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Episode 95—Mike Sager on the Magical Nature of Creating, Suspending Disbelief, and Preaching Beyond the Choir
130 Plays7 years ago
"I have a body of work that's based on work," says Mike Sager.
Hey, today I bring you the incomparable Mike Sager, @therealsager on Twitter. He of The Sager Group. He of the National Magazine Award. He of he talks you listen.
In Episode 95 of the creative nonfiction podcast he talks about his humble start in journalism, suspending disbelief, the power of creating something, and journalism as sport.
His collections of journalism include: The Lonely Hedonist, which includes all new material, Wounded Warriors, The Someone You’re Not, Stoned Again, The Devil and John Holmes, and Revenge of the Donut Boys, which features the iconic profile of Rosanne Barr, a feature that feels timely with the reboot of the show.
All of these books you can find at thesagergroup.net where you can buy them and learn a thing or two.
His collections are an education. You wanna be good? You wanna be great? You gotta read Mike’s work, after you listen to this episode of course.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Mike Sager's Accomplishments
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, what's going on? The CNFers? Feel like doing a show? Good. So do I. Hey, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak with the world's best artists about creating nonfiction and telling true stories, the leaders in narrative journalism, radio, documentary, film, essay, memoir,
00:00:28
Speaker
If there's anything else, I don't know if there is. Hey, today I bring you the incomparable Mike Sager at The Real Sager on Twitter. He of the Sager Group. He of the National Magazine Award. He of, he talks, you listen. In episode 95 of the Creative Nothings and podcasts, he talks about his humble start in journalism.
00:00:54
Speaker
suspending this belief, the power of creating something in journalism as sport and lots, lots more. His collections of journalism include The Lonely Hedonist, which includes all new material, Wounded Warriors, The Someone You're Not, Stoned Again, The Devil and John Holmes, and Revenge of the Donut Boys, which features the iconic profile of Roseanne Barr, a feature that feels timely with the reboot of the show.
00:01:24
Speaker
All of these books you can find at thesagergroup.net or you can buy them and learn a thing or two. His collections are an education. You want to be good? You want to be great? You got to read Mike's work after you listen to this episode of course. I like it when intros are under two minutes so I'm gonna bounce and get out of the way. Enjoy the show.
00:01:58
Speaker
And you know what, you can add a couple years to that because it all really started late at night in the living room of the frat house on the poker table when everyone was asleep and it would become my writing room and I would stay up late typing and
00:02:22
Speaker
I think in those days we had these weird, I borrowed, I had only a manual typewriter, but I borrowed an electric one from my roommate who couldn't type. And it had these different cartridges that you took in and out. And there was like an erasing cartridge. But anyway, I learned to love this art of creation, just sitting there typing to create something is to become a God in a way.
00:02:52
Speaker
in your own little space, especially before you push the send button these days because or send it in in those days because then you lose control of it. But I was pretty sure I wanted to be a writer in college. And I even remember going to the law boards, walking and thinking, I just want to see how far I can go as a writer.
00:03:21
Speaker
I didn't want to become a lawyer, but I didn't know how to become a writer. So I just drifted along with all the pack of liberal arts students to law school, which is where people went in those days. I don't know. I don't have a big tolerance for things I don't like to do. And I got to law school and frankly, the only thing I'd enjoyed was
00:03:49
Speaker
my dad for my graduation gift had rescued for me an IBM Selectric, which was a top of the line electric typewriter in those days. And he had given me that as a graduation
Breaking into Journalism: Washington Post Era
00:04:04
Speaker
present. And so the only thing I enjoyed about law school was studying because I would type my notes at home. So it didn't, I mean, there was no reason to do something I didn't want to do. I found what I did want to do. And I think that's,
00:04:19
Speaker
That's the most rare and, you know, wonderful achievement you can have is finding the thing you want to do because then you can just do it. Most people don't know what they want to do. And that's the problem. It's like, I mean, then the problem of course becomes how do you get to do it? And, you know, the world I was from 40 years ago was a lot smaller.
00:04:49
Speaker
You know, I looked around and there were sort of like so many walls to bang your head against, but I lucked out. I ended up in one place where I could just bang my head at that wall. That's sort of what I did. I was the, the ant, the ant who can't or whatever that old, the rubber tree plant, whatever that old song goes, but, um,
00:05:15
Speaker
because when you're at that point and you know you there was that that moment where you're like I'd rather see or take writing and see how far I can go with that you had there are all kinds of pressures to go elsewhere whether that's parental
00:05:33
Speaker
approval and societal approval yet you still chose like that you kind of had that a closeted novelist in you but you know you chose to see how far you could take it and you land at the post and you did just about everything graveyard shift copy boy stringing anything you could put together and um where did that that grain and that seed and that hustle come from that you're just you needed to just keep keep going and see how far you could take it
00:06:01
Speaker
I got to college and I kind of like had my shit together. Like I wasn't a good student going to college but for some reason I was mature. Partly it was I think from going to summer camp. I was used to being away from home for two months at a time and part of it was fear. But I sort of got this notion that my parents had prepared me well. And so
00:06:31
Speaker
When I finished college, it was there I, you know, really urging, go to law school, have something to fall back on. And so I went and then, and then I quit and I disappointed them. And not only that, but I lied to them and told them that they had guaranteed me a slot in the next year's law school class if I wanted to come back.
00:07:00
Speaker
you know, which was a lie. And so it was like, I had to prove, I had to prove, you know, I had something to prove. Plus, what else did I have to do? I mean, I did, you know, after college, I moved in with my college girlfriend, and we had an apartment together. And then over time, I ended up getting the graveyard shift. And certainly that didn't help the relationship any, and it ended up dying.
00:07:30
Speaker
So I did kind of sacrifice, you know, my high school girlfriend five years later, five or six years later for for this business. But, you know, I think that was one of the things of growing up. I don't know. I think there's that old Hollywood song is a Gene Kelly. He sings God or dance. And I just always felt that way about, you know, sitting down and typing and
00:08:00
Speaker
having things appear on the page and having that sense of control and creation. And also, you know, I think the least common denominator of all writers is, yes, we saw our byline once, but, you know, on a deeper level, I think writers are people who kind of feel like they're special and they want to be recognized and they want their
00:08:26
Speaker
thoughts out there. And but the thing is, is like, if you're a little kid, and your parents want you to sing at the family wedding, that's one thing, you know, everybody's gonna applaud for you. But if you're like, trying to be special, and stick your head up and have a different idea, you know, you better be good. And that's really what's, what's driven me is like the love of it. You know, the love of the, you know, and
00:08:55
Speaker
And also the fact that, you know, if you want people's attention, then there's got to be a reason for it. You know, this notion of being famous for being famous, you know, I always wanted to be, you know, I wanted to be able to get up every day and do what I do. And so over time I learned that in order to do that, I had to be really good at it. And so people would ask me to do it. And, you know, I think,
00:09:24
Speaker
Looking back over the 40 years, things have changed a bit because writing is in such an exclusive thing. So now you sort of enable yourself to do it more than back in the day when you had to be recognized as being among an elite group of people who would then be tapped to be put on paper.
00:09:48
Speaker
published so You know there was a lot of and then you know, I mean every step along the way Everyone was better than me and more educated and more experienced I mean showing up at the Washington Post. I've never even seen somebody from Harvard before I mean all these people like they spoke several they spoke other languages they knew how to pronounce French words and
00:10:15
Speaker
You know, I mean, I was a pretty good 3.98 student at Emory University and I was a history major and all that stuff, but I had no sophistication, you know, at all. And there I was, I arrived at the Washington Post with all of these people who were, you know, the best in their field and some of them were famous. And I had to make my mark there. How did you get there initially?
