Challenging Assumptions: Michael Powell’s Take on True Journalism

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business.

I'm Jaci Clement. Today, I'm joined by one of the most influential voices in journalism, Michael Powell, staff writer at The Atlantic. Over a storied career with legacy news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New York Newsday, Michael has been on the front lines of uncovering truths and pushing boundaries. In this episode, he offers a candid look at the realities of modern newsrooms, shares how he balances rigorous reporting with compelling storytelling, and examines why the career ladder for young journalists has become so precarious. Stay tuned for an in-depth conversation on the craft, the challenges, and the future of news. Michael, welcome to FMC Fast Chat.

Oh, my pleasure.

You have been described as one of the best reporters of your generation. How does that make you feel?

Somebody's hallucinating. I don't think it's me. I think that actually is overstated. I mean, I think I'm a good reporter. I think there's actually quite a few good reporters out there. One of my pet peeves, I think sometimes there's a tendency of those with hair color like my own, which is to say white or gray. You know, to say, oh, well, the next generation somehow isn't up to it. And I think, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, I think the big existential problem is how do we find jobs for them? How do we find career ladders? How do we keep those people in it long enough that they start to get the variety of experience and that, frankly, I have that that a lot of other people of my generation have, where you've done a lot of investigative and feature writing and books and this sort of thing. But to allow that to happen, to allow, in a sense, reporters to come to flower, full flower, we have to figure out a way to keep them, for them to be able to raise families and— Go about, you know, doing things. And, and, and that's just very, very difficult right now.

Well, you bring up 2, 2 issues actually, which is interesting. One is the state of journalism. Yes. But also, you know, there, there's the current philosophy, if you will, that people want balanced lives. So when you started out, was your life balanced?

Were you out there doing it?

I should have the woman who became my wife on this as well. I mean, look, I think that any time when you're starting off, and it was certainly true of me, I mean, it was journalism. You don't get into journalism by and large for the money. So you're into it because you have a sense of you're driven. You want to have a sense of trying to change the world, trying to write. write about the world in all of its complexity. And I think that, yeah, that makes— I am sure, I know that I worked very, very long hours at that time, but I'm not sure that that's— I mean, if I were, I don't know, a junior associate at a big law firm, I suspect I'd also be putting in very long hours. So I'm not sure that that's Again, I guess I go back to, there was a ladder for me. I mean, whether I knew it or not, whether I could climb it as well as I wanted or not, it was there. I could go to a small— I went to the Burlington Free Press up in Vermont. I went to the Record in New Jersey. I went to Newsday, to the Washington Post. So you could kind of work your way up. And at each of those, With the possible exception of the very first one, you could make enough money that you could exhale and you didn't have to worry that you were going to be getting laid off or that kind of stuff. So I think that that's— I mean, I speak as one of my son is a journalist at the Houston Chronicle and I just, I see these young reporters, and it's very difficult to figure out how do I get from here to there? And there would be whatever, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post. And it's not just arriving at that institution, it's what that institution then allows you to do.

Right.

I mean, because when I was at— oh geez, when I was even at New York Newsday, I mean, we had a huge, we had well over, we had about 100 reporters in New York City alone. And that allowed, if I wanted to dive deep on somebody that I thought had been unjustly imprisoned, if I wanted to go into a heroin shooting gallery and spend a month there and trying to figure out, I had the time to do that because there were, you know, whereas when you're— I, so often now when I talk to young reporters, you know, they're, they're one of 3 or 4 of these smaller papers and there's just kind of no time except to just kind of try to kick out copy. And so anyway, I mean, I'm not, I'm not trying to say that, sure, there's, I take pride in my accomplishments, but it also helped that there was a, an infrastructure. around me and other reporters that allowed us to see what we were capable of.

Is it because of technology today that that ladder doesn't exist anymore? Is it because of the digital landscape that kind of came in and said to legacy media, you're out of date, there's better ways to do this, even if it's not truly a better way?

