“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.

For the past 15 years, Amy Goldwasser has written and edited at magazines from Seventeen to The New Yorker, Outside to Vogue, The New York Times Magazine to Metropolis. She’s also a longtime volunteer at the Lower Eastside Girls Club, where she was astounded by the quality of the girls’ work and inspired to bring teenage writing to a greater audience. Edited by Goldwasser, Red: The next generation of American writers — teenage girls — on what fires up their lives today collects 58 essays by teenage girls on topics ranging from gym class and global warming to suicide attempts. While the provocative content creates a new standard of writing for its teen genre, Red also serves as a valuable model for bringing underappreciated voices to a mainstream audience, across media. “The whole idea of Red is that the creativity at the root always comes from the girls,” says Goldwasser. “What we do is provide professionals, whether that’s an editor, a music supervisor, a fashion designer, whoever can make it happen.” Goldwasser sat down after a recent reading in Los Angeles to discuss the response to the book, the challenges of working with teen writers, and the importance of authenticity.

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You’ve expressed frustration about not being able to publish more teen voices. Did Red come out of your experience at magazines where you couldn’t accomplish this?

I tried to start teen-written columns at Seventeen and then at New York, a City Girl column. Both times the submissions I got were incredible, but things don’t happen at magazines for various reasons. So I’d end up leaving consulting jobs with these fat files of wonderful submissions from teen girls.

And no one would want them?

No, it wasn’t that at all, and people were really excited about them. It’s just that the work expires when you’re dealing with writers this young. So you can’t three years later say, that didn’t work for the redesign of New York but I want to do it here, because the girls have moved on. And I felt terrible I was wasting their essays. But the good news is that teenage girls write really quickly.

Yes, that’s something you say in your introduction. The culture of being a teenager now means you’re always writing: You have a MySpace page, you’re texting with your thumbs all day, you have a blog. Would you say, get me a few pages of work and they’d crank it out, no problem?

It was pretty amazing because I thought I’d get more pre-written essays — leftovers from school assignments or college applications. So they’d send me an email and say, “I heard about the book, what do you want me to write about?” And I’d say the whole idea is that I don’t tell you. You write about what you want to write about, but if you tell me what you’re into maybe I can pick out a few things. Someone would say, “I learned how to play the drums last year,” I’d email back, “that sounds cool.” Then an hour later I’d get a 12-page essay about learning to play the drums.

Something no professional writer could ever do!

Yes, it was an editor’s dream in two ways. One is the enthusiasm and output of these writers. They were constantly trying to update their essays. They’d say, “I’m a senior now, can you add this to the end?” And then send me 20 pages. Then second was the rare kind of editing I got to do. I didn’t rewrite a word in that book. The only words I wrote were in the introduction. I don’t believe in rewriting, and I don’t believe that it’s a given that as writer you turn in a story and your editor rewrites your lede. For this book, all I did as an editor was ask a million questions. The words always came from the girls. You just have to keep asking them why. The crazy thing about some of the essays is that if you could see them annotated, they’d be 50 emails cut-and-pasted.

Can you talk about how you found the girls?

I originally sent out an email to about three-dozen friends. It was a little pointed because I wanted to reach people who worked with schools or volunteered, who had contact with teens. It ended up on a lot of message boards, it was on a national English teachers’ association site, libraries loved it, regional groups, and then the girls spread the word. It turns out the kids like the Internet! The cool thing with them is they have friends they’ve never met, all over the country. It ended up on the Freakonomics blog, Stephen Dubner is a friend of mine, and I have to thank him for the majority of the essays I got, including a ton of international, India, Israel, all over Europe, Japan. One of my ultimate favorites was a Japanese girl writing about American rock bands.

And you got 800 essays in eight weeks?

I didn’t even set up a separate email address, my life was ruined! I had one of the first Earthlink accounts, in 1996, and I won’t give that up. I was like, “Oh my God I ruined my early-adopter address.” I’m a fool. I had no idea.

Do you think it was so successful because there’s no physical spaces or groups or communities for young writers where they can contribute and be heard?

On a local level there’s a lot of that but what’s missing is the prize of it. These girls are so over the concept of being published because they’re all “published,” there’s nothing special about that. Turns out they cared about the oldest medium because it was something different: They really cared about a big fat book. It was something their friends haven’t done, they’re the only ones who are in a hardcover, dead tree book. And that’s a nice kind of backlash. I hope it speaks well for future books. Though I realize that adding a level of competition is taking away the great democracy of the Internet, and I hate to be that person.

I did have a few calls to make sure I wasn’t a 65-year-old man.

Do any of these girls aspire to be professional writers?

One girl has a book deal, and a few are working on novels, which they’ll sometimes share with me. There are 58 girls in the book, and I bet about six or eight of them say, “I’m a writer or I’m going to be a writer.” I love the non-preciousness of that.

Do they talk about what they want to be?

It’s funny because a lot of people ask them that at readings and they think it’s a silly grown-up question. They say, “I’m a sophomore, I have no idea.” They actually use a lot of writers’ weapons and the things you learn in class but the best part is that they don’t think of it this way. That’s what Web writing has done. This generation’s writing experience isn’t based on a teacher saying you need to have a topic sentence here and use only this much stream of consciousness. I never knew what I was getting, and I loved the element of surprise when they’d say, “Here’s my essay, attached.” One would be a giant sentence going on for a page, with a sex scene, and another one would be all dialogue. Then Johnny Depp, then a suicide attempt.

