T h e I R E J o u r n a l. . . .8

It is important to feel that you have some professional control over what

you’re doing; that you are not utterly under the sway of events and politi-

cians and editors; that you are not simply a stenographer; that you have a

brain and ideas and eyes that are uniquely your own.

HOW TO STAYONE STEP AHEADOF YOUR EDITORS

Reprinted, lightlyedited, with permission ofDavid␣Maraniss and The

Freedom Forum.Maraniss is on leave from

the Post completing abook about Bill Clinton’s

life before becomingpresident.

By David MaranissWashington Post

When asked whether I had a working titlefor this piece, I just sort of blurted out the

first thing that came to mind: “How to Stay OneStep Ahead of Your Editors.” I had never reallyused those precise words before, but they seemto fit the set of ideas I would like to talk aboutinvolving writing and reporting. I do not mean itto be an attack on editors. I was one once, and Iknow how trying the job can be. It is only whenyou become an editor that you truly understandthe reportorial tribe, and how some journalistswho look so polished in print turn in virtuallyunintelligible garbage and expect the editor totranslate it for them; and how some journalistswho seem so cool and collected to their col-leagues are in fact a bundle of nerves andanxieties, who use their editors as psychiatrists.

Respecting editorsI respect editors. But nonetheless I want to

stay at least one step ahead of them wheneverpossible. That is when I do my best work.Sometimes in the short run it is harder to operatethat way, but the long-term rewards are worththe effort.

I am going to talk about this in severaldifferent ways—some generic concepts, somepractical bits of advice and some examples ofhow I followed this idea over the years to writethe stories of which I am most proud. I know

that many of you operate in a very finite world ofobligations and expectations where you mustwrite out a daily story on a specific set of topics.I think even in those circumstances, it is not onlypossible but important to feel that you have someprofessional control over what you’re doing; thatyou are not utterly under the sway of events andpoliticians and editors; that you are not simply astenographer; that you have a brain and ideasand eyes that are uniquely your own.

Spending time aloneThe first and most important way to stay

ahead of your editors is to spend some time alonethinking about what you cover, in the largestpossible sense. I am shocked by how fewjournalists actually take the time to do this. Bylargest possible sense, I mean taking many of thethings that you know instinctively and turningthem up several notches. Sit down with a yellowpad or something and say, “Okay, this is what Icover. These are some of the most interestingpeople I am responsible for covering. These arethe places and issues where the concerns of myaudience and the national realm of Washingtonconverge. These are the real players that thepoliticians who represent my audience have todeal with.”

I’m certain that every reporter knows all ofthose things instinctively. And you probablythink that you’re dealing with that every day, butthen you go back into your clips at the end of theyear, and you might say, “My God, I know so

EDITORS:FRIENDS & FOES

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much that I haven’t conveyed,” and that isbecause you have not spent the time thinkingabout how to convey it. You cannot do it byrelying on your editors. You cannot do it byriding the flow of events; you have to develop aplan, a flexible plan with several variations thatwill get you where you want to go, so that whenthe year is over you can say, “I wanted myaudience to get to understand the work I cover,and here are the stories that got them there.”

If you map out an intelligent plan and presentit to your editors, the whole process will becometransformed. You are then not seen as shirkingyour daily responsibilities, but as following arational and more rewarding agenda.

Whenever a breaking story is important, youcover it, no questions asked. That’s the given.That’s where you start. You do that time andagain consistently and reliably, for when you goback over your clips over the course of the yearyou might see that one in every three stories wasreally, in retrospect, vital news. Even whenyou’re writing every day you know that is thetruth. So you take that other two-thirds, or to beconservative, even that other half or two-fifths,and that’s what you work with. That is your clay,your time, your story.

You might ask, “Well, won’t I end up fightingwith my editors every day over what storiesqualify as important breaking news?” That willhappen once in a while, I guarantee. But itdiminishes greatly as your editors buy into yourlarger plan and see the rewards of it in goodstories, stories that have an impact and thatpeople remember. I am not talking here neces-sarily about three-month projects or 80-inchstories. The stories can be long or short, and takea lot of time, or one day, or less. That is not theessential point. The point is that you have a planand that you figure out a way so that the storiesadd up to something coherent and revealing.

There are dozens of ways to do this. Youmight say, for example, “This year the story thatinterests me the most, and is of most importanceand relevance to my audience, is health care . . .and the very best work I could do this yearwould be to somehow show, in revealing detail,all of the competing economic and social forcesthat are shaping the decisions of the politicianswho represent my audience, and how thedecisions are made.” Or you could take the singlemost powerful lobby from your district andfollow its course through Washington.

Every single reporter could do either one ofthose two things. You could do it over the courseof the year so that it added up to something atthe end. Or you might come up with some other

idea that I cannot dream of here, but you have toput your mind to it first. You have to developthat long-range plan and stay one step ahead ofthe editors.