You know, I think that's some of it, right? I mean, I do think that's some of it. But I mean, also with that digital, and probably more to the point, It destroyed a business model, right? And I'm not, I mean, that's the way of the world, but print newspapers just were at one point kind of money-making machines. I mean, they got enormous number of ads and advertising, and that's really been kind of vaporized. I mean, now both The Atlantic and The New York Times, where it was before that, really depend on a subscriber base to carry us. That's great, but it is a little bit more precarious and it's without those kind of big fat ads that used to account for why a Newsday or a New York Times landed on the doorstep with a thud. There ain't no more thud. And that's really, and that, you know, I mean, I don't want to get us in a whole discussion on business, but I do think that, that makes the whole business somewhat more precarious. Not so much for me. I mean, I'm fine. I'm at The Atlantic. I mean, I was at The New York Times, but for that kind of the next couple of generations following behind me, I think it's really difficult.

Tell me about working at The Atlantic versus The New York Times. For people that don't work in the news industry, give them some insight as to what it, what it actually seems the differences between, you know, you had mentioned before, it's not just what you're doing, but also how many people you're working with and the large newsrooms of yesterday aren't necessarily there anymore. So if you can describe the different cultures and maybe just the different processes.

Yeah. Sure. So at the Washington Post and the New York Times, where I'd been for the previous, well, I guess to date myself, like for the previous 25 years before I came to The Atlantic. Yeah, I mean, those were big, massive, and still are to a large extent, massive newsrooms and with a lot of emphasis on, I mean, Obviously, it's a daily newspaper, so you're kicking out copy. You're not kicking out copy in the way that, again, you are now at these smaller papers, but there's certainly, really in the best sense, I guess, they're big machines with a lot of emphasis on editing and on double and triple checking each other. There's certainly good writing in the New York Times, but I guess I had reached a point where I felt like at The Atlantic, it's a magazine, so it's a little more loose-limbed. You have more space. You have more— very often you have more time to work on pieces, and there's more voice. You're going to write with more voice. And that's going to mean both writing, one hopes, with kind of a writerly voice, but also having a little bit more of a point of view. I mean, it's not an op-ed column that I'm writing by and large, but I am going to have more of a point of view. And it just felt like a move. I'd had a column a couple times at the New York Times, which I'd very much enjoyed, and this just felt like something— Something different and that I was lucky enough to get an offer from them to come over. So it's, I guess, yeah. So sort of thinking out loud, I mean, I guess it's more that you have, there's a great emphasis at The Atlantic on writing with your own voice and really exploring a topic, trying to, Take some chances. And if you're not entirely right, I'm not talking about factually, but sort of in your worldview, your construct in a piece, that's not the worst thing in the world. I mean, the idea is to try to make a coherent argument that's going to provoke a reader. Not provoke in a bad way. I mean, just sort of— Get them thinking and get them and force yourself to think as well.

So more of to challenge a belief system?

Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I'd been doing a little bit of that at the Times the last few years I was there. I'd been on a beat that was, I like to call a third rail beat. I mean, like on a subway where the, you know, the, all the electricity's coursing through it. I mean, I was writing on race. Identity, gender, a lot of the issues that consume us. And I was able to do that there. I was given a fair amount of freedom. I would say that I have more freedom at The Atlantic, but that isn't to suggest I wasn't prevented from saying anything. It's just a magazine is a little— it's a more expansive universe.

All right. To your mind, what makes a good story? What elements does it have to have?

An element of surprise. Something that, yeah, an element of surprise, a good character or characters that you can build something around so that it doesn't just become an abstract, you know, an abstraction, but that you can kind of ground it in people. And then depending on the kind of the piece, it can be something that outrages one. It can be something that just is moving to write about. And I very much like to vary what I write about so that sometimes I'll do an investigative piece. An investigative piece, you're trying to expose something, right? I mean, I have in mind for a piece I want to do a couple, you know, months down the road, one on a, a doctor who's researching kind of the moment of death and what happens there. I mean, that's, that'll be a very different piece, right? I mean, that's not a piece where I'm doing an investigative piece, but it's kind of probing both the fantastic mystery of that, and then also what motivates this person, this doctor, to kind of— to go there, and it is one of the great mysteries. So it depends on the nature of the piece, but I would say it's very important on many pieces, particularly say an investigative piece, political piece, to challenge your own assumptions, challenge your props, as I say, so that— Look, I'm a born New Yorker, so I can't imagine starting a piece without some thoughts on it, some idea. Well, I think it's probably this. And that, I think I have just learned over time, is it's so important then to challenge yourself on that. Okay, this is my idea. What I think this piece is about, and this is what's wrong. But then try to find somebody— I mean, it's different. Look, if it's corruption, it's a different piece. There's not really much defense for corruption. But if it's a piece, say, on policy or something, you want to find somebody really smart who can help you challenge your own assumptions about a piece. And that was very useful in the last few years I was at the times with these very kind of controversial topics. And it's a lot of fun. I mean, if you don't get too uptight about it, like, oh God, I'm being forced to kind of question my assumption about a piece, it's a lot of fun. It's very freeing and liberating to hear. And it isn't to say that you're necessarily going to entirely agree with whatever the person is. But just to really explore something. And I think that the danger is sometimes in daily journalism or journalism period, but perhaps more so in daily just because we're in more of a rush, is that like, okay, I'm going to find somebody. Let's say I'm writing on DEI programs in major universities. I'll find somebody Whatever, to criticize it. But it's like with an eye towards a quote, right? Like, I need a quote. I need somebody to— and that to me is deadening. I mean, it's far more interesting to spend an hour or 2 on the phone with somebody, really explore where they're coming from. It isn't to say— I mean, I will have sometimes I hope in the best sense of the word, an intellectually contentious hour or 2 with somebody. But it isn't like where, you know, where we're calling each other out. It's more that you're trying to like, no, no, no, let me explore that. Like, how does that work? How does that work? And to me, that makes for very interesting journalism in the end. It certainly makes it more interesting to write.