And I can imagine you had to deal with clearing that kind of content with the parents?

Definitely some angry parents, but we worked it out. They all signed and notarized a document saying they’d read and approved the essays before publication. To me, the parents are heroes too. There’s the girl whose essay ends “what a bitch” about her parents’ breakup, but her mom’s been at the New York events. That’s a big deal because I imagine the wrath of her peers. I think about all the backhanded compliments. It’s pretty incredible about the parents. I did have a few calls to make sure I wasn’t a 65-year-old man.

I want to talk about the name of the book, which, as you say, is “Red, not pink.” And after seeing them today this is the perfect way to describe these girls. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are not their heroes.

They’re not! And you know, grownups are so afraid of teenagers and they’re afraid of what they know, and they’re afraid of them talking about some of the things they talk about. I don’t know if you saw some of the responses to Eliza Appleton’s essay on Salon about grinding. These people got so upset, because she was essentially talking about sex, even thought the entire point of her essay was that grinding is a safe alternative to sex. Why do grownups get so freaked out? And people were calling her a slut and saying I feel sorry for her mother who has to rein her in. Young ladies aren’t supposed to swear or talk about sex, whereas I feel if it were boys the same age, I think people would be okay with it. It’s about getting adults to really listen to them.

You’ve created a Web site with a networking component and launched 58 blogs, one for each author. What else? You were just approached a few minutes ago by someone about wanting to turn this into a play!

I love the play idea, because you can really see what happens live. I love making up magazines, there’s nothing I like more. The idea is the book becomes an annual thing, where we’re publishing young people’s writing, they’re submitting it all year round via the Web site. The site and social network are really the heart of it, and the best of that will get edited by professional writers. My fantasy is to hire a staff so I’m not doing all this, and to pay all the people who did this out of the goodness of their heart. So it’s year-round, professionally-edited, with an annual book of essays, then international, boys, and possibly regional.

But the magazine idea I really like because I love them visually and really believe the girls do, too. They are so much about making video and taking photos. I think about a fashion shoot in a magazine that’s really teen-driven, and you could call in the same clothes that a professional could call in, and do it at a real event, like someone’s birthday party, and you give a camera to one of the girls, and then they’re also the reporters. And the rest of the staff are high-level professionals. So on a regular magazine staff, two or more of us get replaced by teenagers.

Do you think in literary world, you might be able to forge a new kind of respect for this genre?

That’s the idea. It was important we went to an adult publisher, Penguin, part of Hudson Street Press, and had a hard cover, and an adult international imprint. It’s tricky because this category of YA non-fiction is new. And bookstores are trying to figure out where to put it. Even shopping the book — I don’t have much experience in that — but I imagine it was unusual because we had such a range of interest from big houses and from these super YA marketing machines. It’s taken a lot of education, too. So we went to someone who doesn’t necessarily do YA. The fact that it’s hardcover for the holidays is really unusual, unheard of. But it’s all about legitimizing the girls, because I want them to be looked at as writers and these honest, true documentarians.

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Five tips for capturing teen attention across media
1) Remember your date of birth — and that it disqualifies you as the expert
No one is better at sniffing out a fraud, an old person pretending to be down with the kids, than a teenager. Always give them the final word on matters of their generation — they’re the authorities, they’re living it. If you play at being a teenager or use your newfound grownup powers to try to take back some wrong from your high school experience, they’ll sense it immediately. Plus, they’ll make you feel like much more of a dork than you ever feared you were in high school…
2) Resist labeling
This may seem really basic, but there’s not an adult out there who’s not prone to overgeneralizing about this age group — after all, if you can say teenagers are this or teenagers are that, they’re a lot less terrifying. They become knowable. I had to keep reminding myself that there are 58 independent people who wrote this book, with every nuance and variation of personality 58 adults would have.
3) Ask them what they think
For the most part, teenagers — like all of us, though moreso — just want to be heard. They want to know their opinions are valid. Solicit those opinions, and you’ll learn a lot. They tend to be the most honest ones you’ll hear.
4) Know that what they ultimately care most about is themselves — and each other
They’ve grown up with social networking and the opinions of their peers on everything. So you don’t want to dictate anything from above, from a place over-20. They endlessly generate ideas themselves and build on each other’s. They work in teams without thinking of it that way. Encourage interaction on all things creative. I’ve been amazed at what great editors, critics, fans they are of each other’s essays in the book, and how much one author’s comments enrich another writer’s next blog entry on the site.
5) Edit, don’t rewrite
This applies to editing writers of any age: If you’re patient and ask the right questions (sometimes relentlessly), you’ll get answers in their words. And their words, the writer’s, are always going to be better than yours.

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Alissa Walker is an editor of the mediabistro.com blog UnBeige.

On May 1, 2005, NBC launched its Nightly News‘ Daily Nightly blog, a site that anchor Brian Williams declared “a useful supplement to viewers of Nightly News, as both a narrative and as a window into our editorial process.” Since that time, the digital side of NBC’s long-running nightly newscast has grown by leaps and bounds. In October 2007, the channel named Mara Schiavocampo, a veteran of new media journalism, digital journalist for Nightly News, with the responsibility to produce original content exclusively for the Web.

The majority of Schiavocampo’s reporting experience comes overseas. She has reported on hate crimes in Russia, the bird flu in Indonesia, and Iraqi refugees in Jordan. Recently, she visited India for a series of reports. But she also found poignant digital stories domestically. During November 2007, her work during the Nightly News‘ weeklong focus on issues facing African American women was widely viewed and discussed across the Web. Today’s launch of the redesigned Nightly News Web site only add to her status as the digital arm of a well-renowned traditional medium.

