor in five years. Now, as This Week gets ready to move into the Newseum, D.C.’s newest tourist attraction, the anchor prepares for the excitement of the general election.

Stephanopoulos spoke with mediabistro.com following his March 16 broadcast of This Week about the 2008 election, the move to the “amazing home” at the Newseum, and how Michael J. Fox studied to portray him in The American President.

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Name: George Stephanopoulos
Position: ABC’s chief Washington correspondent, anchor, This Week with George Stephanopoulos
Resume: Senior advisor to the president for policy and strategy in the Clinton administration. Author of All Too Human, a No. 1 New York Times best-seller on President Clinton’s first term and the 1992 and 1996 Clinton/Gore campaigns. Joined ABC News in 1997 as a news analyst for This Week. Began anchoring This Week in 2002 and was named chief Washington correspondent in 2005.
Birthdate: Feb. 10, 1961
Hometown: Fall River, MA
Education: Master’s degree in theology at Balliol College, Oxford University, England, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University in political science
Marital status: Married to Ali Wentworth with two daughters — Elliott and Harper
First section of the Sunday Times: Travel
Favorite television show: In Treatment, Head Case
Last book read: A Matter of Justice by David Nichols
Guilty pleasure: French fries

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The 2008 presidential race, specifically the Democratic race, has dominated television news. What do you think has caused this excitement from the public and this scrutiny and coverage from the press?
People get that this is a big election. It’s the first time in more than 80 years now that we’ve had a sitting president and vice president not on the ticket. [The public knows]that there are big issues at stake, with the war and the economy. And we’ve got big stars in the race, from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama to John McCain. It has just been a fascinating journey.

You talk about the big stars, obviously the strong storylines with Clinton and Obama and their historic runs, but even before that, with Huckabee and Romney. Do you think that the star power or the story lines that are coming out is a reflection of the candidates themselves, or is it being brought on by the media?

I think it’s embedded in the race. I don’t think the media’s doing anything to the race or changing anything in the race or finding anything in the race that’s not there. I think you’ve seen a race where you’ve got record amounts of participation by the public, especially on the Democratic side, records amounts of money raised. You’ve had twists and turns on both sides. I mean, who would have predicted eight months ago that John McCain would come back from being flat on his back to win the nomination? Who would have thought a year ago that Barack Obama would be in the lead and that Hillary Clinton would come back from three near political death experiences? It’s just been a fascinating race. No one believed that Mike Huckabee would be a factor as recently as a year ago, and he upended the race, he played a huge factor. So I just think there was a lot to grab on to.

People care about this race, and I think the coverage reflects that.

It seems like also with the media, you see before New Hampshire with the whole “death of Hillary Clinton’s campaign” and then back into the rebirth, the coverage is huge with each of these twists and turns.

That’s because people are paying attention. We’ve been doing a poll at ABC for over a year asking how people are paying attention. We saw late last spring the numbers in the high 60s, which is the kind of intensity you normally see around convention time. We dealt with that a full year and a half before Election Day. Now, by the time we got to the primaries, it was up in the high 70s and low 80s. I mean, people care about this race, and I think the coverage reflects that.

You anchored debates back in August when the field was wide open and just
a few had taken place at that point. It was just announced that you will co-moderate a debate coming up next month. Are you surprised that after dozens of debates there is very little debate fatigue and the ratings are consistently through the roof?

When you’ve got a high intensity, high stakes, and a race with high-wattage candidates, you get numbers. I mean there’s just no question about it. And I don’t think anyone expected, really, the race to go on this long or that we’d be having a debate in late April, mid-April, that could be decisive, but we are. And the debates have been good television. I think there’s important substance there. I think people have learned a lot in these debates.

Later this month [on April 20], you will begin broadcasting This Week from the Newseum, just opening up. I was thinking about an analogy — that it will essentially be like broadcasting a baseball game every week from the Baseball Hall of Fame.
[Laughs] Exactly.

Are you excited to have This Week originate from what will be the preeminent news museum?

I just can’t wait. It’s such an amazing home for This Week, and I think it’s going to be one of the top destinations in Washington. It’s got so much history about the media, about the news business, packed into a single building. And for us, it offers so much. We’ll be broadcasting from a studio that overlooks the Capitol. We have the ability to go to a theater that can hold town meetings and other forums and debates. There are so many different venues that we’re going to be able to use to punctuate our stories and our interviews. I think it’s going to be terrific.

It’s an honor for me to be able to do my work in the shadow of the Capitol, on Pennsylvania Avenue.

You mentioned Washington, D.C. as this tourist destination with all the memorials, all the monuments there. What does the Newseum add to the landscape, and how does it reflect the city?