One of the elements that as you talk It just seems you keep coming back to finding the humanity inside the story. Is that accurate?

Absolutely. Yes. I mean, it's one of the great privileges really of journalism is that you are given the ability to enter somebody's life, right? I mean, to And depending on the piece, if you have the time, sometimes at a very intimate level. I mean, sometimes where you're repeatedly coming back to somebody and that carries with it a lot of responsibility. Again, it may be that you're entering somebody's life and they've made a whole series of bad life choices. They may be that You disagree with their view on the world or whatever, but that opportunity to enter that life and then to try to make sense of it and to try to bring that across to a reader is wonderful. And so when I think of some of the investigative pieces, I've had a couple of pieces where, you know, you basically, you're able to say free somebody from prison because you start looking at their case. And, you know, those are enormously time-consuming pieces because your big worry is this guy, this woman is in the pen there. They've been like a jury has found them guilty. And, and, you know, so you're always worried that you're going to get 3/4 of the way down and then all of a sudden, oh my God, you're going to find something. And you have to be open to that, right? I mean, that's the worst thing would be to write the piece and then have somebody come out and say, well, you didn't look at X and Y and Z. But also in the process of doing that, you're also getting to know that person and I very much want to try to bring the reality of that person's life. I mean, if they've been in prison, what it's done to them, what they were beforehand, and what this experience has done to them. And I had a— I mean, I remember many years ago there was a case, there was a man who had been unjustly, completely unjustly, accused of horrible things, abusing his daughter, little daughter. And so I spent, I mean, it took forever on that piece. I mean, I was doing it in between things because again, I mean, what more heinous sort of crime can one imagine, right? So that the last thing you want to do is, I mean, in other words, I had to— In a sense, a jury, you want to go beyond a reasonable doubt. Well, with a reporter, you also want to be well beyond a reasonable doubt, right? You want to be really convinced this person is innocent. And I remember, and I frankly came to like this man. I met with him a number of times in prison. He got out. He's been out now for many years. But I remember him saying to me, You know, when he was still in prison, he says, you know, even if I get out, like my friends are always going to look at me and there's going to be a question mark in the back of their minds. And by the way, because I went back to him and wrote an article on him some years later, that is in fact what happened. I mean, he was never able to pick up where he had left off. And yeah, so I guess. It's a long-winded answer, but I think it's, you know, the, the, what you want to do is get that, that, that it isn't just the investigative piece. You want to get the tragedy of this man's situation across to a reader in a way that, that a reader, yeah, will care about.

That seems at odds with what we see happening at large in the media landscape today. And by that, I mean, Short stories put out very fast. And the basic storyline is this person is good and this person is bad.

Yeah. Terrible journalism. Terrible journalism. I mean, I, it's, and, and I, and I am very, again, I'm very sympathetic if you're, you know, you're at, you know, some small and geez, even some mid, mid-sized papers. You know, there's an enormous pressure just to, you know, as they say, kick out the copy. And that just feels so at odds with what drew me to journalism, and I think what probably draws most people to journalism.

Right.