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Name: Mara Schiavocampo
Position: Digital journalist, NBC Nightly News
Resume: Formerly a contributor/guest commentator for numerous outlets and online news sites including ABC News Now, ABCNews.com, NPR, Current TV, Yahoo!, Ebony, and Uptown; worked as anchor/reporter for CBS News on MTVU
Birthday: September 28, 1979
Hometown: Silver Spring, MD
Education: Undergrad at UCLA; masters at University of Maryland-College Park
Marital Status: Married
First section of Sunday Times: “‘A’ section, front section, no matter what day it is.”
Favorite TV Show: 60 Minutes
Last Book You Read: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
Guilty pleasure: “US Weekly for sure, which I buy every week and my husband says, ‘Why don’t you get a subscription,’ and I say, ‘Because that would be admitting that I read it every week.'”

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What does it mean to be a digital journalist for a network news organization, combining the old school and new school of journalism?

I think the two things, the two obvious things, are that I work with digital shooting and editing equipment and my work is intended for a digital medium. The one thing that does not change is the journalism and the storytelling. So the tools of the trade, the tricks of the trade, are a little different but the basics stay the same and the storytelling stays the same.

Brian Williams has a lot of influence on the Nightly blog, but other correspondents write as well. I’ve read some of your stuff there, too. It’s very widely read across the Web, maybe more than some other network news blogs. What do you think of NBC’s digital influence compared to the whole network news competition?

One thing that is really clear is that NBC is committed. They get it. They understand that the Web is not going to be a sibling, a step-child anymore. They want it to be an equal sibling to everything else that’s going on. So they are really committed to that, to making sure that it has its own life. It has its own identity. It has its own Web exclusives. They’re not just trying to take the scraps from the cutting room floor. We’re doing stuff just for our Web audience. So that’s really impressive that they get it, that they’re committed to that. I think that there’s the Daily Nightly and all these other elements that are just indicative of that. You know Brian gets it also, that people want to know him on more of an intimate level and that’s what the blog is about. So they really understand what’s happening, and are committed to being a part of the growth of Web viewership.

It seems there’s two angles to the Web, with the Nightly blog, like the more personal behind the scenes look at what it takes to do the newscast or what stories they’re working on and how its happening. But also, there’s the added element of Web exclusive material, which I know you’re very much a part of with the Digital Dispatch page. Can you talk a little about the Digital Dispatch page and what that means to the whole site?

It’s really cool that you have items that are Web exclusives that are intended for the Web that then the broadcast uses afterwards. I think that’s huge. That says a lot about what NBC thinks of the Web. Because its not just, “Let’s use the Web to repurpose stuff which is posted after it airs,” or it’s the stuff that wasn’t good enough for air. It really is to build its own thing there. And so that’s what the Digital Dispatch is all about. It’s creating exclusive material for the Web for that audience. It really is indicative of their commitment to moving into this new realm. You see it with the Digital Dispatch, all that stuff is exclusive material for the Web, not for broadcast. If stuff is aired for broadcast it comes after. It goes on the Web site first.

Think how great it is that you can go and have a discussion with Brian Williams [on the site].

The redesign of the site launches today. What changed?

The biggest thing is its moving from a text-based site, which we see all across the Web, what all the other networks have, to a video based site. So its huge. It looks fantastic — I can’t wait for the world to see it. You can see little snippets of it here and there with the video player. So really the focus is on the video and it allows the user to customize what they want to see, so you can decide how you want to see the Nightly News broadcast. You can go on, you can create your play list, you can decide, “I really care about health stories. Let me make a play list of health stories.” You are customizing your experience. I mean imagine if you could do that on the TV. If you can say, “No Brian, I want to see these stories in this order.” I mean its huge. So a lot of thought has been put into creating a great viewer experience and something the viewers can drive. It’s not a passive medium at all. You can go on and you can decide how you want your experience to be.

One of the stories that the Nightly News did that was also big on the Web was the weeklong focus on issues facing African American women.

Yeah, that was huge.

It got a very strong response from the public, especially through the Web. One of the major critiques of it was the length of time that was given to each story, which is something that you addressed in the blog you wrote. What can the digital platform do to solve some of those problems?

Well you know its unlimited real estate, like they say. You don’t have that consideration on the Web. So I did a piece on the Web, and also I had a roundtable with black women who had dated interracially. And I found that the little sound bites that went in the piece didn’t speak fully to what the discussion was about. So we put a six-minute cut of the discussion on the Web. So if you see the piece and you want to see more you can see that. I did a hip-hop roundtable, which was six minutes. So it’s just the advantage of making it as long or as short as it needs to be. Its not, “Let me make this 20 minutes because I can.” Its, “How long does it need to be?” And if someone is clicking on it then they’re interested. So you have viewers that are already invested in the topic. You’re not forcing them to watch and running the risk of them changing the channel. And also the comments — people were able to respond on the Daily Nightly, they were able to post a ton of comments. We’re really interested in creating a community that speaks to the relationship with Newsvine. Now people can create their profile in Newsvine and they can talk about what’s happening in the news and all of this builds community. We love how the Web gives us the opportunity to do all that.

It seems like your blog post addressed a lot of the comments either on the Nightly site or elsewhere on the Web. It adds a quick element, with fast responses.