Well it’s the first museum dedicated to the news business and to journalism, and I think it just rounds out all of the other keystones of Washington, D.C. You know they call journalism the fourth estate. You’ve got the homes of the three branches of government, the Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, and also now a museum dedicated to the fourth estate. So I think it adds something important, something vital, that is just essential to our democracy.

Have you been over to the space much? What can you say about how it will impact the show? How will the look change?

The main studio is going to be overlooking the Capitol, so people will know where we’re situated every Sunday morning. And it’s an honor for me to be able to do my work in the shadow of the Capitol, on Pennsylvania Avenue, right between the White House and the Capitol. The first day I came to D.C., I was a junior in college and I was interning with a congresswoman, and I’ll never forget the sight of that Capitol dome up against the sky on an early summer day. Not only what it looked like, but what it meant. It was the tenor of our democracy. And to be able to do my show each week in sight of that, and to be able to show our viewers in a very tangible way where we are and what we’re about I think is a great gift.

You’ve interviewed many key members of the Bush administration, including
President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Condi Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. In
this last year of the Bush administration now, how do you think they will be remembered and what do you think of the media’s coverage during the eight years?

That’s a great question. The administration is going to be defined, I think, by the events of Sept. 11 and its aftermath and of course the war in Iraq. President Bush and his team believe that in the long run history will bear them out, that the sacrifices we made will turn out to be worth it. Right now that looks like a difficult case to make, but they have seen progress in the last year. I think that’s going to be the defining event of the Bush administration, for good or bad. Some will depend on what happens with the economy in the last year, but lots of presidents face ups and down in the economy.

You’ve been a guest on The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, and a lot has been made recently with Saturday Night Live as changing the tenor of the media coverage. What effect do you think these shows have on the media?

You know one of the reasons we started doing “The Sunday Funnies” on This Week several years ago now was because we realized how much news, how much information voters, especially young voters, were getting from these comedy shows. I mean the figures for 18- to 30-year-olds [show] a good 25 percent get their news from these shows. They’re an important outlet, and obviously politicians have figured that out. It’s now a ritual of political life for candidates to go on all these shows. They have to do those shows the same way they do This Week or Face the Nation or Meet the Press. That’s something that’s just a fact of life right now, and I think that by giving our viewers on Sunday morning a look into how the comedians have been covering the political news all week, we add to their knowledge.

There’s a great race going on in the Democratic race, but there is a ratings race between NBC and ABC when it comes to the evening news or the Sunday morning shows. Do you think about it? Does it inform any decisions you make with the program?

How can you not think about it? Obviously you have to think about it. They don’t dictate our content in any way, but we’re aware of them and we always try to figure out what we can learn from them, and of course we want to do as well as we can.

Now one of those decisions that may be a ratings thing, or maybe not since it didn’t actually help the ratings, was that ABC chose to go with five hours of coverage on Super Tuesday — far more than the other networks, with two hours for CBS and one hour for NBC. Tell me about that choice, and for you, was it exciting to have those five hours to really go in depth?

I was proud that our bosses would dedicate that kind of time to the coverage, and thrilled to have the chance to be a part of it, no question about it. And I do think it was a huge civic event, but it turned out not to be a decisive night, as we’ve seen. I think it was the right thing for Disney and ABC to do, to dedicate that kind of time to election coverage that night, and I think we were able to give our viewers a real sense of the moment, and the importance of what was at stake.

To do our job well, that means we have to stand apart from the decision-makers, and ask questions that are on people’s minds.

One of those reasons that NBC may have chosen to go with the one hour was because they had the cable outlet. Do you think it hurts ABC News not to have a 24-hour cable outlet? I know there’s the Web that changes that a little bit, but do you think it would help to have a 24-hour station like that?

It may. It’s hard for me to know; I don’t understand the business well enough. I know personally there are days when I’m glad we don’t have it, being, you know, tethered to a camera all day, and there are days I’m pining for it. If nothing big is happening, then we can get the time on the network. I don’t know the costs and benefits either way.

I was watching This Week this morning, and I know it was brought up that you have experience both in politics and covering it. Do you see the roles as working in opposition or in conjunction with each other?

Well there’s always a tension there. What I think we’re in the business of doing is trying to inform viewers and educate them and get them all the tools they need to make a decision that will affect politics and government. So we’re a part of the broader civic and political process, no question about it. To do our job well, that means we have to stand apart from the decision-makers, and ask questions that are on people’s minds so we can get the answers that people need to have.

What do you and ABC News do to handle that separation and get the news to the people, while having the relationship with the politicians?

I think what we try to do throughout this election, and what we always try to convey, is what’s at stake for our viewers. We try to provide the best analysis we can to give people a reason to come to ABC and that’s our insight, and our reporting and our ability to put the issues in context and let people make up their own minds.