Mapping out stories ahead of timeThe next way to stay one step ahead of the

editors involves individual stories. So manyreporters go into a daily story without eventhinking about it ahead of time. I try never to dothat. I try to always have a plan, a scheme, astructure or two that I can work with as Idevelop the reporting. You might say, “Well,that’s not very smart. That means you might missthe best story because you are so busy trying tomold the material into your preconceived notionsof what you want to write.” But I don’t acceptthat argument, because I have confidence thatany good reporter, all good reporters, know thatwhen the material can take them in a betterdirection than theyhave planned, they willgo with it. You canhave a plan and still beflexible. It is a no-losesituation. Either yougo with your plan, oryou have somethingbetter.

In Texas, wheneverI was flying or drivingto a breaking story,and usually it wassome sort of tragedy ornatural disaster, Ispent the whole timemapping out in myhead the possible waysI could present thestory that would reallygrab the readers.

One day a planecrashed at Dallas-Ft.Worth airport, and onmy way up fromAustin I thought aboutwhat I wanted to do with that story. There hadbeen some survivors. What I wanted to do wasbring as much reality as possible into thesensation of being in the plane as it was crashing.I wanted to convey the ordinariness of thepassengers’ lives as the plane was rolling downthe runway and contrast that with the moment ofterror. I wanted to put the readers in a seat, 27Aor 12F, and have them reading the USA Todaysports section, or folding their jacket neatly inthe overhead rack, or thinking about the fight

I am always thinkingahead of time and I find itmakes the senses sharper.

I feel as though I amseeing things that thereporter next to me

is not seeing, because heor she doesn’t have the

concept. I will pick up-to-the-minute details, and Iknow that it will convey

more about the fragility oflife than will

12 conventional quotes.

T h e I R E J o u r n a l. . . .1 0

they had with their spouse that morning. That’sthe story I wanted to write.

When I got to the airport I had a focus, and Iknew exactly what I was doing. If it had turnedout that there was a better story, if there hadbeen a bomb aboard or a single overpowering actof bravery, I would have gone with that. Butshort of that I was ready. I was one step ahead ofmy editors. I called them and said, “This is whatI’m going to give you. This is how I’m going towrite it. You’ll feel like you’re in the plane.” It’swhen you do that that you write your beststories, and the material flows the easiest.

What if I had just gone up there and roundedup quotes here and there, and then while I was

writing an editor hadcalled me up and said,“Look, we want you todo it this way or thatway”? Maybe youdon’t have the materialbecause you weren’tlooking for what theeditor was interestedin. So you hackaround and struggle.But if you have gotyour own idea you willbe ahead of theeditors. They will bemost likely to go withyour plan because theyhave learned fromexperience that youwill do somethingspecial that way.

Again, you have tobe flexible. If the story doesn’t fit, if there is abetter story, go with it. But I am always thinkingahead of time and I find it makes the sensessharper. I feel as though I am seeing things thatthe reporter next to me is not seeing, because heor she doesn’t have the concept. So I will pick upthe minute details—the popcorn a passengerbrought that his wife had made for him thatmorning because he would have to be alone in aSuper 8 Motel in Butte, Mont., that nightwatching a movie on television. I would have anidea and I know how that detail fits into mystory, and I hear it when the other reportersdon’t, and I know that it will convey more aboutthe fragility of life than will 12 conventionalquotes about hearing something go pop.

Study your editorsA third way to stay ahead of your editors is to

study your editors. If you know what they want,then it becomes easier for you to figure out ways

to do things the way you want, and satisfy themat the same time. Editors tend to be predictable.They respond to stimuli the same way, time andtime again. They want stories to be clear andunderstandable, accurate, in on time, with littlehassle from the reporter, and as much credit forthem as possible.

I know many fine reporters’ best work is oftenfrustrated because they don’t get along with theireditors. Their fights are almost always overstupid little things. My advice to them is concedemost of those little things. Figure out youreditors, and you will end up getting what youwant on the bigger things. I might be imposing abit of passive-aggressive philosophy on you here,but there is a lesson besides that. If you take thepains to be quick and clear and responsive, theodds go up that you can break free and do thingsyour way, and do your very best work.

Late in 1991 at the dawn of the last presiden-tial season, I sat down with a yellow pad andbegan the process that I have been talking about.I plotted out my goals for the next year as apolitical reporter, and how I might go aboutachieving them. What I wanted to do was focuson one candidate for president, and keep lookingat that candidate in as many ways as possible,peeling away the skins of the onion in story afterstory. If that person happened to be electedpresident, the readers of The Washington Postwould have a thorough understanding of thepersonal, sociological, historical, intellectual,economic, religious, geographic, and politicalforces that shaped him.