I think it can feed into this sense we have these days of this polarized world, As you were saying, kind of right and wrong and this and that. And having said that though, I guess I'm thinking out loud. I mean, I thought there were some good pieces done out of Pennsylvania this year. Like there were a number of papers that sent— it was clear obviously that Pennsylvania in the election was going to loom extraordinarily large. As it turns out, she lost. Harris lost states she was supposed to win. So it was— it did. It itself was not as central, but I mean, she lost Pennsylvania narrowly. And there were— I was heartened to see the number of reporters that went to a particular— I had done this back in 2008 in Pennsylvania, as it happens, when I was covering Obama, and just go to a town and stay there long enough to write a piece that gets at what's going on. And I think if you do that, and they were going to counties much as I did, they were picking counties that were more or less 50/50 splits and seeing what's going on there. And I think that you can shine a light On where people are, where their thinking is, where their values are, and frankly, often come away with a pretty good sense of who's going to win. I mean, I'm not going to say, having gone to Beaver County, oh, I didn't say, you know, Obama's going to win. Though it's interesting because that was a— I went to Beaver, which is way out beyond Pittsburgh, an old steel county. And Majority white, the Black population, majority white. And McCain, who was running against Obama— I'm just sort of going through the thinking of what happens with that. He needed to take— if he was going to beat Obama, if he was going to make up for what Obama was going to do in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, he needed to take those counties like 70-30, 75-25. It was pretty clear to me after spending a week just talking intensively with people, and I was lucky I found a couple of people who were able to make a lot of introductions for me out there. It was pretty clear to me he wasn't— that wasn't going to happen, that, that, you know, that there were enough white working-class voters who were going to stay with the Democrats and vote for Obama. And that he was going to be able to hold his own there. And in fact, that's what happened. And I think that you— so I saw a number of, I guess, in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New York Times did that, and they all were really good pieces and then different counties. None of them, I don't think any of them went to Beaver. But here's the problem. I mean, if you're a Really good reporter at the Allentown paper. I mean, that used to be a really good paper in the day. And again, not because the reporters were better, but because they had a bigger staff. They had an ambitious ownership. Now, you know, you're not going to be able to, you're not going to have the time to do that. You know, to go and spend a week even in your neck of the woods, wherever, you know, in Allentown, around Allentown. And that's a shame because that's where we can really shine a light. And particularly at a time like this where we're so polarized in kind of at least allowing people to kind of understand the thinking of the other side. And I think that's very difficult. And I think, you know, it also, everything in our culture mitigates against that right now.

Yeah.

All right.

So. Which came first, the fall down of democracy or the fall down of the media?

I think they kind of have gone— I mean, I think they both— I think both have occurred at the same time. And it's, you know, and I, I, I'm not—

Maybe democracy's not as bad as we think it is.

Well, yeah, I mean, I was going to say, I'm not apocalyptic about this. I mean, I think, look, it's, it's a really tough time. But I am not, I mean, we've been through really, in fact, I wrote a piece this summer on this that, you know, I mean, when I was a kid, so, you know, I mean, I remember '68, I guess it was like 9 years old or whatever at that time. And, you know, I mean, Martin Luther King was killed, Kennedy was killed, there were riots. I mean, there were, I remember my parents used to get Life magazine. I remember seeing pictures of sandbags on the Capitol with soldiers behind it because there was huge rioting in Washington. I mean, we've been through some really grim times and so far democracy has held. And I'm not being— I'm not trying to be sanguine about this. I'm not trying to say, oh, don't worry about it. I mean, there are things worth worrying about. I guess I'm more worried that we've lost the ability to talk with each other. And I do think the media and the decline of the media hurts that because we can play a role there. And I also think there's a tendency— I mean, there's been this whole debate in journalism, right? Does Objectivity matters. I always pay less attention to objectivity, but fairness. And that fairness is not just finding a quote, but again, really engaging. But then there are those who have argued that, well, no, that the job of journalism is to speak truth. We know the truth. Let's We'll find the truth and we'll deliver it. And if we say that Trump is fascist enough times, that will somehow supposedly convince people. I just think it's a terrible path to go down. Not because— I mean, I'm all for let's cover Trump or any president as tough as we can. I mean, we should go at it by all means. And if there are ways in which crony capitalism or this or that is coming up, we should write on that, expose it. But let's not fall into this, I think, terrible trap of thinking that we possess the truth. I think it's just a very dangerous place to go as journalists. And I think we don't. In fact, all we do is turn people off when we talk like that.