00:10:44
Speaker
Well, after I quit law school in the third week, I went to the library and looked up every publication that was in town. And, of course, and I applied to all of them. And then the one contact that I realized I had was a fraternity brother. His mother worked at the Washington Post.
00:11:05
Speaker
And she was in the style section. And her name was Sandy Ravner. And she would be there for many, many years after I was even gone. So she got me an interview with the HR department. You know, I go in there in my three-piece Georgetown Law School interview suit with my chief of clips from all the things I was editor of and my internship at Creative Loafing and all my grades.
00:11:35
Speaker
And not only that, but I was a scholar athlete. I played on Emory University's varsity soccer team, you know, as a freshman. And I had all these credentials and she gave me a spelling and typing test and I failed them both. I could never spell. I think one of the great reasons for wanting to be special is because when I was in elementary school, I couldn't spell or do math. And, you know, the teeth, my mother was constantly at the school.
00:12:05
Speaker
And my spelling was atrocious, and I was never going to amount to anything. So maybe that's something I had to prove deep down. But here I am at the Washington Post, and I failed the spelling test. And I could type really fast, but I could type like 80 words a minute, but with 40 mistakes. And they count that against your time.
00:12:30
Speaker
So the lady and I remember her name was Wanda, Wanda something. She said, you know, I'm sorry, you can't have a job here. You don't qualify. So, you know, I did in my mind, I did that thing they do in the movies like, no, you know, that sort of thing. And then I went.
00:12:50
Speaker
home and I started calling Sandy Robner and I started calling the post more and I got this, I think she must have given me the name of the guy who was head of the copy aids at that time and I just started bugging him. And finally they called me in for a job where I didn't need to be qualified to spell or type.
00:13:16
Speaker
And so I got a job on a night shift, seven at night till three in the morning in the wire room, it was called. And in those days, of course, there were no computers and no internet. So the internet was the AP, the UPI, Reuters, all those different wire machines that like spit out copy. Some like the speed wires were like,
00:13:42
Speaker
Then others were like like the old old TV show where it's like clackity clackity clackity and it's like in this small room and I had a I had like a 16-inch ruler and I was you know, I would Get all the paper and tear the paper and put them in baskets and then deliver them and that was my job but so the
00:14:03
Speaker
Since we're interviewing, the first thing that happened was the first night I was there, I was being trained by this guy who I still know, Roger Saucier. In fact, I'm going to a Washington Post reunion in a couple of weeks in Washington with all the people from this era. And Roger was training me to strip the wires, as I think what we called it, and deliver the wires. And anyway, it was like,
00:14:33
Speaker
it was like 10 of two in the morning. And I would later learn that like a little after two o'clock, you know, what they would do is the paper would start publishing and about, I don't know, I think it was about 10 at night was the first edition. And then as the night would go by, you know, further additions would be published with, with, with corrected mistakes and updated stories until you got to the last edition, which went on the street. And, uh,
00:15:02
Speaker
So, you know, by a little after two in the morning, there weren't enough papers left to make any changes anymore. And, you know, I would learn this all eventually as I did all my copy boy jobs and learned all the stations of the newspaper. But at this point, it was my first night. It was 10 of two in the morning. My, the guy who was training me was somewhere and I was in the room by myself and this little tiny
00:15:29
Speaker
printer we had. It was like a thermal printer. It was the Reuters machine. And it started going ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And I went over to the thing. It was going urgent, urgent, urgent. And it's like spits out this thing. And that was 1978. And there was a Pope John Paul.
00:15:54
Speaker
And then he died after a few days. And then there was a Pope, John Paul II, who was the Pope for a long time. So this Reuters wire was telling me that John Paul I had died unexpectedly. And ding, ding, ding, urgent, urgent. So I just, I ripped up the wire and
00:16:17
Speaker
I had it, you know, the guy had taught me, you look at the dateline, you know, if it's a foreign story, a sports story, a national story, whatever. So I took it over to the foreign desk of my own accord. And this guy, Joe Ritchie, uh, was the foreign editor. He's, he's still around and teaching journalism. Uh, he took one look at the thing and like cursed and balled it up in a knot. And like the next thing I knew,
00:16:47
Speaker
the editor at the big desk next to that was picking up the phone and saying, stop the presses. And it was, you know, 10 of two in the morning, there was enough time to get enough, you know, to change. And, you know, there were three or four people left in the newsroom and including this one guy named Martin Weil, who was a just a legendary rewrite guy, always stayed inside the office. I learned so much from him about cold calling and how to,
00:17:17
Speaker
you know, comport yourself on the phone. I'm sorry to bother you at a time like this. You know, this is Martin Weil from the Washington Post. You know, I mean, he was so because, you know, he was just so
Balancing Reporting and Creativity in Journalism
00:17:29
Speaker
great. So I stood there and then I went and went to the library to get clips and I ran. I sprinted. You know, I we were and we tore up the front page and wrote a new article and put it in. And that was my first night.
00:17:46
Speaker
in newspapers. Sounds pretty infectious. I was dead. That was it. So I spent the next few months reading every article that came in. I had never read a newspaper before. I took political science once and then switched to history because I didn't like how political science kept going on. You couldn't study something when it was a moving target.
00:18:12
Speaker
You know, so I went to history where you could pick out an era and learn things. Um, and, but I'd never really study the news. My family didn't care about the news. We never discussed current affairs, nothing. So I, I just read every single thing that came in. I spent my whole time doing that. And then it late at night, I would go out with the editors and drink. And then as time went on, I started freelancing within the paper.
00:18:39
Speaker
And I literally engaged in this campaign to become a reporter. I mean, I would come in during the day in a suit.
00:18:50
Speaker
and sit at an empty desk and I'd go home and change into my t-shirt collection and moccasins and jeans and work as a copy boy. I mean, it would get to be a joke with people. They said, oh, I saw your your twin brother was here last night or this morning. And like every single time a job would come up like I was in the union. So they had to interview me. So the city editor job would come up. I would go interview for it.
00:19:16
Speaker
You know, I did everything. This, the guy who was the head of personnel, he went into the room where the, you know, coffee and candy machines were. And I like went in after him and I'm like, I didn't mean to corner you, but, you know, you know, asking him about the internship. And I remember there was another copy boy there too, who I also met. We both met at the same freelance assignment. We were both assigned to do a story about a dark
00:19:45
Speaker
darts tournament but it was like a youth darts tournament and he was from sports and I was from the weekly and we both went to this like 12 and under like darts tournament and it turned out his name was Peter Melman and he would end up being one of the writers on Seinfeld but that was the beginning of our you know close relationship and I remember our first summer there we both tried to get internships he was from University of Maryland you know I was from Atlanta
00:20:13
Speaker
you know, it was the beginning of affirmative action and we were both, you know, Jews, which is minority in my book, but not in the newsroom. We were not underrepresented in the newsroom and neither of us got internships, you know, most of which went to minority people. And then there was David Remnick who came in as, when I, when I was, I eventually, he came as an intern the summer I was promoted to reporter.