Without reading too much into it, which character do you prefer: Michael J. Fox as Lewis Rothschild in The American President or Rob Lowe as Sam Seaborn in The West Wing?
I thought you were going to say Brad Whitford!

See, I was reading up on it a little bit, and that’s what I got. I got Lewis Rothschild and Sam Seaborn as the characters [that were based on you].

No, my job was a little bit more of the part that Brad played. [Pause, laughs] Excellent question.

Should we leave it there?
I’ll be a politician here; I am flattered by both portrayals, and I hope that Brad and Michael weren’t embarrassed to have to portray my character. Actually, I remember that Michael J. Fox, back when I was in the White House, came by and spent a couple of hours there, and he really absorbed an awful lot in a short period of time. My mom said, “Boy, he got your walk down.”

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Steve Krakauer is associate editor at TVNewser.

Travel writer Chuck Thompson’s new book, Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer, blows the lid off the glossy brochure, luxury resort world of travel publishing. His work has appeared in publications such as American Way, Esquire, Men’s Journal, Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic Adventure, Islands,and the Los Angeles Times. He was also the editor of Travelocity magazine. Below he shares some of the pitfalls of the travel writing industry. He knows because he’s done it himself.

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What’s the background for the book? It seems to me that a large part of it was that you wanted to tell the stories that never made it into print. You also had a bone to pick with the travel writing industry.

That’s definitely part of it. It’s not an f-you to anybody, but it’s definitely my reaction to writing this kind of stuff for five or 10 years and getting frustrated with never being able to write the way I wanted to. I didn’t get into the racket to be a travel writer; I got into it because I wanted to write. But when you start writing for travel magazines, you adopt certain conventions. You write the way your editors are instructing you to write. After awhile, you sort of start figuring out what they want, so it’s this kind of organic process that turns you into this kind of writer. You know without being told to end all of your paragraphs with a Web site or a phone number or a price point. So that got kind of frustrating, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of room to be a good writer in any of that of stuff. That was definitely when I started thinking about putting the book together. Definitely some of it comes off as an angry reaction to the travel press and the travel industry, and that’s true. But I certainly don’t hate all of it. I say nice things about a lot of people and places. But it’s the negative stuff that you remember.

Have you had any fallout with your magazine editors?

For the most part, it’s been really very positive, particularly with people I’ve worked with and even a lot of people I didn’t know. I think all of this stuff really does resonate with a lot of editors and writers who are sick of being shackled by the demands of advertisers or the pressures of publishers.

However, I don’t want to give the impression that it’s been entirely positive. I’ve gotten some angry emails and. There are a lot of Web threads that use the book as a jumping off point to discuss travel writing. And a lot of those topics are not very complimentary to me at all. “Who is this asshole?” “Who does he think he is?” A lot of people professionally have weighed in, and it hasn’t been entirely positive.

What’s the next step?

I’m working on another a travel book for Holt [Paperbacks] that will come out in 2009. The magazines I’m writing for now are non-travel magazines, like Men’s Journal, Esquire, and
Maxim. And those are the kinds of magazines where it’s much easier to write about travel because there is no real pressure from travel advertisers.

What about travel publications that have a no-freebie policy for their writers? Does that maintain more journalistic integrity?

Here’s the deal with no-freebies policies. They make high and mighty sanctimonious claims that, “we do not accept freebies.” The implication is that copy is pure and unadulterated. Well, that’s fine, they may not be taking the comps and the junkets, but they are taking a hell of a lot of advertising from the places that they cover. You can go right now to the news stand and pick up a copy of any magazine. Look at the feature well and what is that magazine covering? They are covering Singapore this month. It’s an eight-page spread on how Singapore is emerging as a fashion capital with a nice sidebar about all the cool and hip neighborhoods in Singapore. Cool. Flip in the back of the book and there are four full pages from Singapore airlines and Singapore.com. And they’re portraying Singapore as the fashion trendsetter of Asia. I don’t know what the going rate is, but I can tell you that in a major mainstream travel publication, they are probably getting six figures for those four full pages of ads. They don’t need the comp.

So now you’ve written the book, you’ve been very outspoken about [the ills of the travel industry], but you are also at a point in your career where you now have another book deal coming. Personally, you don’t have to worry about the fallout. But what about someone who is new in the field?

The larger implication of your question is that “you’ve made your money, you can go shit in the bed now.” The fact is that every freelancer struggles…I do have to worry about selling to magazines and keeping a decent reputation and not being the big asshole that is going to flame you after I write for you. I’m scrambling for work like everybody else.

If you want to be a travel writer, expect to compromise on what you consider to be good writing.

But you are more established.