How do you get that message through to colleagues, to other people in the business? Is it you kind of lean over and say, you're fooling yourself right now. Get a grip. What do you do?

That's a great question. And I think, I mean, you know, Right. So what you don't want to do is become the guy with the white hair and say, oh, you have it all wrong. I think you want to challenge people. I think we want to challenge each other. And I think it's worth engaging with these discussions and not being— also, I guess, not being scared away if you're told I don't know, whatever it is. Oh, you're just doing get off my lawn, or you're frankly, in my case, a white guy. I just think whatever that is, and it would be if I were a Black guy, I'd say a Black guy. But it's that we want to have this discussion. And I saw this play out when I was at the New York Times. during COVID right after George Floyd, there was a lot of this that we should be writing truth. And with a number of other reporters pushed back on that and said, no, what we want to be doing is writing powerfully about what's going on in the country right now. But let's not assume that we know the truth. Let's go out there and just report. And by the way, there's racism in this world. There's sexism. There's, I mean, those things are all, should all be written about. I'm not, you know, for a second saying that, but let's just, it's just that terrible conceit that goes with thinking that, you know, I know the deal. Like, like I know the deal and I'm going to explain it to you, dear readers, so that you understand. It just feels to me like not a, not a useful way of— also not very interesting.

Do you think that's also why so many people are turned off by news today?

It could be. I mean, I do think, you know, to, to pick on some of my, you know, some of the television stations, I mean, I look at, you know, I mean, you have Fox, but MSNBC is absolutely no different except from the other side, to my view. And there's some good journalists. I mean, I'm not, you know, but you know, you will never hear a contrary voice if you're on MSNBC. You're not going to hear an interesting conservative voice on that ever, pretty much. In fact, very often you won't even hear an interesting, you know, kind of contrarian liberal voice. And the same goes on Fox. And I just think that's Sad. It's just, it's, it's not. And also, I, I will say, I don't find it particularly interesting viewing. I mean, it's, you know, if I want to just get ratified in whatever my point of view is, but that's kind of dull.

Do you, do you consider it journalism or no?

You know, it's at least a cousin of journalism. I mean, it's filled with journalists, you know, I mean, they're, journalists go on the air all the time, but no, I think it's, I mean, I think it's Or it's a different kind of journalism. I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's inter— it's in part it's entertainment, in part, and in part it's, it's preaching to the choir. And look, I mean, we have those in magazines too, right? There's the, the Nation and Dissent magazine. There's new— the, on, on the left, there's National Review and the Spectator and other things, right? I mean, and I'm, I'm fine with all of that. I mean, I, I, I think that's, I, in fact, subscribe to all of the aforementioned. But there's, I think there's a, there's a role in trying to synthesize and pull together that, that journalism can do uniquely.

Okay.

Daily journal, you know, daily journalism, big magazine journalism. Mm-hmm.

When did you decide you wanted to be a journalist? Like when you were 5 years old, what did you think you'd be when you grew up?

I don't know that it was when I was 5 years old, but I do remember my uncle worked for the Providence Journal as an investigative writer. And I can remember when he was up in Vermont, because we had a country, you know, old cottage up there. And I wanted to find out, I forget, we were driving around Burlington. I wanted to find out what, like if the Mets had won the night before, because this was before You know, before the internet. And he said, well, follow me. And he went in and he was, you know, he was like part of the, you know, fraternity. He was part of, he was a journalist. So we walked back to the sports department. They looked up on the wire and they told me, you know, what, what had happened with the Mets. And I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world. And it seemed— So I guess in talking with him, and he used to do, he used to do a lot of investigative stuff on Mobsters in Providence, of whom there were many. And it all seemed very exciting and kind of a chance to explore different worlds. That said, I mean, I went through college. I don't know that I did. I worked on school paper and all that kind of stuff, but I don't know that I thought— I worked for a while as a tenant organizer when I got out of college. And I think it was at some point I wanted to, at some point I wanted to change the world and I wanted to write. And as I say, I succeeded at one of those. And then, you know, and then what happens, you know, the change the world. I mean, yeah, you start to see the world in, as you go along in kind of more nuanced ways. And, and, but that, that idea of exploring subcultures, of getting into people's lives has always stayed with me. I mean, that always was exciting to me.