00:20:44
Speaker
You know, it was always a matter of fighting for the job and trying to impress and getting the scoop. And and then once I had the job, you know, there are all these people like Remnick who went to Princeton and studied with John McPhee. And I'm like, you know,
00:21:01
Speaker
studied history at Emory and I remember we used to go to the gym together and we'd walk from the post over to the YMCA where a lot of people belonged and I was going to play basketball and I had my high tops and he had like this thing with a squash racket in it and I'd never even seen a squash racket.
00:21:24
Speaker
not a pauper, but I was an unsophisticated suburbanite from the Baltimore County, who had a nice upbringing, but didn't know anything about anything. But I think, I guess what I did have was a sense of self enough to figure that I could compete, which was crazy, but that's the gift of youth.
00:21:53
Speaker
I mean, I was blinded by my task and I performed. And I guess one thing I do have, I guess, was a talent for words. And I shoved a whole lot of work ethic into that.
00:22:10
Speaker
You know, one time I rode my Honda 360, 60 miles on the side of the road. I-95 was piled up to 60 miles because of a bus crash. It was winter. And I rode my motorcycle on the side of the road for 60 miles and found the driver of the bus.
00:22:32
Speaker
That's what I did. And you know, I think the other thing I did was and that contributed to my career was, you know, all these people were great. And I'm still like a lot of Facebook people are still like people from the metro section. It was really a great thing. A bunch of young writers, many of whom are, you know, well known today.
00:22:54
Speaker
Blaine Harden, Chip Brown, Neil Henry, you know, the list goes on a lot, you know, and then Michael Isikoff, you know, Maureen Dowd was at the, the Washington, they call it the star in those days, but we all had this, this football game.
00:23:18
Speaker
together on Sundays in the shadow of the Washington Monument, like Woodward would be there, David Maraniss, Maraniss, you know, we'd all play football. I remember throwing a cross body block on Woodward one time. I'm like, what am I doing? I was just, but I was like 24 and I was carried away with sports still. I think I was the only one who still had cleats. Cause everyone else was like 30, 28 to 35. And I was like 21, 22.
00:23:46
Speaker
So it was a great experience. But, you know, these people brought so much more to the table than I did. But I think what I brought to the table was, I guess, sort of an acquaintanceship with the underworld. You know, as a as a youngster, I played in a band with older people and I used to go down to
00:24:10
Speaker
You know, the inner city of Baltimore to go to a music store. And, you know, I met musicians and smoked pot and they were like other races and creeds than me. And, you know, it was like scary down there. It was like the land of the of the wire. But I was with these people and I was safe. And, you know, I I smoked a good amount of pot in college. I didn't really like to drink. So I went to that side.
00:24:39
Speaker
And, you know, I guess when I got to the Washington Post and when I got on Knight Police and Washington was a pretty dangerous city there, at one point the murder capital of the world, of the country. But I was sort of enthusiastic about driving into these bad parts of town. I was enthusiastic about driving into these bad parts of town and knocking on the door.
00:25:09
Speaker
talking to people and you know it was scary and dark and there were hoodies on the corner but I also knew that people were just people and you know there was only once or twice in my whole history where I've gotten mugged and in both instances I shouldn't have been where I was.
00:25:32
Speaker
at the time I was there. Was that job-related mugging or recreational? Well, the first time was and the second time wasn't. But the first time Bob Woodward sent me up to 14th Street in Clifton, which was supposedly the worst street in town, to go walk there. And I only brought like 10 bucks with me. I knew I was going down. And then I got to write a first person piece for the front page of The Washington Post about getting mugged.
00:26:02
Speaker
And I remember the last line my editor says I can put the $10 on my expense account But you know, I could have been killed, you know, I still remember that I have the clip So that's kind of what I brought to the table I like was young stupid What's that?
00:26:25
Speaker
there's a song young dumb, young dumb, and bro, you know, I was like young dumb and and I would do anything. And plus, I had a little bit of knowledge to go with with the bravado. And you know, I had my motorcycle. And you know, fucking journalism was a sport. You know, it was a fucking sport. And then it was an art. You know, so I could like
00:26:55
Speaker
climb all the way up to the, you know, there's the old post office building in Washington, DC. I think Trump owns it now. But it used to be the post office and it had this, this spire on the top. And there were people working on the, on the top and I like climbed up into it and found the people and like climbed all the way up there and like stuck my head out and like, Hey, what's happening? Mike Sager from the Washington Post, you know, and,
00:27:24
Speaker
And I mean, it was a blast. And then I was lucky enough there, you know, I started out, you know, they would say I could, I could spin a good yarn is what, you know, Woodward used to say, I had a way with storytelling, which, you know, looking back, I had no way with storytelling, even though I had a million creative writing courses, that was really my problem.
00:27:50
Speaker
I was a great writer, but I had nothing to say. And that's why I got into journalism because there was a story and it was like an Easter egg hunt. If you have that tenacity to climb up to the top of the post office building, like there's your story. You know, if you can spin a good yarn, let their story do the telling. Then you could get out of the way of the yarn. And that's what I eventually learned. And I learned that beginning with Walt Harrington.
00:28:19
Speaker
who came in when I think it was 81 or something a couple years into my tenure at Washington Post. And, you know, he was he was brought in to be like an editor of good writers. And so we we sat down together near the library. And he's like, you ever read Tom Wolf? Because he'd read some of my stuff. And I'm like, who? And he's like, Hunter Thompson, Gay Talise. I'm like, who? And
Shift to Literary Journalism and Digital Adaptation
00:28:48
Speaker
So he brought me in the next day a copy of the new journalism. And, you know, I took it home that night and I started reading it and already at the post, like, you know, I was learning, you know, my, the night editor was saying,
00:29:04
Speaker
You know, what hand was the gun in? And I had to call them back and find out what side of the car did he walk around? I mean, this guy used to like send me back, you know, a three inch police short. I had to call them like 20 times. I mean, everybody really took it to heart that I was the kid being trained, you know, the stations of the journalistic cross. And I was going to do all of them. And they really kind of took that to heart, but they also helped me. But at the same time, you know, as I grew up,
00:29:35
Speaker
It was like the most intensive grad school slash first marriage you could ever have. And I learned stuff exponentially and grew exponentially even as my hair fell out, which was weird and I grew a beard and then I started looking older. So it was more proper that I could be an actual journalist
00:30:03
Speaker
Harrington gave me this thing and it was basically the first four chapters talks about there's scoop writers and then there's feature writers.
00:30:15
Speaker
and sort of never the twain shall meet and that's why the new journalism was created because what was happening was like my editor didn't would like change my two syllable word into a one syllable word and he'd ruin my lead as far as I was concerned because the rhythm was now all off and like the editors didn't care about rhythm you know they just wanted you to perform your story and get it into them and you know if it was good good but that's something else you know so
00:30:44
Speaker
Walt Harrington opened my eyes to this whole thing that I do now, anthropological, intimate literary journalism. But he also spelled the end of my years at the Washington Post because I became more and more unhappy with the constraints of
00:31:08
Speaker
you know, the news and news gathering and news writing, which is really, you know, along the continuum of, you know, nonfiction writing journalism is, you know, the, the first baby steps of, of, if you're planning to be an artist, you know, you know, having the skills of journalism, you know, I think are the most important, but then you have to expand, like in journalism, you know, the average,
00:31:37
Speaker
story is either is just on the one hand on the other hand you know or it's a compare and contrast there's no complexity to the thought there's no you know thickness to the paragraphs you know in a certain way it's interesting because as i've come the full route and now you know i wrote a story for bleacher report and basically there's they're like hey people are reading this on their phone we don't want you to digress
00:32:06
Speaker
We don't want these long, digressive stories. We don't want all this background information just like throw it up there in the beginning. I mean, I think over the years, my stories have been known they have a great lead and opening to draw people in, but the ending is always much better. I mean, the ending is the killer. It's like, but you have to read all the way there to get it. And I've had more recently, people cram my ending onto the top.