I agree, totally right. When I people ask me for advice, or they tell me that they want to become travel writers, I tell them don’t become a travel writer if you want to become a writer. And don’t become a travel writer if you think are just going for the fun or the free trips. It’s research, it’s collecting facts, and talking to a lot of people that you really don’t want to talk to.

One thing that a lot of people miss about this book is that it’s really a memoir disguised as a travel book. And that’s kind of how I look at it, and that’s how I look at the type of travel I’ve done. If I was that mythical young writer you are talking about, I’d travel to Stockholm and write about the music scene there or go to Mexico and write about the food or the politics. If you want to be a travel writer, expect to compromise on what you consider to be good writing. If you can live with that, cool, and you know what, I don’t think that’s all bad. I lived with that, I did that myself for a long time. I am still doing that. Any writer has to admit that, particularly working with magazines and newspapers, that there is always a sacrifice. It’s never exactly how you want it.

I’m not really condemning people that are doing this, because I did it. If you want to pay me enough, I’ll go do it again. I’m just saying how it is. The other thing, talking about reasons for writing the book, is that I kind of wanted to talk about the travel racket and the travel writing that I’ve done the way that I talk about it to my friends.

Most of the interest in this book is around my critique of the travel industry. I marketed it that way, and it’s definitely a running theme of the book. But, really, my absolute main goal for this book was for it to be entertaining and to get someone to turn the page. For me, [entertainment] is humor, maybe a little bit of insight and once in awhile a poignant moment or two.

Your book includes a chapter on getting Travelocity off the ground and your grand plans about really doing something different. Is there any room today in the travel industry for a publication that does something different? Or maybe another way to look at it is if you were relaunching Travelocity now, what would you do differently?

I used to be very bullish on that proposition. I used to think there was a lot of room to do a travel magazine in the way that readers deserve. Immediately after Travelocity went under, several people involved with that magazine rallied around and, as they do at all magazines when they die, they started thinking about how to resurrect this idea. As the years went by, I’ve grown much less confident that such a magazine would succeed in the marketplace. The economic model for travel magazines is such that without the major advertisers, it just can’t happen.

Every few years, a new travel magazine will pop up. Escape was one of those. Printing costs and travel costs conspire to bring them down. With the way that the market is set up right now, even for a really good kick-ass news stand travel magazine, I wouldn’t want to be the one putting money behind it. I want to read it, but I don’t want to have a financial investment in it.

One last thing. You talk about something you call the travel writer’s imperative. As a travel writer, these kinds of typical phrases become so ingrained in the way you write. So how do you break the habit?

The travel writer’s imperative is that style of writing that directs readers to do something specific, like, “Be sure to snack on the seaweed-encrusted cashew nuts.” As Ernest Hemingway said, “There’s no such thing as great writing, only great rewriting.” I rewrite everything I do 20 or 30 or more times. But two or three of those reads I save exclusively for what I call my “cliché watch.” On those reads, I just go through my copy specifically looking for clichés or lazy writing and pull them all out. The frightening thing is, as much as I hate clichés, I write them into my copy all the time without even realizing it. And those things will pass through two or three drafts before I sit there and get grimy and look at every single word. It blows me away.

And I use the imperative voice. In fact, my editor for this book, Sara Knight, liked my section on the travel writer’s imperative, and then a chapter later, she says, “Here are two examples of your travel writers’ imperative, you’d better rewrite that.” I look at it, and damn, she’s right. I just did the same thing I told people not to do. I’m guilty of everything in this book. That’s how I know that it’s true.

Except there’s one thing I haven’t done. I have not used the word “tasty” to describe a guitarist’s licks. I’m not guilty of that.

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Thompson’s tips on the do’s of travel writing:

1. Be honest. “That doesn’t necessarily mean pointing out the bad things. It means not writing about the things you don’t know about.”
2. Be funny. “For me, [entertainment] is humor, maybe a little bit of insight and once in awhile a poignant moment.”
3. Do some real research. “Find something really interesting that is going on in this location right now. Not just the bogus restaurant scene or the new outlet malls. Honest to God real social issues.”
4. You don’t really have to be a “travel writer” in order to travel and write. “You can write about all sorts of things — politics, sports, environment, immigration, movies, gardening, architecture, food, art, whatever — and still travel.”
5. Pitch ideas, don’t fish for assignments. That’s the sign of a rank amateur. (As a magazine editor, it always amazed me how many writers would simply email me out of the blue and expect to be given assignments.) Don’t waste an editor’s time unless you have a legitimately interesting story to pitch. Even if they don’t buy that one, if you pitch in a smart way, they’ll be more likely to consider your next idea.

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Charlotte West is an American writer living in Stockholm, Sweden.