Okay. So when you started, because again, a very different landscape than what we're in now, how was it in regard to, did you have editors who were correcting your work, who were training you as you went along? Were they paying attention to you?

Oh yes. Oh yeah. I mean, sometimes more than I wanted, of course. No. And they were good. I mean, I remember at the Burlington Free Press in particular, I mean, I still, look, I was in my 20s. I had like, I was going to right all the wrongs of the world. And so I had to go through that experience of like, slow down. Like, the world is more complicated. And that was pushed on me by editors in a very useful way. So I think the, you know, not having— I mean, yes. Anyway, editors, editors are, I think, incredibly important. And they still are. Look at The Atlantic. I mean, there will be times when I'll think, you know, my, my, what, what's he doing to my copy? And then like, you'll look at it and you'll think, well, no, actually, I hate to say it, that's better. You know, that makes sense. Unfortunately, that's now a great luxury to be able to have any kind of sustained interaction with an editor. So we come back yet again. I think it's really— yeah, it's a problem because there's absolutely no doubt that editors played A really important role in tempering me and taming me and getting me to look at— I mean, the good editors, bad editors, bad reporters, but I mean, the good ones could really force you to go beyond in a way that was great. And at some point, you've inculcated that as the way you approach journalism.

One of my concerns with younger reporters these days is that they don't have those editors with the experience who are either pulling them aside and saying, let me show you something, or try this, you know, that sort of thing going on. So it doesn't seem like there's as much on-the-ground training going on with them.

Oh, I think that's, I mean, that's certainly been my experience. I, it, it's, yeah, I mean, again, it's, it's all that speed. There's just. Fewer and fewer editors. The editors are all stretched. And yeah, so no, I think it's a, it's a real problem.

Now you are also, though, you're a gifted writer. And my point in bringing that up is it's 2 very different skill sets to be a good reporter and a good writer. And you could be a great reporter and be a lousy writer or be a great writer and be a lousy reporter. So when you marry those 2 together, and here's the reason for my question, there's so much emphasis on storytelling these days. You gotta be a great storyteller that sometimes I wonder if that's misinterpreted as, oh, forget about the facts. You know, that's getting in the way of the story that you wanna tell. So how did you learn to write, I guess, is part of the question, but also in what regard do you balance your story With the facts that you've turned up as a reporter?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I, and I do, I strongly believe that we have to, there's almost no such thing as really good journalistic writing that isn't based in a lot of reporting. And And I mean, and I could cite, there's some really great writers out there, journalistic writers that do that. I mean, and in fact, I think all of them do. I mean, of the really good ones. And yeah, because I mean, it's funny, I know when I go out on a story where I'm going to do it and I want to base it around a character, I mean, the thing I almost always regret is that I couldn't go back yet again and again because you just get different thoughts. I mean, when I was writing on pads, I used to scribble my impressions on the back of the pad very quickly. But I think that, yeah, I mean, The two are inseparable to my view. I mean, you can, and I work on, look, I worked on writing a lot and that process is not, never one hopes plagiarism, but certainly paying attention. If somebody writes well, pay attention. I pay attention to how they do it, what the rhythm is in their copy, how they use short sentences, long sentences, how they set scenes, all of that kind of thing. And you can get that from novels too and pay a lot of attention, but then it has to be wed to really painfully careful reporting. And that's the stuff that comes out, I think, and really works. When I look at the pieces I'm happiest with, you know, where it's, yes, that it's, it's well-written, but it's in part well-written because I've been able to inhabit characters, really go back enough that I'm, I'm confident of kind of where I'm going with them. And yeah.

Where do you get your story ideas from? Is it the kind of thing you hang out, you talk to people, you get, you get a couple things going on in your head saying, oh, that's interesting. And then you go to the grocery store and you see something that kind of reinforces what you heard Saturday night. Or are you looking at press releases or are editors telling you you need to be doing this? How does that work?

