In the 10 years since graduation, David Sirota, Medill ’98, has written a New York Times bestseller and worked as a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His next book, “The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington” will be released today.
The Daily: Was there anything in particular from your time at Northwestern that you feel has contributed to your success?
David Sirota: Well, I would say certainly the mechanics of writing that I learned at Northwestern were essential to writing the book. And the same thing with the mechanics of reporting, because … unlike the first book, this book is all first-hand narrative reporting. So the mechanics, the ethics of journalism that I learned at Northwestern were really very important. I would say that the thing that I didn’t learn at Northwestern – and perhaps is not teachable, but I think it needs to become teachable at the journalism school – is how to responsibly do opinion journalism. And by that, I don’t mean editorial writing; what I mean is Medill is very much about standard concepts of objectivity. I wasn’t used to it, and I had no training in it. And as the media now becomes more and more fragmented and there are more and more voices online and opinion journalism becomes more prevalent, I think it would be really good for the journalism school to teach how to do that responsibly because it is such a blurry area.
The Daily: You are known for espousing a progressive or populist brand of politics in your writing. How have you been able to connect your politics with your writing, and what, if any, challenges have you faced in doing so?
DS: My trajectory after school was a little different. I went into Medill thinking I was going to become a journalist, and then I got very into direct politics. While I was in school, I took a semester off to work on a local congressional race in Evanston. Then I worked on Capitol Hill, and then I worked in D.C. I kind of came back to journalism. I’ve really come back to journalism through my column and through the book. And what I’ve basically found is that, if you are going to have a voice, your own voice – and I mean that in the journalistic sense: a tone, a style, a voice – you can’t pretend to be objective. The reason I think readers are interested in different writers is because they are interested in that writer’s point of view, that writer’s perspective, that writer’s voice. So, what I’ve tried to do is connect my political beliefs that I (have) sharpened over that time in direct politics and put them deeply into my writing and reporting without trampling the facts. We have gone through an era in this country where the facts have been completely and totally ignored in the media. We have gone through an era that is an embarrassing stain on the media, where rhetoric has substituted for fact. The best example, of course, is the Iraq war, where if you were a journalist and you questioned the assertions being made by the government, you were considered irresponsible rather than responsible. So, operating in that world as a writer right now is challenging.
The Daily: What would you say drew you to political journalism in the first place? What inspired you to make the transition back to journalism from politics?
DS: After school, I thought that the best way to effect change, or the only way to effect change, was to be in direct electoral politics. And I came to realize that, actually, part of the problem in this country is that those who are in electoral politics aren’t even dealing with basic facts. What brought me back to journalism was the realization that a lot of work needs to be done just reporting and uncovering the facts. That, in many cases, what is being reported in the media, what facts are being uncovered dictate what happens in the electoral political world.
The Daily: Your newest book, “The Uprising,” is being released today. What is it about, and what inspired you to begin writing it?
DS: The book is about the re-emergence of populist politics on both the right and left at this moment. What the book says is that the country is experiencing an uprising, which I define as the middle step between chaos or disorder or disengagement on the one side and a full-fledged, organized social movement. I went out and I tried to report on the most representative places where this uprising had happened. What I found was that we are, at this moment – and you can prove it through public opinion polls, you can prove it through other kinds of data, you can prove it through market research, you can prove it by just talking to people on the street – that there is a moment right now when people really want change and when the country is really angry. This backlash on both the right and left expresses itself in different ways, but it is all rooted in the same anger. The book tries to take a look at whether this populist uprising will become a full-fledged social movement or (is) a momentary thing that will fizzle out.
The Daily: You encountered lots of different people and places while writing “The Uprising.” What was the most interesting, inspiring, or otherwise noteworthy experience you had while writing the book?
DS: I think that spending time with the California minutemen at the border was eye-opening. I really tried to get at the heart of what drives those folks who are down there and go beyond the stereotypes. On the left, I very much enjoyed looking at the Working Families Party, a third party in New York state which is not very well-known outside of New York state, even though it is, I think, one of the most powerful third parties in America. I learned a lot about the history of third parties – the history that explains why third parties have had such troubles in this century – and it is only in this century that third parties have really had to face so many obstacles. In that chapter, I really got to play a little bit of a historian, which has definitely broadened my experience.
The Daily: “The Uprising” is a work of investigative journalism. What was it like doing the background work for the book? How do you feel about the current state of investigative work in the journalism world?
DS: The background work was intense. I had to try to take every experience I had and put it up against the facts. And that meant I had to know the facts really cold. A great example was when I was with the minutemen. One of the things that they talk about a lot is their fear that the wide-open southern border is going to be exploited by Islamic terrorists, that Islamic terrorists are going to come into the country through the southern border. They told a lot of stories about how this is already happening. Without passing judgment on their fear, I went and looked just at the facts. What do we know about what is going on down there? What has been reported? That took a lot of work. It took a lot of investigation; it took a lot of background research. I think that what journalism is suffering from right now is he-said she-said journalism. That journalism is defined not by putting the iron-clad facts up against what is being stated by those in power. We, instead, get a back and forth between two sources without the actual facts being brought into play. In a typical story, you get a Republican politician saying one thing and a Democratic politician saying another thing, and the reporter acts as a stenographer. And I think that is one of the things that has really hurt journalism, is that this quest for so-called objectivity has meant that the media has abdicated its role as the institution that is supposed to provide a factual check on those in power.
The Daily: Do you have any advice for the budding young journalists at Medill? How about those graduates that might be starting their first assignments as reporters for national newspapers in just a few weeks?
DS: Don’t be afraid to develop your own voice, your own style and your own perspective in what you are doing when you can. What is going to b
ecome a premium in the increasingly fragmented media world is the credibility and the individuality of your voice. Now, that advice doesn’t fit for everybody in every single job. Sometimes, if you are starting out, you have to conform to the model of the job you are in. I think that is what news consumers are looking for: the actual audience, the readers. And I think that is what editors will be looking for. If you want to be a real journalist in the real sense and not just sort of a talking-head, you have to be really tenacious about it, because the media world is getting more difficult to make a living in, not easier. I have found that, between the “freelancization” of the media to the questions of how publications can make money through the Internet as opposed to print, all of these things are changing the media business in a way that has made it more difficult to be a real journalist. As a career choice, you are making a choice to be in a business that almost guarantees probably a life-long uphill climb. Obviously, I think it is worth the climb, but it is not easy.
The Daily: While promoting your first book, “Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government – And How We Take It Back,” you appeared on The Colbert Report. What was your experience like talking with fellow NU alumnus Stephen Colbert?
DS: I’m going to be on his show again on Thursday, actually. When I was on his show before, he was really funny. Before the show, we talked about it, and I can’t remember if he lived in Willard or not, but he knew the Willard Woo, the three-fingered “W” sign. At the show, they sit you down at the place, and then he runs over. In the middle of the break, he was about to go back on, and he flashed to me – I think he thought I was nervous – he flashed the Willard Woo, as sort of like a wink, you know, which was really cool. We bonded over our fellow Northwestern alumni status.