00:32:36
Speaker
And it's like there's, and then they try to set it up in one second, but you know, it doesn't set up in one second. It's like, it took 5,000 words to set this up, you know? And so it's funny that like what, what started in the beginning is ending up in the end. And I think it's even affecting, you know, our traditional sources of long form, you know, like the magazines because the editors are coming out of the web.
00:33:06
Speaker
And, you know, so many of the editors at magazines today, you know, started a website and so they want the simple declarative lead, you know, or the, you know, put your best stuff in the top, um, that kind of thing. And, um, so it's, it's sort of weird that it's kind of for me come the full circle of,
00:33:28
Speaker
of feeling sort of rather bridled. Yeah, it's like trying to shoehorn a feature into the inverted pyramid of a news story, like get all the sort of juicy cinematic stuff and then let the rest trail off. But that's not how. That's exactly how I put it too. It's like we're back to the inverted pyramid. I told Walt Harrington that in a phone call, an anguished phone call.
00:33:56
Speaker
Not long ago. And that's what it is. I mean, am I sitting here complaining about it? No. I mean, I'm a historian and anthropologist and without portfolio, certainly, but with plenty of experience. And I know that like time marches on and things evolve. But, you know, I also I also. You know, that's my that that's sort of my art and
00:34:26
Speaker
And, you know, yes, it can be done more in books now, but it's not the same as doing magazine stories where, you know, a book takes five years as one subject. A magazine story, you almost do enough research for a book like Under the Old Regime. I used to do like a story for four months. And unfortunately, I'm still inclined to do that much work before I can feel like
00:34:55
Speaker
I've done enough. And plus, it's difficult today for me because I have a body of work that's based on work. I mean, John Holmes took nine months. Right. And, you know, and three long trips to LA, I mean, two to three weeks each trip in a hotel room with a car with Jan Wenner writing checks. I mean, thousands of dollars.
00:35:23
Speaker
to go somewhere and do research. I recently paid for my own research trip for a magazine because they didn't want to pay for it and they wanted me to do it on the phone. The whole story has sort of turned into a big mess and that's kind of like indicative of why. How do I turn my frown upside down? Well, what I've tried to do is create a new type of story.
00:35:49
Speaker
that's sort of like the length of an old newspaper feature and takes the time of an old newspaper feature, except, you know, it used to be, as a feature writer, you kind of had a week to do a story, you had a couple days there, and then a couple days to write it, and then it was on. It was in. And so now I'm way better
00:36:12
Speaker
So, but I try to do the same thing and write a 3,000-word story, but, you know, only spend a week doing it. You know, are there a lot of places that want this kind of story? No, but I'm steadfastly sticking to it, and I've been doing it for, you know, this website that I now write for occasionally and help to found. It's called Mel. We are Mel.com. It's Michael Dubin, who founded the Dollar Shave Club.
00:36:38
Speaker
you know, finance Mel is like a vanity content brand. It's, and I helped, you know, staff it and started up and with this guy, Josh Scholemeyer from Chicago journalism circles. And, and, you know, it's a great outlet. He, he, he was a student of Walt Harrington at Illinois, you know, and also Josh was, and he was also a, an assistant to my buddy, Bill Zemi.
00:37:08
Speaker
who wrote beautiful long form profiles for a long time for the big magazines. And so Josh believes in this kind of work. So I've sort of found a way to do it sort of smaller. Now, does it really take me a week? No. I just spent, I spent a few days with the rock spotting double, stunt double, the rock stunt double in Hawaii. And it turns out the guy's fascinating.
00:37:38
Speaker
And I should be writing that now. And it's taking me much longer to write than it should. But that's sort of what I'm doing to make myself happy. But am I supporting myself doing this job anymore? And the answer is no. I'm doing other things as well. I started my book publishing company. And I also have artists at my disposal. And we're designing marijuana products. I extended my art.
00:38:07
Speaker
you know, to other things in order to make this work. And, you know, it's kind of, you know, weird because 40, you know, 30 some years ago, I quit the post in 84. And then for like two years, I had local contracts in D.C., but I was trying to get into the bigs. And I experienced all the various things that freelancers experience, you know, like you can't get answers.
00:38:35
Speaker
you working with different editors a lot. So each editor has their own process. So each story is like unbelievably difficult because you don't know how they work on and on. But it's funny, like all the same things that happened to me as a beginning freelancer are the same now running after InStyle magazine, 10 million newsstand sales for my fucking check for nine months for a cover story.
00:39:05
Speaker
You know, I mean, all those things that used to happen when I was nobody from nowhere, you know, still happen today in the same way. So, you know, I have a lot talked to a lot of freelance people and I feel for them. And, but you know what, it's like weird cause I'm in the same exact boat. Like it kind of doesn't matter. It's always still the same. You need somebody who wants your work.
00:39:32
Speaker
And you need to be like buddies with them so that they'll give you an assignment because, you know, you can send a thousand queries. And, you know, I mean, in 40 years, the number of stories that I've suggested and have actually been bought are like probably like one and a half hands. Right. Now, some of them famously like Todd Morinovich, like I went to Esquire
00:39:58
Speaker
four times over 10 years of that story and finally just decided to do it myself. So that was kind of like a spec project then? Well, not only that, but it was like a magazine story that took two years that I wrote as a book proposal. And you know, so that's what wins the national magazine award after being nominated by magazines like over 30 times. Oh, I only got into the finals once.
00:40:25
Speaker
You know, but that was sort of like the kind of story that I did. And I think that's another aspect of today's market that, that, you know, I'm able to do at Mel what other people won't do, because I think today most people consider long form. It has to be a murder or a crime, or it has to be some social injustice that's uncovered, like,
00:40:51
Speaker
So many of the stories I did, I feel were kind of signed Feldian, but also universal. I mean, the my story of going to high school with a junior, a 17 year old kid, like is one of my old man story, my fat guy story.
00:41:11
Speaker
you know, the beautiful woman, the Marine Colonel, you know, a lot of these stories are in this book, Revenge of the Donut Boys, that I've just done a second edition of. But very much like, you know, Hachet, I think you pronounce it, bought Perseus and they let this book go, which was an LA Times bestseller. And I think my gem of a book, of all the collections I wrote, they let it go. In that same way,
00:41:39
Speaker
It's like magazines now don't do stories about nothing that are unbelievably detailed. Like John McPhee wrote about nothing.
00:41:49
Speaker
you know, the pine barons, you know, nobody cares about that. It's like, unless you start reading about it, and then you start caring about it because it's a really amazing thing. Yeah. And, you know, these, and that's, you know, going back to Walt Harrington and the new journalists. I mean, you know, I mean, luckily, my career has been varied, you know, because as a reporter at The Post, I learned how to do everything.
00:42:17
Speaker
And, you know, I mean, I had a 15 year career as a crime reporter before I ever got to, you know, doing these anthropologies because no one would let me do them before unless they were about drugs, you know, like the crack gang for Rolling Stone, but they wouldn't let me do like gambling. I always thought like gambling would be a great anthropological story like a drug story.
