Hi all, Parker here. I hope everyone’s having a happy Memorial Day weekend.
In addition to writing The Present Age, I also do a bit of freelancing from time to time. One of those freelance projects is a free, weekly newsletter I write with
for about longform journalism called Depth Perception.One of my favorite recurring Depth Perception segments is a Q&A feature with journalists called Leading Questions. I just wanted to use today’s newsletter to highlight some of the LQ features we’ve done this year. If you enjoy them, consider subscribing to Depth Perception. Thanks!
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Molly Knight:
What was the most indulgent media event you've ever attended?
In 2007 when I worked for ESPN the Magazine we had a writer's retreat at a spa in Montauk and we each got our own suites plus hundreds of dollars to spend on massages. etc. It was almost impossible to spend all our gift card credits so I was just using them to buy fancy chocolate bars in the gift shop on the way out. When the economy crashed a year later we had our writer's retreat at an adult Chuck E. Cheese in midtown Manhattan.
I used to fly somewhere new every week chasing a story. Now, magazines and newspapers barely have any budget to send a writer anywhere.
Kim Kelly:
What is a widely accepted journalistic rule or norm that you hate?
The general sentiment that you see floating around to keep yourself out of it, keep politics out of it, be objective, try to be unbiased. All that bullshit. All that stuff that I’ve never done.
I come from a world — the music world — where if something sucks, you just say that it sucks. And coming into the more mainstream journalism sphere and realizing that you’re expected to keep your opinion to yourself, that just seems ridiculous to me.
Sara Benincasa:
What’s the best journalistic career advice you ever received?
Don’t become obsessed with the theater of horse-race politics. Keep your mind on the actual issues. That was from a teacher at a free summer camp I went to in high school. I have absolutely ignored this advice at times when it would’ve been great for me to heed it. The older I get, the more valuable it becomes.
I’ve also heard this in different forms over the years: read great journalism, even if it’s not in your usual lane. I’ve taken that to heart and I pass it on with a little twist. When I teach any kind of writing – usually personal essay, memoir or novel writing – I tell the students to read great sports writing, especially if they’re not into sports. If you find a writer who can make you care about a game you’ll never watch or an athlete you’ve never heard of, you’ve found a writing role model.
Jo Piazza:
What work of yours do you most regret?
During Hillary Clinton’s election, I was still at the New York Daily News and was forced to do a piece on all of her bad hairstyle choices, with a sidebar on why it was ridiculous that she was wearing a scrunchie.
There were a lot of questionable things that I was asked to do by the male editors of the New York Daily News, many of which involved me having to put on a bikini. I did a day in the life of a boxing ring girl. I had to try out to be a Jets cheerleader at one point. So yeah, those were fun times, coming up the ranks as a young woman at a New York City tabloid.
Mehdi Hasan:
What interview of yours are you proudest of?
One that I particularly enjoyed and has had a great positive impact both on the world and on my own career was my interview with Erik Prince [founder of the private security firm Blackwater] for Al Jazeera a few years back. It was for a show called Head to Head at the Oxford Union, which is in front of a live audience. And I grilled him on his relationship with Trump, on alleged war crimes in Iraq.
It went viral at the time. It introduced me to an American audience in a way that I hadn’t been introduced before, and it was covered by all the American media. It was, I think, interview journalism as it should be done: well-prepared, well-briefed, competent. And it also actually had real-world consequences. Based on what Prince had said to me that contradicted what he said to Congress, [Rep.] Adam Schiff referred Prince to the [U.S. Department of Justice, alleging that] he had perjured himself to Congress. Obviously, the Trump DOJ never took it anywhere. But that was something I’m proud of.
Miles Klee:
What story of yours are you proudest of?
I feel awkward taking pride in anything I do, and the article of mine that recently won an award (for humor writing) was a review of experiencing Avatar: The Way of Water on mushrooms, so the metrics for successful journalism in my niche are pretty bizarre.
I suppose I always love the opportunity to celebrate art I admire; I’m pretty sure I wrote the only in-depth, on-the-ground coverage of the first SopranosCon, which doubles as a love letter to my home state of New Jersey. And I definitely put my heart and soul into this hot take about Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” being the song of the summer, every summer. I listened to it on repeat about 200 times while writing it.
Brandy Zadrozny:
What’s the best journalistic career advice you ever received?
Pamela Colloff, the brilliant magazine writer and all-around good human, gave a talk in the city years ago. I attended with my third child, a newborn, strapped to my chest. I was feeling very “in it,” wondering if I could pull off momming and work, and she said something along the lines of “I had a child and immediately felt like, ‘Well, that’s it! Journalism is done with me! I’ll never write again!” But she came to view being a mother as a secret kind of power – it made her more empathetic, and better at her job in myriad ways. I try and see my identity as a mother as a plus.
Also, I don’t know if it’s the best, but I think about it a lot, one of my former bosses, as I was leaving for another gig, left me with the sage advice, “Everybody stinks. Don’t stink and you’ll be fine.” It helps with the anxiety this profession can spark.
Tim Herrera:
Why did you become a journalist?
I’m gonna give the least charming and endearing answer: Because my first two choices — chemical engineer and anthropologist — required too much school. But! Things always work out in the end, and very early on in my career I realized journalism should’ve been my first choice all along.
I’ve written a lot about finding a career that aligns with your values and ambitions and gives you fulfillment, and years ago I figured out that journalism is that for me. The thing I value most — in work and in life in general — is helping people to live a better life, and for me, journalism is the best avenue through which to do that. At its core, that’s what good journalism does. That can take a lot of forms, but this career path is inherently all about service, and that’s exactly where I want to be.
And less philosophically, it’s just fun. What other career lets you talk to interesting people and write about interesting and impactful things for a living?
Tom Scocca:
What is a widely accepted journalistic rule or norm that you hate?
Shibboleths around the performance of neutrality and the performance of balance — it drives me nuts. I’m just very annoyed by the pretense that journalists and journalistic outlets are not constantly making judgments and value decisions. Like there’s some sort of purity to what they do, where the world is just happening around them and they’re taking it all down, and there’s no agenda, purpose behind it.
It's been really fascinating to see The New York Times get like a dog that can't stop licking its paw at the Harvard presidency. They’re like, “Well, this is happening, so we have to write about it.” But you’re not observers, you’re participants — and you can’t stop yourself from participating. How can you be one of the major journalistic institutions in the country and have that little ability to direct media literacy at your own activities?
I'm sorry, you come here on a holiday to give us all this inspiration and wisdom, and then I show up to bitch about the fucking New York Times. Because how is the big story today "Trump booed by Libertarians" and not "Trump promises to pardon drug dealer"? It's another example of how the more comic aspects of his character serve to distract from anything that could do him real harm politically.
I did a search on google news for the name "Ross Ulbricht" and what I get back are stories from Reason and CoinDesk like this is some kind of Libertarian inside-baseball thing.
Just imagine if Biden went to the Green Party convention and promised to pardon Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Times and Post would both be headlining this with "Desperate Biden torpedoes failing campaign with promise to pardon cop-killer" whatever the reception he got from the Greens.
I suspect this is another example of the Times' maddening "Trump Exception" where they respond to his campaign promises with "Oh, that's just one of those things he says like ending all absentee voting, not like he'd actually follow through on it, no need to waste our readers time with this."
fascinating stuff. I've subscribed.