It’s awesome. Think how great it is that you can go and have a discussion with Brian Williams. When I was growing up, if I was able to send a letter and get a signed picture from Tom Brokaw, it would have made my life. Now, to send an email or post a comment, to have fun on the Daily Nightly with Williams or myself or Rahema Ellis, that’s just so great. It says a lot about where the medium is going. It’s wonderful; it brings us to a new level of transparency.

Much of your work has taken place outside of the United States, recently with your work in India. Talk a little about how that can translate to the Web and what other factors you can do when you’re working specifically for digital.

I think the one thing that’s nice is you can send one person to India, and still maintain the integrity of the journalism and the storytelling. You can just do more with less and that’s not a bad thing because the equipment now enables one person to shoot and edit their work. It still maintains the things that are really important, but you’re able to do it in a different way. As a perfect example, when I was in India working on a story, Chris Rock from HBO was there too. Now they spent two days meeting with officials and they couldn’t dip under the radar. They had the officials really leaning on them hard. I got approval over the phone, and they didn’t see me at all when I was there. I was totally under the radar. One person can do that. Chris Rock and his crew from HBO can’t do that. And I’ve seen that time and time and time again. For me, I get a lot of access because one woman with a camera is easily ignored, easily missed. And then it’s the same thing with viewer interest. Maybe everyone doesn’t want to see the stories from India, but the fact is that people can go on the Web and find it, and the people who are clicking on the stories want to see it. So I can devote the time, the storytelling, the resources to it, because I know the people watching are interested in it.

And this will be airing with the launch?

Yes, the week of the 7th.

This year, you won the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Emerging Journalist of the Year. Previous winners have all been in the print field. What does that say about the emergence of digital reporting?

I think that says a lot about NABJ. I owe so much to them and am so grateful to the organization since they’ve been with me since my student days. Anyone who asks me for advice I say, “Join a professional organization.” So it says a lot about them, to the fact that they’re paying attention to where the field is going. They devoted that whole convention to next media type of things. So I think it says a lot about the fact that they’re paying attention to where things are going and how we can prepare our membership for the future. How we can recognize the work that is being done in this field. I think that speaks more to them and what they value and what their mindset is.

Also you’re a member of Lightstalkers.org. You’ve got a sleek personal Web site. What interests you about the Web and its impact on journalism?

Well Lighstalkers has been huge. I could not have done any of the things I’ve done without Lightstalkers, literally. Every trip that I ever went on, including this one, I have made contact with Lightstalkers. It’s a network that’s global, truly global, and these are people that are doing essentially the same work that I’m doing. They’re primarily photo-journalists, but they’re in the field and doing the same kind of stuff. They’re working with pictures. They’re trying to find their own accommodations. So it’s unbelievable that I can go on the Web site and say, “I’m going to the middle of nowhere and I need help,” and have all these responses come in. That is what I think the Web is really about. Connecting people, bringing people together, helping you find people offering a helping hand. It’s just the best example of the Web. It’s really a community of people, likeminded people, who are working towards common goals.

It’s interesting. I had never heard about it before. It’s a whole other community. It seems like there are places on the Web that could be huge resources as far as news gathering or journalism go that you might not know about.

I recommend them to everyone I ever talk to. It’s the way to go, even when you have to only get back-up options. I mean I got back-up names. NBC took great care of me, they gave me great people. But just to have some back-ups in case something goes wrong, it gives you who to call on for help.

Previously you worked for up-and-coming TV stations like MTVU and Current TV. How does the work there prepare you to be a digital journalist? I’m sure they had some sort of focus on digital there as well.

I’ll talk about Current because that’s the most relevant to the experience I have now. Again, I have nothing but good things to say about them. They really, really helped me in kind of breaking out of the traditional news mold and trying to think of telling stories in different ways, which now is great on the Web. You’re seeing that a lot more on the Web because it’s not tied to format. And they did understand that very well so it helped with a lot of the things I do now such as asking questions off camera and keeping it in the piece. It’s a little rough around the edges, but it adds another element to it, another layer of realness, like there’s a real person behind the camera shooting, and they can speak. A lot of those rough around the edges things I do now came from Current. And those are the kind of things where, when I was in school, in the traditional model of news, you had to be very polished, and you didn’t do those things. They really encouraged me, not only gave me the freedom but encouraged me, to do things a little more ragged because it does provide another element of reality to it. It’s phenomenal.

Although, I would imagine that the work you do for Nightly News would feel a little bit different stylistically.

Well I have to say NBC has been phenomenal. All they’ve ever said to me since I got here was, “Do what you do.” And they support me on that so they haven’t given me any restrictions on format, on style, on content, nothing. All they said was, “Do what you do and we will support you.” And again, that speaks to the fact that this is a news organization that has such a long history, but they’re not saying, “You have to do it X-Y-Z,” they’re saying, “We’re open.” And I think that’s huge, especially coming from NBC. You know its one thing for Current to say, “We’re open.” They’re new, so they’re going to be open, but for NBC to say, “You do what you do and we’ll kind of develop together,” I think that’s great.

With the Internet and 24-hour cable channels there’s been some discussion of the decline and influence of nightly news broadcasts. Do you think your work with NBC News and others like it can essentially save the medium, or help to lead it back to what it once was?