00:42:42
Speaker
You know, I did young heroin addicts on the Lower East Side. I did, you know, crack. I did meth when it first was smokeable meth in Hawaii. You know, I did all those things. But, you know, it was Granger. I was at GQ and I wanted to do a story about a fat guy because I was like really annoyed by like snack well cookies and all this low fat stuff.
00:43:06
Speaker
I started seeing stories as a way to drill down into these societal things that were just bullshit. It started out really with my, you can eat a whole box of cookies and they're no fat. I wanted to do a story about a fat guy, what it's like to be a fat guy in a no fat world, and GQ wouldn't do it. Part of it was Art Cooper.
00:43:29
Speaker
was the editor. We called him the fat man. I think he was offended by the story, but this is where Granger and I met Granger and I'm like, man, I want to do this story, but I can't get Cooper to do it. What can I do? And he like, he's like, loved it. And, but the thing was, is thereafter, when I went to Esquire, that's the only kind of story I did, that and celebrity stuff, which was great because I love that stuff. But, you know, let it not be forgotten that
00:43:57
Speaker
You know, I've done a whole bunch of things. I mean, crime became a sort of a matter of PTSD in 15 years of dead people. And, you know, there's never, you know, I sold a lot of story, there was stories to Hollywood and I'd be in a producers meeting and they'd say, who's the hero? And I'm like, there is no hero. You know, this idiot killed that idiot. You know, and that's why they always put reporters in those stories, you know,
00:44:26
Speaker
So the reporter can be the hero. But I think this designation of long form has shrunk a little bit in the years right now. And it's almost like there's this certain reverence given to official long writing. And at the same time, there's this irreverence where everybody can write anything in first person.
00:44:54
Speaker
It can be really long and then it's called long form and you know, God bless long form org and others, but I get the list every week of This week's long form stories
Critique of First-Person Journalism
00:45:09
Speaker
and you know, a lot of them are just as the first-person essays You know and that doesn't make it for me. So I've published a
00:45:17
Speaker
even, you know, I leave out the device of first person, because I think first person in journalism is a device that's usually only used when you're failing at your job. And, you know, famously, my Marlon Brando story, I couldn't really get Marlon Brando. So it is about me, you know, that's what and you know, you can do that a few times in your career. But
00:45:43
Speaker
You know, I don't think like every store when, you know, so many stories now start off with I'm driving my car somewhere to go to meet so-and-so, or we're meeting in my favorite bar. Like, I don't really care about you. Yeah. I hate when the report is like, I, then I, I hugged so-and-so and like, no, who cares? No. Like at the ending, like the end of the Todd Morinovich story, I had to be in the story because somebody had to ask him the question he wouldn't answer.
00:46:12
Speaker
So I had to ask it, like, do you think you did drugs for all these years because you really didn't want to play sports, so you like took yourself out of the game? You know, which is what like Billie Holiday and so many people do, they they do drugs to avoid something. You know what they don't want to do. So, you know, that's the reason people do drugs, they want to avoid the life. One watch.
00:46:39
Speaker
that they don't want to have. So it's like closing your eyes and putting your head in the sand or whatever. So do I sometimes appear in a story? Yes. But I'm not the driver of the story. And there's been other occasions when, you know, and this kind of came up recently, like I went to a prayer meeting
00:47:05
Speaker
With the subject he just took me because he wanted you know, he needed somewhere to take me so he just took me to a prayer meeting so that inspired a lively dialogue about how I was a Jew and I've known people who have actually done stories and that became the story that These people were reacting to the Jew in the room, but you know, that's not that's like defies the Star Trek Ian Margaret median anthropological
00:47:36
Speaker
you know, prime directive where you're not supposed to fuck with the society that you're visiting. You're just supposed to observe and you can participate, but not in a way that affects the history of the society. You know what I mean? And that's a really important thing with me. So, you know, I don't know where we're all drifting around, but you know, that's another aspect of storytelling that I think has,
00:48:05
Speaker
just become confused. There's a confusion with what old school nonfiction narrative journalism is good for and what's just out of the, you know, and it started with, they called us the me generation, but that has continued, you know, and it's like the me blogging generation, the me tweeting, everyone has the printing press.
00:48:33
Speaker
Right, which makes it all the more important. I believe Walt Harrington wrote in, I think it's the introduction to Donut Boys, something quoting you actually saying, master technique, and then listen to your heart. And there seems to be a lack of
00:48:50
Speaker
technique going in a lot of heart rending and listening to the heart without the repartorial technique behind it. So that that's kind of goes to your point that everyone has a press so everyone's writing but maybe not necessarily mastering some of those basics of reporting and getting getting a more well rounded well research piece that might add a little heft to a first person piece or you get enough research done and you feel like you don't even have to be in the story in the first place, which is what you've built a career on.
00:49:20
Speaker
Well, yeah, and it's really, really hard because, you know, this is one of the things I tell college classes. It's kind of like the reporter wears two hats and, or my kind of reporter and you have to be a reporter and you'll have to be a writer. And usually the personality is not the same for both. Like I,
00:49:50
Speaker
don't like to meet people. I don't like to travel. You know, I'm scared of being lost due to a childhood incident where my parents put me on the wrong bus and went to the wrong town. Yeah. And all kinds of stuff. And and yet, you know, it's the it's the it's sort of like what I call the, you know,
00:50:13
Speaker
the Catholic part of my job is like, that's the neatest part when you're on your knees. You gotta go and you gotta meet people you don't wanna meet because you're, and you've gotta like transcribe tape of your conversations with them because you would listen better the second time and do all these things that are hard work because then you have the joy of what I call the bowl of details.
00:50:42
Speaker
You know, and also, you know, you have the joy of breaking through, you know, when you stop being you and start trying to understand others, that's where like my wisdom has come from. Like, no, I didn't go to Harvard, but yes, I'm wise now because I've spent 40 years
00:51:10
Speaker
listening to other people's lives in extremis. It's like, you know, in the most extreme and sometimes in the most boring conditions. And, you know, it's the doing stuff you don't want to do is the hardest part. And like I said earlier, I didn't want to go to law school because I didn't want to do that. But, you know, and there was no payoff for the no pain, no gain in that because then I would just have ended up a lawyer.
00:51:39
Speaker
You know, but now, so I have pain, but I get gain, you know, which is understanding. And it's become so important that, you know, one of my collections I called the someone you're not. And, you know, it's the name of a, one of the stories I wrote, but so many times when I go out to do a story, like,
00:52:02
Speaker
Either it's a story that's on the news, or it's a profile of someone, or it's just meeting people from a different culture, like gang members. And the impression that society has of them is so wrong. The Mexican-American gang members who were slinging rock, shooting people, doing rock,
00:52:29
Speaker
doing heroin, doing all this shit, they were some of the nicest people I've ever met. And I mean, I remember I got ripped off for $600 by this other gang member. And these women felt really bad. And so they treated me to a crack smoke off
00:52:52
Speaker
And these are all like these women who had jobs, but they were all in the crack gang neighborhood, so they like to do, instead of going out drinking, they like to do some crack, you know, together. And I mean, the homeboys never had any money, so they were doing like nickels and dimes, and these women were buying huge pieces of rock, and it was like, I mean, who would have ever thought, and then on Monday they all went back to work. I mean, what the hell, hello, what? I mean, what?
00:53:22
Speaker
You know, it's like, and it's like, so today, what's kind of ruined me, though, from this thing is that every single thing I see in the news, I'm like, well, what about what's the other side of this? Like, you know, every single thing that we get incensed about, I want to like, I want to know, like, the most recent shooting victim, what was he doing in the backyard? How did he get there? The one in Sacramento? What's the rest of the backstory?