It's never entirely linear, right? I mean, there's sometimes it's all of the above. I mean, even I pride myself on coming up with my own story ideas. I've also had some editors come to me and say, hey, I think that, hey, you might think about this. I will say, I think the best stories like that where an editor comes is where they give you a shard of an idea, not the whole idea, not like, I want this piece. That strikes me as actually bad editing. It's more like, hey, There's something to explore. Let's talk for a couple of minutes. And I will do the same, by the way. I mean, I'll have an— a shard of an idea and I'll go to my editor and I'll say, hey, you know, I'm thinking of this. And then the editor might say, well, you know, maybe try this and that. And, and you, you know, you, you'll come out of it with an approach, an idea, you know, a fully formed idea that you can start to explore. But I think I've never had— I have a lot of interests, so I've never really had problems finding, if anything, finding ideas. I remember my wife, when I was at the Washington Post and I was overheated and had too many things, she said, why don't you draw up a list of all the stories that you think you're working on right now? And like, I got to like 25 and I realized that's mentally ill. Like, like I can't do that. Like, that's nuts. And I like, you know, crossed out a bunch of stories. But I mean, it's, you know, it kind of depends. I mean, there was a, I mean, you know, I, I almost dread to say this, but, you know, like I was on X the other day, right? And I saw some mention of a Film festival in Montreal where there had been a film that had been a documentary made by a lefty Israeli filmmaker. And because of everything that's going on, there had been a push within the film festival and they jettisoned the film. They weren't going to show it. And they put out this very strange press release where they said, because then I started going down the hole. I mean, this, I then, you know, I started like just looking around and they put out this very strange press release saying this was brilliant, but because of the day we live in, we can't do it. And I just thought it was, now I may never do something on that, right? I mean, I literally just, this was this weekend. But I did spend about, I don't know, it was fun, about half an hour Googling around and just trying to find it. And the filmmaker looked like an interesting character. So the superstructure, were I to approach that, was starting to take form. Now, look, again, it may look very different once you start doing the reporting, but That was, you know, that was an example of that. I mean, and sure, as you say, I mean, it's, it's things friend, you know, a friend will tell you something. You'll, I always, as embattled as they are, I always read the local papers when I'm out on the, you know, on stories because very often they'll have, you know, it'll be like some little piece that turns into, you know, the, yeah, if you have the time, really turns into a terrific piece. So you get them from everywhere.

Yeah.

All right. And I will take the blame for any, you know, blowback you get for answering this question. Name me 3 journalists that you think people should read.

Well, I think, you know, I mean, at, at, okay. I mean, I could name a couple just at The Atlantic. I mean, George Packer and Jennifer Senior are both wonderful, really mature writers and Thinkers. Jennifer tends to do more— she'd been at the New York Times and at New York Magazine. She tends to do more kind of— what's the word I'm looking for? Kind of personal, but that isn't to say written out of her head. I mean, like she's done things on 9/11. She did things on a mentally ill relative. She's done just some wonderful, wonderful journalism. And George does more Kind of sociocultural stuff. He did an enormous piece out of Phoenix, Arizona, kind of looking at that as kind of the template for kind of where America is right now. Not at all in bad ways either. So, I mean, I think they're wonderful. Ian Shapiro at the Times, I mean, he does like their long pieces. He came over from the Washington Post. He's Talk about somebody who does really careful reporting in the context of narrative. I mean, he does pretty much purely narrative journalism and it's just great. And he learned from this David Marinus, who's at the— still, I guess, a senior editor at the Washington Post. But I would recommend anyone Google his— the stuff he used to do for the Post or the books that he now writes. Mainly he writes nonfiction books. And on just a wide variety of subjects. Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I could go on. Dan Barry, Ellen Barry, I mean, at the Times. I mean, there's just a lot of— mainly I would say if you want to become a writer, if that's something that you want in your quill, that that's one of the things you can pull out that I might— Really pay attention to the writers in the paper and figure out what makes that woman, that guy, that whatever special. What are they doing? Because often it's pretty subtle. I mean, if it's not subtle, it's very often overwriting, right? So if it's subtle, just pay attention to what they're doing and— And this, as you say, look, there's some wonderful reporters who are not great writers, but just are great omnivorous, like I would leave the country if they started to come after me and report out me, but they're not writers. And I just think that it's fun to see somebody who can do both, who can both write and report. And it, it, it's a matter of just of reading carefully and paying attention to what makes it work.

Well, it, it's also helpful to the news consumer to say, let me seek out these people and let me see what, what is it about what they're doing that is either quality reporting or is good writing and is it resonating with me? Because I think at the end of the day, everything you're talking about are things that are just bringing out the authentic story.

Yes.