I don’t think it needs to be saved, and I don’t think it will ever be what it once was because the world is different now. I think that it’s great that NBC gets that. They’re not trying to hold on to sinking ship. They’re very aware of how the world is changing, how the Web is influencing things, and they’re moving and changing with that. The broadcast benefits from that, everything benefits from that. Someone who can go online and read Brian’s blog and feel a personal connection to him, and then want to watch him on the broadcast, I think that’s great. It all works together, and I think they’re very aware of that. No one is trying to go back to the heyday of TV networks because now it’s all changed, and they’re moving and changing with it so I think that’s a testament to the people who are making the decisions.

You previously taught a class at mediabistro.com in video journalism. Do you see any difference in the principles and practices when you go from video to print to digital? Any differences or are the principles the same?

No, and that’s what I tell people all the time. The basics are the same. The ethical rules, all the different standards of journalism, those do not change at all. And anybody that tells you they have, steer clear of. I think that’s a concern, because the great thing that we’re seeing right now is kind of the democratization of media. So everyone can do it — they can buy a camera, they can get editing equipment. The bad thing is that not everyone realizes there are rules to it. And so that’s something I address in my class I tell people that if you want to do this, that’s great. You know, it’s your first amendment right to do journalism. Go for it, but recognize that there are rules to it. You owe it to all of us to uphold what comes along with it. People can’t forget that, yes be a citizen journalist, but one half of journalism is that you have to be bound by those same rules that NBC News is bound by.

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Steve Krakauer is the associate editor of TVNewser. You can reach him at STEVE at MEDIABISTRO dot COM.

Andrew Morse was the editor-in-chief of his college newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, and at the time, he says, was “never all that interested in foreign affairs, or foreign policy.” Little did he know he would become ABC News’ Asia bureau chief; cover wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and ensure that foreign news coverage gets fair play during Good Morning America Weekend broadcasts.

Morse describes GMA Weekend as “launched on a shoestring. And it’s always been dubbed ‘the little show that could.’ It gets by with a very small staff of very dedicated people.” Ratings for the Saturday show have it trailing NBC’s Weekend Today, and on Sunday, the program ranks behind both Weekend Today and CBS’ Sunday Morning. But the show’s fourth quarter ratings show growth; for both GMA Weekend Saturday and Sunday, ratings were the strongest (in terms of total viewer delivery) for any quarter since the program debuted in 2004.

Morse, at the helm of a young broadcast that demands of him pre-dawn wake-up calls, is also a husband and the father of a toddler daughter (with another child on the way). “It’s certainly a challenge,” he says of the work/life/early-morning-hours juggle. “I think the key is to just always have a sense of balance in your life and to remember at the end of the day what is truly important.”

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Name: Andrew Morse
Position: Executive producer, Good Morning America Weekend
Marital status: Married with a two-year-old daughter, expecting a second child in May
Birthdate: March 10, 1974
Hometown: Potomac, MD
Education: B.A. in government, Cornell
Resume: Morse has been with ABC News his entire career, starting in 1996 as a desk assistant at the network’s Washington bureau before being named an associate producer for ABCNews.com. In his next job, as an assignment editor and producer in the London bureau, Morse covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Promoted in 2002 to Asia bureau chief, Morse was based in Hong Kong and supervised coverage of the 2002 Bali bombing and the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. He returned stateside in 2004, becoming senior producer of World News Now and World News This Morning, later moving to Weekend World News Tonight as senior producer. Morse took his current job, as executive producer of Good Morning America Weekend, in July of last year.
Best part of the job: “Waking up at 3:30 in the morning. The best part of my job is having an opportunity — it’s going to sound somewhat cliché — but actually, truly having the opportunity to make a difference. I think we have an incredible responsibility as journalists to inform people and we sometimes lose sight of that amid all of our other goals, but truly for me the best part of the job is to wake up on any given weekend and put together a broadcast where I can walk out of the control room at the end of the day and know we left the audience better informed than when we started. It’s just incredibly rewarding to be able to do that.”
Favorite singer or band: “That’s a tough one because I’m a big, big music fan, but if I had to say one I’d say Bruce Springsteen.”
Favorite non-news TV show of all time: “I’m torn because I’m a big fan of M*A*S*H, but I’m also fairly obsessed with Lost.”

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When you produce your show, who on the weekend morning are you trying to reach? Do you have a type of viewer in mind you think of?

I purposely do not. It’s something you hear a lot about, and that executive producers of broadcasts spend a lot of time in dark audiences thinking about: “Who’s our key demographic? I actually purposely don’t produce with that in mind. I think my goal, and our goal for the broadcast, is to reach as many people as we can, and to do that, I think the key is to just tell great stories, and to make sure that in every broadcast we do, we have a little bit of something for everybody.

How do you give the program a familiar, Good Morning America-feel, but yet also keep it distinctive and fresh — how do you achieve that balance?
I think we’re able to achieve the balance, by and large, with our anchors, Kate Snow and Bill Weir, as well as Ron Claiborne and Marisol Castro, who are each very talented and who each bring to the table very unique, very exciting, very energetic, and very smart personalities. It’s very important for us that we maintain and strengthen and bolster the GMA identity and the GMA brand, which has been built up over so many years, but we do want to be different. And I think the way that we’re different is that we’re able to build on the strengths of our anchors. We’re also able to take more chances, because there are fewer eyeballs on our broadcasts. I think that gives us the ability to reach out, to be a little bit different, to be a little more off-the-wall, a little quirkier, to move beyond your typical, morning show formula.