00:53:51
Speaker
It's like there's a whole story here that nobody knows and that everybody's just jumping to conclusions about and because everybody's angry about a whole bunch of other things. And it's because we've piled up, piled up, piled up to someone you're not over and over again. And nobody really knows what they're talking about. And then the news media makes everything crazy because they don't tell the full story.
00:54:20
Speaker
It's like I remember one of the first crime stories I went to in Midlothian, Texas near Dallas. It's a town near what became the super colliding superconductor was built. But in this small town, they put a narc in the high school. It was early in the drug war and the kid got killed by some other kids.
00:54:42
Speaker
when Rolling Stone assigned it to me, it was being covered by the newspapers in Dallas. There were two of them at the time as an occult killing. Like there was pentagrams and, you know, bones found at, at sites. And I mean, this was in, this was the news. And the reason the story was assigned to me pretty much, it was an occult murder. And, you know, I get down there and, you know, as they say, long story short,
00:55:10
Speaker
In those days, they didn't have a fence around the campus so I could walk onto the parking lot. There were three guys on the murder. Two of them were in jail. I ended up at Whataburger, Whataburger, whatever it's called, Whataburger, with the girlfriend of one and the driver of the truck who was in the crime. And I look at the girl's notebook and she's got, when I was in high school, I had peace signs.
00:55:39
Speaker
and all that stuff on my notebook, you know, that I drew in because it was hippie days and all those kind of things. She had like Slayer, ACDC, Pentagram, Metallica, you know, she wasn't in the occult. She just liked metal music. Right. And they all that's this was not an occult murder. It had nothing to do with it. Yes, they did have a Ouija board that they like to play with when they were stoned the board.
00:56:10
Speaker
And that was part of the story, but it was not an occult murder but that's how it got played. And, you know, that was in that that I experienced that in 1986 or something. And, you know, already I knew that
00:56:28
Speaker
people weren't as they appeared until you got to know them. And so for me today, that's really the value of this anthropological journalism that takes time. And the same is true, could be true for the magazines that still do explorations of crime and stuff. I think the woman who just won the National Magazine Award
00:56:57
Speaker
She spent a lot of time with that Dylan Roof guy, wasn't it? I think I read over six months' time. So often today, the stories we get are quick to react because that's what they want. That's what sells mags. So it's a different art. It's a whole different thing going on.
00:57:19
Speaker
Yeah, I guess the real challenge is like, how can you engineer a life that affords you the capacity to spend the time with these people and to be able to tell the story of greater depth while also being able to like food and feed, you know, feed yourself and clothe yourself, let alone family. Well, I assume some people are still on, on decent sized contracts at some of these magazines, but you know, I'm not one of them. So anymore. So I don't really know.
00:57:47
Speaker
I don't, I, you know, I don't know. I wanted to ask you something too, uh, in that, um, you know, what part of the countless, you know, hundreds of stories you've written about, about so many people that are either, you know, celebrities or not celebrities, like what part of you do you see in all of these people? And that draws you to them. Well, I try to see a part of me and everyone that causes me to
00:58:17
Speaker
It's like the line you hook onto their ship in order to tow you along. It's like some line of empathy. I remember one of the early stories like this I did was for a magazine in D.C. called Regardie's. It was a business magazine and I just moved into Washington D.C.'s hooker strip, the host row.
00:58:38
Speaker
And they were like hookers up and down 14th Street. And I bought a house right off of that. And I did a story about a pimp, and I wrote around with this pimp for weeks. And we kind of became friends. And so when I wrote about him, it was the first time I was ever asked to be on an interview show. And it was Mari Povich at a show in DC. And so I come on to the show, and it's like,
00:59:08
Speaker
it seems like you kind of like this guy. And, you know, he was like a Paul that I could like a pimp. And, you know, it's kind of when I learned this thing about sort of suspending disbelief, I call it. And I think that's like an acting term. But it's like this thing where I'm Jewish and have a part black son, but I can go and sit with the Aryan nation guy while he's saying, and
00:59:38
Speaker
n-word, k-word, every word and I can just be there with him and not judge him when I'm there because it's sort of like I believe that when people yell back at the television they don't hear what they're saying
00:59:58
Speaker
And it's kind of like the art of war, you're supposed to know your enemy anyway, right? So in order to know people, you have to drop your defenses, you have to suspend your disbelief, and you have to walk that extra mile into their camp and see what it's like. And then you walk out. You can leave without losing your soul. And I think that's one of the things I've learned. It's like, I remember the Washington Post,
01:00:21
Speaker
The first Christmas I was a night police reporter, I got like these can of mixed nuts from the police and fire union. And they made me give them away, you know, because they would taint my sense of evenness and I would be subjective instead of objective, swayed by a can of mixed nuts. And, you know, the thing is, is nobody can fucking sway me.
01:00:51
Speaker
I can learn though, and I might learn to be different than I was, which is what you hope occurs when you spend time learning that you're fundamentally changed in that area. And then that area touches on other areas of what you know. Just as I see my stories, as I call, you know, I'd speak of the bowl of details where you put in all your details, dialogue,
01:01:17
Speaker
you know, information and you create like a mosaic that's a story. And, you know, in the same way, I feel like I am a mosaic. I'm like made of found art creation of all the things that I've learned. And, you know, it's like made me into this weirdo who doesn't fit into any particular group and doesn't really agree with any particular group. Like I I'm not I can't get on the bandwagon.
01:01:48
Speaker
Because the bandwagon is always too gross. It's too gross of a concept. There's too many hairs to split. There's too much truth. And my favorite thing I've ever heard is from Roseanne, whose show premiered last night, who said to me, apropos of nothing one time when I called her up. All hate is fear. All fear is insecurity.
01:02:14
Speaker
All hate is fear. All fear is insecurity.
Social Media Echo Chambers and Tribalism
01:02:18
Speaker
And, you know, I think that's like the exact defining of all the problems we have because people are afraid of what they don't understand and they don't really want to take the time to listen or learn. I was watching Vice and they had this very interesting segment on where
01:02:37
Speaker
one of the young women reporters went to MIT to talk to this guy who had sort of mapped out social media as an aspect of the left and the right. Social media as it reflects people's political ideology. And so he made this big sort of pretty thing with the red and the blue.
01:03:01
Speaker
The red was all on one side and the blue was all on the other side. And there are only a few threads of connection in between the two, which led this guy to conclude that everyone was just getting information from their own world. It's sort of like all of my friends on Facebook who are members of the liberal elite and everything that
01:03:25
Speaker
People complain about Trump and all the things that are bad about him and all the bad policies and the disastrous things that are going on and how horrible Trump is. Nobody from the right or Trump's side, whichever side that is, reads that stuff or is affected by it. It's just everyone preaching to the choir. That's the problem.
01:03:52
Speaker
So, you know, and that's what that's what literary anthropology has taught me. You know, I mean, you know, clearly there's groups of people in this country who are afraid of each other and angry at each other and they don't want to breach the divide. You know, I just spent, you know, several months writing about rodeo, you know, which in Texas, you know, in Trump's country,
01:04:21
Speaker
You know, and it's really interesting to sit at a table full of women and they're laughing at all this stuff about Weinstein, Weinstein and all that need to, they're laughing about it. You know, they don't agree with it. They don't, it's not even on their radar. And the thing is, is they might be wrong according to my friends, but they believe it. So it's gotta be dealt with.