I happened to choose Gov. Bill Clinton ofArkansas as the candidate I wanted to writeabout. I wrote a long memo to my editors at ThePost detailing what I wanted to do and how Iwanted to do it. I also suggested that The Post,with no shortage of reporters or political report-ers, devote the same level of interest and intenseconcentration to other candidates. In the end Iwas the only reporter who kept at it, and Clintonkept going all the way to the presidency, andthose are the stories for which I won the PulitzerPrize. Doing it was a constant struggle. I had tostruggle with myself, with my editors, and withthe tenor of the times, in a sense.

When the Gennifer Flowers story broke,some editors, naturally, wanted to divert all ofmy attention to that story, as though it meantsomething out of context. When Ross Perotentered the race, since I was based in Austin, thetemptation was there for me to write Ross Perotstories. There were times when my own desire toget a story in the paper led me to short cut myown long-range goal for a week or two. Iconstantly reminded myself that things were

Concede most of the littlethings. Figure out your

editors, and you will endup getting what you want

on the bigger things. If youtake the pains to be quickand clear and responsive,the odds go up that youcan break free and do

things your way, and doyour very best work.

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All along the way therewere editors at the paper

who wanted me to do otherthings. But because I had a

plan and a goal and a courseto follow, I could keep going.Gradually the editors cameto realize that I was building

a body of work thatamounted to more than the

individual stories.

transitory and elusive, and that if I could keepmy eye on the bigger picture—the full story ofClinton’s life and career or as much of it as Icould get, given the constraints of a campaign—it would be worth it in the end.

What I tried to do, with varying degrees ofsuccess, was look at his life from as many anglesas possible. I wrote a long story exploring hismoral and religious roots, revealing his eclecticreligious tastes, and his propensity to seekreligious justification for his positions on suchissues as abortion and the death penalty.

Another article delved into his history on racerelations. It showed that he was a white, South-ern politician with a remarkable capacity torelate to African-Americans on a personal level,and that he’d appointed more blacks to positionsin Arkansas than all the state’s previous gover-nors combined. Yet when black leaders inArkansas pushed voter redistricting in a fashionthat upset the white majority, Clinton backedaway—and left them disappointed. That historyoffered the context that made the Lani Guiniersituation predictable and understandable to me.

In late August there was a period of 18 dayswhen Clinton essentially avoided the travelingpress corps. He held no press conferences duringthat period, and even refrained from his occa-sional practice of ambling back to the presssection of the plane to shoot the breeze duringlate-night flights. The reason was that he wassick of being asked questions about how heavoided being drafted back in 1969. He wantedto talk about the economy, not his past.

This peculiar press dodge coincided with thestory I was writing, placing his dealings with thepress into a historical context. In looking at his12 years as governor of Arkansas, I found thathe would go through periods of ignoring thestatehouse press corps, especially when hewanted to talk about one thing and they wantedto ask him about another.

His old press secretary said he becameaccustomed to seeing the verb “bristled” instatehouse accounts, as in, “the governor bristledwhen asked why he was driving 80 miles an hourdown Route 630 between the YMCA openingand his downtown luncheon address.” Anyonewho watched President Clinton react to ABC-TV correspondent Brit Hume’s question at theWhite House gathering where Clinton an-nounced the appointment of Ruth Ginsburg tothe Supreme Court saw a vivid demonstration ofthat bristler.

Some people argue that Clinton soured on thepress during the presidential campaign when hewas engulfed by questions about Gennifer

Flowers. But in fact there was a pattern thatwent back more than a decade. Every timeClinton appeared on the brink of creating apermanently hostile situation with the press, hewould open up and answer every question,outlasting even the most dogged questioner,leaving reporters dazed and sated, if not utterlycharmed . . .

In partnership with my friend and colleague,Michael Weiskopf, I examined how Clinton dealtwith two major industries in his state—poultryand timber—and explained in historical contexthow he at times made environmental sacrifices inhis effort to lift up a poor Southern state, and toget the money hethought he needed tolift up his own politicalambitions.

Shortly after thosearticles appeared,Clinton gave a speechin Philadelphia, wherehe said he changed,and learned that therewas not an either/orproposition betweenjobs and the environ-ment. Not long afterthat he appointed “Mr.Ozone,” Al Gore, to behis running mate.

I examinedClinton’s economicplans in Arkansas. Ablend of bold initialefforts, experimenta-tion, and ultimatecompromise in moderation—not at all unlikewhat seems to be happening in Washington now.Some wise people argued that running thecountry is not at all like running Arkansas. In asense they are right. But while the situationschange, people seldom do in their most basicselves. They are their histories, and that is what Ispent the campaign writing about.

All along the way there were editors at thepaper who wanted me to do other things, whothought I was concentrating too much onClinton. But because I had a plan and a goal anda course to follow, I could keep going. I wasdiverted for a week or two, but I could alwaysget back to it, and gradually the editors came torealize that I was building a body of work thatamounted to more than the individual stories;that there was something to show for it at theend of the day, which is what, finally, our workand our lives are all about.