Bill and Kate have been co-anchors of GMA Weekend since the program’s inception in 2004. Do you have a plan for when the time comes that one or both of them leave the show? Do you think about that?
I think about it every day. But I think that while it’s always good to plan, and it’s always good to be thinking about the future, it’s more important to be thinking about the present, and I think Bill and Kate are remarkable talents.

But that said, there will come a day, when Bill and Kate, I’m sure, will move on, and when they do, we’ll start thinking more seriously about what we do next. But I think for now, there’s too much to look forward to. And I think we’re really hitting our stride at the moment, so we’re trying not to look too far into the future.

What is your typical schedule, day-to-day?
I wake up Saturdays and Sundays at about 2:45 [a.m.] and get into the control room sometime around 3:15 or 3:30. I’m generally in the office Tuesday through Sunday, and I take off after the show on Sunday, and I take off Monday … and I hope at some point I’ll reach a point where I can take Tuesdays off and have a semi-normal weekend.

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are generally filled with meetings, and a lot of planning and a lot of show administration. And then when Fridays roll around it’s usually like going to battle. We have a very small staff, but a very talented staff, and everybody’s really firing on all cylinders Friday into Saturday. So Fridays are a very long day — where I’ll get into the office anywhere between 7 or 8 in the morning and stay until 8ish, 9ish at night. Which isn’t a horribly
long day, but then when you have to turn back around and be in at 3:30 in the morning on Saturday, it catches up to you. And then Saturday is the real marathon, where I’m waking up at 2:45 and, again, I’m in the office until 9 o’clock at night or, if there’s breaking news, even later, before turning around again and coming back in early Sunday morning. So it’s grueling. As I’ve said, it truly feels like going into battle every Friday-Sunday.

How do you prepare for the program with regard to your own personal newsgathering — what do you read and watch, and which Web sites do you check out before the show?
On any given day, I try to get through The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York tabloids, just as your basic diet that I have to get through every day. And usually I’ll check out Drudge and Politico.com, since it’s the political season as well. And it’s funny, because I’ve had to amend my diet a little bit since starting at GMA. Whereas I used to always make sure I read Time and Newsweek, and Economist, and Foreign Affairs, all of which I still read, and now I find myself grabbing People, and Entertainment Weekly, and InStyle, occasionally Vogue. You work a lot of muscles you don’t use on some of the other broadcasts.

You have risen through the ranks at ABC News rather quickly. To what do you attribute your success?
Luck. [Laughs] Certainly luck is a factor. But I don’t think there’s a substitute for hard work, and for experience. When I was 22 and just starting out in the business, I had been the editor-in-chief of my college newspaper, so I thought I knew everything there was to know about journalism. Never mind that I had never worked in television, I just thought I knew everything there was to know. And I couldn’t quite believe that I was answering phones and faxing [when starting at ABC News], although I did it with great gusto.

I’ve always had terrific mentors, every step of the way and every job I’ve had, who’ve helped guide me and teach me things. I’m a pretty good listener.

I also was in a very unique place, especially overseas, and I had a very unique opportunity to work with some real pros, some great veterans who’ve given decades to this business. Having the opportunity to watch and learn from some of the best in the business was invaluable experience.

In the television news industry, who has been a mentor? Who has inspired you?

It’s a pretty broad range. My very first job, as a desk assistant in Washington, Sam Donaldson had just returned to the White House beat. So to be just starting out, and seeing Sam back at the White House, and having the chance to chat with him and watch him report, that was a pretty unique experience.

“Our first date essentially happened under the auspices of talking about underage prostitutes.”

At the same time, David Brinkley was still anchoring This Week. So when I was a very young kid, being able to chat with David was a real honor, about that broadcast and about his great experience in journalism over the years.

My first job at ABCNews.com, I had the opportunity to work with Jeff Gralnick, who really put me on a path and honed my journalistic instincts and made me smarter and made me better. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some really unbelievable writers. From Jim Wooten, who recently retired from ABC News, about as poetic a journalist as there is, to Bill Blakemore, who’s a great ABC veteran who I spent many months in Afghanistan with, and Mark Litke, who was our longtime Asia correspond who recently retired. The three of them really taught me the importance of just great writing, and more importantly than anything else, reminded me that what this business is all about.

And also, again, as a young kid in the business, getting the opportunity as a desk assistance to watch from the sidelines how Nightline came together, with Ted Koppel … to be able to sit down and have real conversations with Ted was remarkable. In fact, the whole Nightline environment in particular, Ted Koppel and Tom Bettag and Leroy Sievers, taught me the importance of good leadership and good management and how important it is to stay true to the story and stay true to the people who are out there getting the stories.

How have your overseas experiences helped shape you as a journalist?
You learn the importance of being self-sufficient, and you learn to value the benefits of being part of a team. And it seems like a contradiction, but it’s not. You learn to be self-sufficient in that you’re a long way from the Mother Ship. So you don’t have access to all the resources that you have back here in New York, so you learn to do everything. You spend all this time with your team, and you learn how important everybody’s role is and how everybody needs to dig in and do a little bit of everything.

What do you think of the way U.S. networks handle foreign news coverage? Should there be more foreign news coverage, or is there sufficient coverage?
I think, unquestionably, there needs to be more … And I think if we give people more, I think that they’ll watch it.