01:04:50
Speaker
It's like all these marches displaying anger and resisting, you know, it's like, what are you resisting? No one's listening. Except you, you're listening to yourself. And I'm, I'm like liking my friends who are marching. You know, but none of the rodeo people give two shits about the march.
01:05:17
Speaker
And they don't agree that it's common knowledge that all these horrible things that Trump is doing are horrible. That's what we fail to understand in our me first blogging society, that just because you have a printing press doesn't mean that anyone's reading it. Yeah, and then then algorithms built into those platforms just further create the same echo chamber because you're liking the things that
01:05:47
Speaker
Yeah, you're just making yourself feel good. Yeah. Yeah. And then you get fed more of the same stuff instead of maybe another voice. But in order to get that voice, it's like you have to almost like change your geography, like you subsidizing this reporting trip out of your own pocket to go to Texas and and sit with people of different mindsets. And well, that's why like, I can't I don't I'm like not mad. I'm just
01:06:16
Speaker
You know, one thing I spent, I spent like, I don't know, six or eight months writing about all these Buddhist monks who got killed in Phoenix. And I actually wrote stories for two different magazines, first Rolling Stone and then GQ. So I spent a lot of time and I spent a lot of time studying Buddhism. And Buddhists believe that you need to see
01:06:44
Speaker
life the way things really are. You need to see things the way they really are. It's kind of like what reporters are supposed to do, but we don't anymore. Because reporters are all from kind of camps, whether they see it or not. It's like, God bless Bezos and for restoring life to my old newspaper, and the sale of which was
01:07:12
Speaker
was approved by the family that I remain loyal to, the Graham family, because they really brought me along. And God bless the Washington Post for being this place where I came from that still has a voice. But they're biased as hell. And they've got like 60 people trying to bring Trump down. That's biased reporting.
01:07:41
Speaker
even if the stories they're finding are true and like what they're doing. And I'm hoping that Trump is like Jimmy Carter and only lasts one term, you know, and I'm hoping that something will bring him down. You know, I agree, but I also see like that the people on the other side see, you know, they're all just trying to get them. They're out to get them.
01:08:06
Speaker
And that's true, too. So it's like there is no, no cool head is prevailing at all. You know, and that's what that's what's disturbing. But then again, I don't think ever in the history of humanity has cool heads prevail. That's just not the way we are. You know, that's not who we are. And before it was just villages with limited amount of
01:08:33
Speaker
of information, now it's like a huge media village, but we're still humans, like running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Yeah. Because we don't really know the answer to anything. Yeah, which makes the kind of journalism that you that you practice all the more valuable and it's just it it stinks that maybe that it's just it's it's never been more valuable, but it's just not valued any anymore. And it's very
01:09:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's frustrating to be the creator of that content and the reporter of that content and then still have to really struggle to find the space to tell the stories that might bridge those two sides by the empathic reporting that you've built up. Well, there's also, I think, sort of a knee-jerk, finger-pointing sort of place that we've gotten to that, you know, there's immediate, it's like,
01:09:33
Speaker
It's just like in one of those future movies where everybody at home votes thumbs up or thumbs down immediately. There's no room for, you know, the middle ground, the intelligent middle ground. And, you know, as I said, in all of humanity, there's always been very little room for that, you know, because 99% of humanity is just, you know, humans. But there used to be some
01:10:00
Speaker
it seems like to me maybe it's just it seems like to me there used to be some intellectual level where cooler heads prevailed but I think probably not too because you know thinking back about it you know in history there's always various sides it's just everyone's like more up in it right now so it seems like more right but maybe it's always been like this
01:10:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that. Humans have only been around for 20,000 years. I don't think we've changed all that much. Our technologies advance faster than our brains. We might just be more aware of these disconnects, but all these disconnects have probably been there for eternity. Humans aren't really good at having a sense of themselves in relation to the world.
01:10:53
Speaker
And because of that, people rely on religions and ideologies to join, which always have like a limited self-serving scope and are founded upon, you know, Roseanne's thing of hate and fear and insecurity and difference. And it's like,
01:11:18
Speaker
I mean, I was talking to this woman and I'm dating someone, so it's not like I was, I was trying to pick her up. But when I was doing the cowboy story, you know, we were talking and, you know, we're two like people of a similar age and, um, a man and woman. And so we're, but, you know, it immediately in our conversation became evident that I was not going to be a candidate on her radar because I was not saved.
01:11:44
Speaker
And I did not accept Jesus as my personal Savior. And so she really didn't want to date anyone who is not going to end up in the garden later. You know, I mean, like I said, I've been dating someone for seven years. It wasn't really a thing. But I think people size themselves up when you meet one way or another. And it was just really interesting. Yeah, people want to be in tribes. Right. And so and that's what I've done is go seek out tribes.
01:12:13
Speaker
And because I don't yet possess what William Gibson advertises a plug-in ability to learn a new language, and I think it's one of his first science fiction books, which I wish I always wished I had, I can't really work in another language. I've tried a couple times, and then I've written first-person pieces, of course.
01:12:38
Speaker
So that's why I've tried to specialize in tribes within the United States who speak a dialect of English. And believe me, when you're with the Marines for the first month, it is a dialect of English. It's not English. And anyone else, or with Ice Cube. It's like being an immersive anthropological journalist for the first few days, weeks, or months are often
01:13:08
Speaker
just like they're not even speaking you don't even know what they're saying and you certainly can't be yourself and can't promulgate your own opinions and you know you just have to listen and study and try to empathize and you know people call it fly on a wall reporting and it's simplified for I feel like it's like walking a mile in their shoes if you want to cliche you know it's like
01:13:38
Speaker
What's it really like to be a 600-pound man? What's it really like to be anything that's not what everybody understands? That and some great, colorful, crazy shit is always what I'm out for. It's just like, you can't make up what people do, but you have to be able to be accepting and quiet enough to be there to let it happen.
01:14:06
Speaker
Right, and that's what still gets you out of bed in the morning, right? Yeah, well, you know, it's in a smaller form and less often. But yes, and I'm always like, you know, I have travel anxiety and, you know, all this stuff, but there's always a point when, you know, when I've like reached this sort of nirvana where I'm in, I'm in with the group and they're
01:14:36
Speaker
I'm the weirdo who's been allowed to be at the party. And, you know, it's just fucking great. I mean, just just to be able to like know that I've gotten there, you know, that's kind of like it's a sport. But then, you know, in a larger way, it implies that
01:15:00
Speaker
And, you know, what I've tried to bring to my, what I do over the years is I've gotten older and hopefully wiser as like almost like a ministerial quality to what I do so that, you know, I'm hearing people, I'm listening to them and hearing them and making them feel heard, whether I agree with them or not. And in turn, they accept me and allow me to be in their world.
01:15:28
Speaker
I mean, people travel for that reason. People, you know, vacation to get a glimpse of that. You know, and as I said, I think, you know, I'm I'm a guy probably who's less book taught than experience taught. But I also believe that, you know, most of the philosophers that we read were like 24 when they wrote that. Right. Like the same age as our songwriters writing, you know, Moon, June, Spoon. I want to hook up with you.
01:15:58
Speaker
So, you know, I'll stick with my, I used to say I was, I was educated on the curb side. And, you know, in a way, I have been educated into like, you know, understanding humans, but, you know, having no particular portfolio granting me any title.
01:16:24
Speaker
Jon Didion always said something, that writers are always selling people out. In your experience, engendering this trust from people, do you ever feel like you're selling people out? No, that's my first duty in a story is to my subject. I never, ever, ever forget.