And it's, it's the realness that the audience responds to. And I think they see a difference between the realness and the stuff that's just pushed out the door to fill the space or, you know, to get the click online. Let me, let me ask you, for the news consumers themselves, what advice do you have for them trying to find their way in this crazy media landscape today where There's real information right next to misinformation and disinformation and your crazy Uncle Larry's, you know, wild opinions about things. All of it comes together in the same place. So it's really hard to figure out what to believe or what to at least, you know, say, let me turn to this source for some kind of enlightenment. So what do they do?

Okay. Well, I mean, here I'll, I'll, you know, I'm going to sound like the newspaper hack that I am, but I think they should read newspapers. I mean, I really do. If you want to understand Long Island, you've got to read Newsday. You just do. Maybe it's not the paper it was 25 years ago when you could kill a cat by throwing the Sunday paper on top of them. I mean, it's not, but it's still a terrific paper that does that, that tries to cover that. And if you're going to— so I guess I would seek out the big papers, but I would also look, there's wonderful—

Yeah.

There's news sites now, you know, the Baltimore Banner in Baltimore. I mean, the Baltimore Sun used to be a terrific paper, has really fallen on hard times. And a lot of their best people went over to the Baltimore Banner, this, you know, nonprofit digital paper. Will it survive? I don't know. I sure hope so because it does terrific work. The City is similarly a digital site in New York City. That does a lot of really good work. You know, I mean, and those—

Harry Siegel's out there now, right?

Yes. Harry Siegel's there. It was terrific. Uh, yeah, I know there's a lot of really good people there and, you know, and, and, and in fact, some of the best reporting is being done there. So I would, you know, it's, it takes a little more work now and, and I am sympathetic to that cuz it's like, I'm sure if I were to walk out on the street here and talk to my neighbors, most of them probably unfortunately had never heard of the city. I mean, it's difficult to get the publicity or to rise up to a point where people know what you're doing. But there is some great reporting out there. There's great— so as much as possible, I would encourage people to do that. And then also challenge yourself. If you are a liberal New Yorker, read Commentary or the National Review or something once a week. I mean, just, there's actually some very smart people there. If you're a conservative, read— pick up Dissent, pick up The Nation, pick up The New Republic. I mean, one of those. Just Challenge yourself. I mean, the worst that will happen is that you'll metaphorically throw the thing across the room and say you're never going to read it anymore. But that is one of the great things about big papers is that they do still have op-ed sections that have conservative and liberal writers. I mean, the same thing for that matter, if you're reading the New York Times and you're a liberal, You know, read Douthat, read Bret Stephens. If you're a conservative, you know, read one of the liberal columnists. I mean, you know, in other words, challenge yourself. And I think that feels to me like a really interesting way, yeah, of living.

Yeah. Why do you think people are so afraid of information today?

I think as a challenge. I mean, I think the idea is that it might challenge, well, 2 things. A is that it might challenge your preconceptions of something. And then 2, and fairly, I mean, there's a lot of stuff of dubious quality out there, right? I mean, because of my job, I spend some time on X every day, right? And look, There's actually some really interesting stuff if you know what you're looking for. There's also, I mean, I will disgust my sons every once in a while by sending them something that I'd seen about sports on X, and they'll say, Dad, that's a fake account. You know? And I'll get annoyed. But I can imagine, I mean, the same thing happens with politics, just that I can more, much more quickly recognize. That. And I think it's all very, it's very unsettling, right? It's just like no one wants to feel like you were the chump, that like you didn't understand that you were getting played or that who's playing you. And I just, it's a very disorienting time right now, I think, to be a reader of news. So I think it's in a way not surprising that a lot of people kind of Start to kind of back away from it and just wonder, well, I don't know, I'll go to TikTok, which strikes me as something I want to— anyway. Yeah.

One final question. You've been very generous with your time. What is the best thing about being Michael Powell?

My sons and my grandkids and my wife. And I know it sounds like hokey, but it really, yeah. I mean, it's just, that's in the end what really matters. Now, as a journalist, you know, the nice thing about being at the place I'm at now, place that is age, time, whatever, is that I can kind of I know what I want to write about, and I'm lucky enough to be at a place when it was the Times, now The Atlantic, at places where I can do that and where you can really wrestle with what's going on in the world. So I can't, more so than most, I really don't have a right to just bellyache and say, well, no one's writing about this. you know, I do have that ability to do that. And that's, and that's a, that's a wonderful place to arrive at.

Yeah, this was great fun. You were wonderful. I'm just—

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Thank you.