A good example is several months ago, when the unrest in Burma was unfolding, the networks covered the story admirably, did a solid amount of coverage. And we made the decision to take nearly four minutes out of our second half-hour, which is the time that we usually reserve for consumer-friendly feature-y, laid-back segments, to do a very lengthy profile of Aung Sang Suu Kyi, simply asking the question, “Who is Aung Sang Suu Kyi?” and answering it for our viewers. And I generally don’t like to live and die by the ratings and the numbers we pull, but that was one story where I was pleased to see that the ratings seemed to show that people were genuinely interested.

I understand you met your wife while on overseas assignment?
Just before I moved to Asia, I produced a Nightline story with Bob Woodruff about the trafficking of women from the Balkans to Western Europe for prostitution. I was very interested in the topic of human trafficking and was looking into doing a story throughout Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam. And a mutual friend introduced us and told me that I need to meet this woman named Ana to talk about human trafficking. So our first date essentially happened under the auspices of talking about underage prostitutes, which, even now, thinking about it, makes me laugh. Ana was living in Hong Kong, working for a publishing company and doing independent research into trafficking in Asia. When I moved to Hong Kong, I didn’t know a soul. The friend who introduced me to Ana was my first friend in Hong Kong, and Ana was my second. And three months later, I proposed to her over email from Baghdad.

Tell me about the ABC/Facebook partnership — you’re quite involved in that endeavor.
I spent a lot of time thinking about how we engage young people in the political process, how we get them watching, how we get them reading, how we get them to pay attention, when they, by and large, are getting their news in a different way, at different times of day, than people did in the past. Facebook is an incredibly powerful Web site. Powerful in the sense that it can galvanize opinion and vast numbers of people very, very quickly, and I was drawn to them one day by a story that I saw — a group on Facebook had popped up, and within 24 hours, 800,000 people subscribed to it, which I thought was just remarkable.

So originally, I came up with the idea that we would partner with them and try to, essentially, hold a series of town meetings on college campuses across the country, and engage the opinions of younger people in terms of which issues inspired them and which issues they were interested in. And the relationship evolved over time and we decided, together, to partner for this [Presidential] election. And Facebook has evolved into a Web site that has much broader appeal than just a younger audience, although they tend to skew younger, and we tend to skew, obviously, much older. And we thought it would be an incredibly powerful proposition if we could somehow take a younger audience and take an older audience and merge them together, if you will, somewhat, into focusing on this election.

What I thought at the time we started talking to Facebook, is that there will be a story, a big story of national importance, be it a terror attack, a major political event, be it a national tragedy, where people will turn to Facebook in much the same way that past generations turned instinctively to Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather. And while I still think in times of crisis, people turn to the networks as their primary source of information, I think millions and millions of people turn to Facebook at a time like that. We had a story like that, as we were still in our early discussions with Facebook, and that was Virginia Tech. The shooting was really the first story where people engaged on Facebook for news and for information and to exchange condolences and to support each other, and I think we’ve seen that in ensuing stories. But that gave a really important window into the power of what we’re trying to accomplish with Facebook.

Do you see yourself ever doing something other than journalism one day?
All I’ve ever wanted to be, for as long as I can remember, is a journalist. That said, throughout my career, being exposed to some of the places that I’ve been exposed to and some of the things I’ve had the remarkable fortune to see, has also opened my eyes to the broader world out there and to different and potential opportunities. So, while I find it hard to envision getting up every day and not being a journalist, the opportunity to explore different places, to work overseas again in some sort of a different capacity, is something that’s always very intriguing.

Do you have any kind of personal mission statement or personal philosophy?
There’s a quote from Teddy Roosevelt that I have taped to a small corner of my desk where virtually no one else can see it, but from time to time I do look at it. And if I do have a mission statement or a personal philosophy, that’s it. The short version of it is that, “There’s always a way.” The longer version, which Teddy Roosevelt said far more eloquently, is “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” I try not to let anybody else see it, but I think it’s a reminder that it’s always good to take a chance.

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Alissa Krinsky is a contributing editor to TVNewser.

Michael Calderone’s name is a familiar one to New York media watchers. The longtime New York Observer columnist spent three years at the salmon-colored newspaper — where, before handling real estate and media beats for the NYO, he started off as an intern. Most notably, Calderone scored an infamous interview with the Washington Post‘s Howard Kurtz and regularly covered a number of high-profile stories relating to the magazine and newspaper industries both for the print paper and their “The Media Mob” blog.

But Calderone made the move to DC. In October 2007, he announced that he was joining The Politico as a political media reporter. One of 2007’s most successful media launches, the DC-based newspaper was founded in time to cover the most exciting presidential race in thirty years. The Politico is one of the few sites we can think of that has been praised by both Bill Clinton and Bill O’Reilly. Founded by ex-Washington Posters John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, the paper varies its issue release schedule as events warrant, with additional content posted daily to their Web site. We caught up with Calderone in a few conversations while he was on the road covering the caucuses and primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire to discuss New York vs. D.C., Politico.com vs. the Observer, and media reporting vs. political reporting.

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Name: Michael Calderone
Position: Media reporter; Politico.com
Resume: Started at Politico in November 2007 after three years at the New York Observer, most recently covering the media; previously a researcher at Artforum and Bookforum; freelance writer for several publications, including The Fader, Nylon, and ARTnews
Birthdate: October 27, 1979
Hometown: South Plainfield, NJ
Education: Rutgers University, B.A. in English; New York University, M.A in Journalism
Marital status: Single
First section of the Sunday Times: I always scan the A1 stories as soon as I pick it up. But the first section I get into is Week in Review, working backwards from the opinion pages. I won’t say how quickly after that I get to the wedding pages in Styles.
Favorite television show: Like every other person working in media in 2008, I’m obsessed with The Wire. Also excited for Lost, even if there are only eight episodes in the can due to the WGA strike.
Last book read: It was a Chekhov book called A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire. That might sound pretentious, but it was a very thin travel book, not one of the 19th-century Russian doorstops.