01:16:45
Speaker
one of my tips for good reporting is, you know, don't forget that I can't remember how I put it, but, you know, it's like you're nothing without your subject. Right. And, you know, I mean, when I started out as a young feature writer and I would write these snide things about people and they would upset them, you know, because I wasn't smart enough or old enough to like understand how to really describe them without being kind of like a smart ass, which you see in so much writing now or just like tossed off.
01:17:15
Speaker
Quickly came the conclusion if I keep this up, I won't ever be able to go anywhere Mm-hmm, you know, you can't you know, you can't piss off your subjects and I think that that's like like part of the beauty of I Feel like like the unsung beauty of my stories is I'm still friends with or in touch with so many of the people I've written about I can count on one finger the number of people who
01:17:43
Speaker
objected to my story. I mean, I've had people say, Who was that? I'd rather not discuss it. It had to do with an ensemble cast story that I wrote about a fire, which I'm not sure I agree with her objections, but she was a journalist. So I had a I had a I felt like maybe she felt like I was stealing her story.
01:18:06
Speaker
which he eventually wrote a book about. Was that the story in Donut Boys, the wildfire and that whole like mass evacuation or is it? Yeah, which was a really great fun story. Really hard to do but fun. Yeah. Fucked my lungs for like a couple of years. But yeah, I remember one girl saying I was writing about these punks in DC.
01:18:34
Speaker
one of my early stories, the Washingtonian, and this girl was like a council woman's daughter and she was like living in a squad and doing heroin with these people and all, you know, it's like wearing all black in the early days of that whole thing. And I guess by the time the story came out six months later, she had cleaned up her act and left and she was kind of upset. And she said, you make me seem like white trash on drugs. And I'm said, well, that's kind of how you were when I met you.
01:19:02
Speaker
You know, I mean, I said who you were without telling your name and everything that you were from a good family, but that you'd gone this. And she kind of agreed with me by the ending. Um, but I also learned to be able to like have people call you up and complain about things and not, you know, like I always thought like in some magazines, a person would write a letter to the editor and then the author would get a chance to respond. But I feel like you're whole, you've got like 5,000 words, like let the person have 200 and say whatever they want.
01:19:34
Speaker
But in general, I don't get a lot of complaints. A, because I've had amazing lawyers and fact checkers over the years to catch me on my little errors, especially, as I said, with my numbers and spelling, which I still have a problem with. But I think in a greater thing, it's like I remember the gang guys saying, you can use my real name if you want. And I'm like, no, you don't want me to.
01:20:02
Speaker
you know, even though like your editor would want you to. But like, I'd been in it long enough by then to know, no, you don't want your name used. It's almost like the thing I write about in my Marlon Brando story, Hunting Marlon Brando, it's like the conclusion the young reporter comes to is you can either act like a reporter or you can act like a decent human being.
01:20:30
Speaker
which is one reason Ben Bradley really hated the story. 14,000 words, you don't meet Marlon and that's the point of it. You can be a good human being or you can be a reporter, but that's sort of my higher, what do they say in the 12 step? My higher authority is my responsibility to this person who let me in.
01:20:58
Speaker
You know, I never, it's funny, I recently collected Janet Malcolm in our women's collection, the stories we tell. And for years, I hadn't had much love for her because of her, her line of in that piece she wrote about all reporters are confidence men. Yeah.
01:21:22
Speaker
And I have to say Janet Malcolm was the sweetest, most easy to work with person ever. And so I really like her now despite her saying that, but I have never been a confidence man. And I try to leave something positive behind. And if only listening to people and witnessing them and hearing what they have to say and getting it right, you know, that's the purpose of what I do and the greater purpose.
01:21:51
Speaker
The everyday purpose is the opposite of what I really try to do with my stories is the opposite of Mary Poppins famous song, a spoonful of sugar with the medicine. I try to have a spoonful of medicine with the sugar. So what I mostly want to do is entertain, you know, and inform. So I guess in a way, what I'm doing is the highest trying to be the highest level of infotainment.
01:22:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's like you said thou shalt not bore. Yeah, well, it's like everybody we're, you know, one of the first things I learned in the newspapers, you're kind of you're competing with like seven or eight other stories on the front page to be read. And then you're competing for the reader to jump with you into the jump on the next page. So it's sort of like I've always taken that to heart. And like, everybody like
01:22:47
Speaker
Writing is just one form of entertainment that comes out of a huge pie of slices in a person's life. And entertainment is just one slice. And then writing is just one possibility, reading. I feel like it's got to be really good. So it's got to be good because people have other things to do. It's got to be good because I'm sticking my head up and trying to act like I'm great by writing something and being published.
01:23:16
Speaker
It's got to be good just because I'm insecure and want to make sure that everything I do is good. So I outlive my youthful feelings of insecurity.
Philosophy on Writing and Storytelling
01:23:30
Speaker
And so those are the things I strive for in trying to do this job.
01:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think I'm not exactly going out on a limb by saying mission accomplished there. The collections that you have behind are in and of themselves, like the collections you read as a young reporter that Walt Harrington sort of turned you on to that are in and of themselves sort of master courses on how to do this kind of work. So if you're willing to put in the work and read the stuff and then maybe deconstruct it a bit,
01:24:00
Speaker
you know, maybe a lot of us can be a sliver as good as you are. And so we owe you a big debt of gratitude for all the work you've done. Well, thank you for saying so. And as you and others know, my books carry with them a guarantee that you're allowed to contact me, which is kind of easy, and pursue your love of writing
01:24:30
Speaker
further if you wish. Being a writer who works alone is to me the greatest thing in the world, but it's also necessary to have other people beaming into your space at times to want to share the art, which only a small number of us
01:24:54
Speaker
really, really care about to this much degree. Yeah, and how can people reach out to you if they feel so inclined? Well, I think the easiest way is just go to micsager.com and hit Contact, or go to thesegergroup.net and hit Contact. Check out my books and our books while you're there.
01:25:20
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Mike, this has been a been a thrill to get to talk to you at length here. There's so much more I'd love to hit upon, but maybe we can have a part two and not too distant future if that's amenable. I'm always available to talk about myself and my wonderful work. That's a wrap.
01:25:38
Speaker
Big thanks to Mike Sager for spending time on the podcast. He is at the real Sager on Twitter. Be sure to give him a follow, drop him a line, and buy his books. They will not disappoint. Show notes are app Brendan O'Mara.com. There you can sign up for my monthly reading list newsletter. I recommend four books and give you links to what you might've missed from the world of the podcast. Once a month, no spam. You can't beat it.
01:26:08
Speaker
consider subscribing to the podcast, if you don't already, and share it with a friend. Just like passing a note in class, only no teacher is gonna bust you and send you to that crusty Vice Principal's office, that crusty VP. Also, I'd love you took a few seconds and left a rating or a view on iTunes. It'll help create a greater sense of visibility in our little corner of the internet as we look to
01:26:35
Speaker
build a community around telling true stories. High fives to all of those who choose to do so. This show was produced by me, Brendan O'Mara, at Brendan O'Mara on Twitter and Instagram. The podcast is at cnfpod on Twitter and at cnfpodcast on Facebook. I'd love to hear from you. Of course I asked my wife if I was doing a good job in the podcast. I sat her down and I said, listen,
01:27:07
Speaker
Am I doing an okay job on the show? No! Just, he's not long crack. Have a CNF and great week.