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What is a typical day like on the job?

I’m sure that it’s not too much different from many reporters and, sadly, it’s not as adventurous as reporting from Baghdad. But here goes: On the way to work, I usually pick up three or four daily papers to both get started with my day and to do my part in keeping the newspaper industry afloat (or at least to counteract reporting on dwindling circulation numbers). To cover the media, I still think it’s important to try and read the hard copies. But I keep up with media and political news online during the day, and make lots of phone calls — whether running through a publication’s masthead to confirm a short item or having longer talks with editors and producers to get more insight. There’s lunch and drinks with sources on occasion, and of course, writing. Shorter pieces are usually done in the office with the help of my iPod. For longer, more nuanced articles, I prefer to write from home.

What qualities do you think are most important for political and media reporters?

For media reporters, I suggest to block out of your mind that the people you’re writing about could be future employers or colleagues. It’s not relevant to the reporting task at hand, and if you are accurate and ethical, I believe that folks will understand that you have a job to do. And while it’s also important to be critical of the industry’s prospects, you have to try to avoid the all-too-familiar-pattern of seeing doom and gloom in everything these days. Of course the media industry’s not in the best shape, and it is sad to keep reporting on foreign bureaus shuttering down and chopping resources. But with the shift to the Web, it’s a transformative time as well.

Since I am not a political reporter — and can’t claim to have authority on the subject — I’ll just offer a couple suggestions from what I noticed on the campaign trail. While it’s easy to give better treatment to a candidate when there’s lots of access, political reporters need to remain skeptical at all times. I think that most still do, but that even includes the hour laughing with John McCain on the Straight Talk Express. Also, if New Hampshire taught anything, it’s to beware of the bubble!

“I don’t expect you’d keep talented journalists around if they were forced to report through a partisan filter.”

You were in Iowa and New Hampshire covering the caucuses and primaries. What was the experience of covering them like?

Before I left for Iowa, I was fishing for campaign press stories, and every reporter I had contacted just said to go out there and see for myself. And it was incredible to try and take in the fact that the entire media apparatus relocated out to Des Moines, and later Manchester. For someone who makes their living covering these personalities, it could be more than a little disorienting. Look, it’s Tim Russert! There’s David Brooks! Not to mention the fact that I had a few encounters with journalists I’d written about or emailed but never met in person. So that kept things interesting.

How are reporters keeping themselves busy during the downtime covering the caucuses and primaries? Was there a lot of downtime?

Well, there’s always drinking. But seriously, it’s not exactly Hunter Thompson-style fear and loathing on the campaign trail. Part of the reason, I think, is that reporters these days are filing so much copy throughout the day online, and the fact that they are also connected back home via BlackBerry. Sometimes you’re on a bus for 12 hours a day, which makes it harder to escape on the trail. In Des Moines, the New York and Washington crowds often filtered into the same handful of bars and restaurants at night. But even during downtime, reporters compare notes, and endlessly handicap the race — even at New Year’s parties.

For those unfamiliar with the Politico, how would you describe it?

Politico is a multi-platform, print and Web publication that covers politics, with exhaustive reporting on the 2008 Presidential race and the various levers of power and personalities in Washington D.C., whether in Congress, media, or lobbying. The print edition is generally published three times a week when Congress is in session, but it is distributed down here (in the Washington D.C. area). So even if New Yorkers are unable to get a paper copy, the Web site is constantly updated with breaking news stories, video, and blogs.

As a staff reporter, what does your beat cover?

I report on political media, with a focus on election coverage.

Some have accused the Politico as having a right-wing bias. Do you think there is any truth to that?

Definitely not. And I don’t expect you’d keep talented journalists around if they were forced to report through a partisan filter.

Before joining the Politico, you reported on media for the New York Observer. What have the biggest differences been in covering media in Washington vs. New York?

For one thing, I don’t have to worry about the stupid things I say at parties winding up on Gawker. But the main difference is that my focus here has narrowed to political media and examining the interplay of campaigns and the press. That’s definitely a change from covering the glitzy magazine industry in Manhattan — I haven’t been to a Radar party in ages! Not to mention that my Us Weekly comp subscription hasn’t made it down to D.C. as of yet.

A number of your stories deal with New York media pillars like The Wall Street Journal. What is it like covering New York while living in Washington?

At the Observer, I covered Dean Baquet leaving the Los Angeles Times, buyouts at the Boston Globe, and squabbles at The New Republic, all while writing from a bullpen in the Flatiron district. It is better to be closer to sources at times, but you can still break news remotely simply with a phone and computer.

What do you think of Jared Kushner’s work at the Observer?

Well, I know Jared works very hard because whenever I came into the office on Sunday afternoons, he was always there. Since arriving, a lot has changed: the broadsheet morphed into a tabloid and the Web site was redesigned. And unlike most owners, Jared has actually increased the paper’s editorial staff — which is a very good thing. But I’ve been away, so I will have to wait for Isaiah Wilner’s upcoming piece in New York piece to find out what is going on at the Observer now.

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Neal Ungerleider is co-editor of FishbowlNY.