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Episode 465: Miranda Green Searches for the Harm
537 Plays22 days ago
"You want to be able to nab the details, but then you also want to be able to tell the story of why this matters and who's harmed by this, and finding the harm is oftentimes the hardest part of investigative reporting," Miranda Green, an investigative reporter.
Her latest piece is for The Atavist Magazine titled "All That Glitters" about the seedy underbelly of diamond sales, crypto, and sports ticketing and the man at the center of it all.
In this conversation, we talk about:
- How she earns trust
- How she navigates background
- The structure of the piece
- Finding the harm in an investigative story
- And her routine (or lack of one)
Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Pre-order Promotion and Event Announcements
00:00:01
Speaker
ACNFers, we're less than three weeks away from the publication of The Front Runner, so be sure to secure yourself a pre-order. While supplies last, call now. But seriously, go to your bookseller of choice and maybe pre-order it.
00:00:14
Speaker
Order from the independents, not the big A, if you can help it.
Upcoming Appearances and Workshops
00:00:18
Speaker
And I will be at RunhubEugene slash Coldfire Brewing on Wednesday, May 21st at 6 p.m.
00:00:27
Speaker
for a pub day 5K, three to five mile run. Then we head over to nearby Coldfire Brewing for a book, talk, signing, reading. I hope it's not a reading.
00:00:40
Speaker
So that's happening. Thursday, May 29th, 7 p.m., Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing in Beaverton, Oregon, near the Nike campus, I believe, in conversation with Ruby McConnell.
00:00:55
Speaker
Shout out. May 28th, June 1st, the Archer City Writing Workshops at the Larry McMurtry Center, Literary Center. You know, the quote that doesn't make it in.
00:01:07
Speaker
led by kim h cross hampton sides and glen stout visit l mcmurtrylitcenter dot org such events learn more you're going to enter this retreat one writer and leave ah new one ah better one check it out man you know the reader never misses the quote that doesn't make it in
00:01:33
Speaker
All right, ACN efforts.
Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Podcast and Story Teaser
00:01:34
Speaker
It's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. I'm Brendan O'Meara. Apologies. It's the Atavistian time of the month, so there's some saucy details about this month's story titled All That Glitters.
00:01:50
Speaker
His alleged victims say he bribed New York Police Department officials, stole millions in diamonds, and persuaded Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Kim Kardashian to shill for scam cryptocurrency.
00:02:03
Speaker
So why is this man still free? This gives us a chance to speak with Miranda Green, an investigative reporter about this piece. I'll detail more about her before this segment.
00:02:16
Speaker
Go to magazine.atavist.com to read the story and subscribe.
Engagement and Support Options
00:02:21
Speaker
No, I don't get kickbacks. Show notes of this episode more are at brendanomira.com.
00:02:27
Speaker
There you can sign up for the monthly Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter or my episodic pod stack. And while we're hawking product... Don't forget to window shop at patreon.com slash cnfpod if you want to support the show financially.
00:02:40
Speaker
You can also follow for free and be a wallflower. The $4 and up tiers can get some one-on-one time with me to talk things through. Maybe it's research and reporting. Maybe it's writing. Maybe it's marketing. Maybe it's that pesky voice in your head that tells you you're not worth it too and that your dream is stupid.
00:02:56
Speaker
I can speak to it because my dreams are dumb.
Challenges in Investigative Storytelling
00:02:59
Speaker
Okay, we're starting this off by speaking with lead editor Jonah Ogles about his side of the table. No parting shot today because this episode, like all out of his episodes, run long.
00:03:12
Speaker
So here's Jonah. Riff.
00:03:23
Speaker
Very nice rejection. They were like, oh, this is cool. I don't want it. You know? To be honest here, none of us got into journalism to make money. I don't even know. I don't even know how to write anymore. is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:03:45
Speaker
a unique circumstance for you because I believe Sayward was working on it before and then like passed it off to you at a later stage and so and what was it like for you to ah get up to speed on a story that was in someone else's hands for a bit and then you take over It is different. The expectations I have for myself are a little bit higher because, you know, somebody that I really trust and admire as an editor had been working on it. And so there's this feeling like, oh, she knows what it could be. And I better deliver. um you know but ah But on the other hand, like it's it's a story still.
00:04:27
Speaker
you know You get a draft and you just sort of work with the material that you have. So I think Sayward had done... um A lot of the heavy lifting on the structure, and I know those two had talked about sort of how to make this whole thing, help make the story unfurl in a way that was ah compelling and would make sense. And so that was all in place, you know, that I really didn't have to do too much on that front. We expanded.
00:04:57
Speaker
the new york crimes uh that this guy's pled guilty to so we did a you know we'd sort of like changed the ratios a little bit but but more or less we were able to just use the structure that they had worked on together and then it became a ah matter of you're working on like two different fronts and big investigative stories like this you the The first is obviously just like telling a good story and making it flow from beginning to end.
00:05:29
Speaker
But there's also the investigative nature of it. And, you know you were ah you know, we're reporting from a lot of public records and we're we're basically like building out okay, this is the case that has been made in court and in public institutions for what this guy is allegedly up to.
00:05:53
Speaker
That's a really different part of the brain to use, you know, to to really like build what we hope is a ah very solid case or a solid representation ah of what's been alleged that this guy has done.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah. And working with somebody like Miranda, who's an investigative reporter, and she told me that yeah are her instincts as that reporter is to just kind of, you get all this information, you want to throw it all in there.
00:06:23
Speaker
And ah you know for an activist story, it takes a lot more shaping and narrative structure. So what becomes the the challenge for for you and your side of the table to withhold some information for the benefit of the story itself?
00:06:38
Speaker
Yeah, right. I mean, there were there were ah different avenues that were kind of ah related to the this guy's alleged activities that we didn't really go down, you know, because it it really it just took too many words to away from the main narrative.
00:07:00
Speaker
And I worried readers would... would get lost as as they sort of followed this other storyline and we'd we'd move too far away. and And I think that's especially tough in stories like this where you're doing a lot of, quote, according to court records or, quote, according to a lawsuit.
00:07:23
Speaker
And, so you know, you already have like a certain amount of they're not wasted words, but they're non-narrative words, I guess. You're devoting a fair amount of space to just like making sure you're being clear about where you're sourcing things from and how you've tried to verify or dispute them.
00:07:43
Speaker
So you really just stay as close, or not that this is the only way or maybe even the right way to do it, but I try to stay very close to the narrative, just as close as we can.
00:07:55
Speaker
And anything else, Anything that feels like we're stepping, you know, more than a foot away from it, you just
Fact-checking and Legal Considerations
00:08:03
Speaker
drop it. Given the investigative nature of this story and, and the all these lawsuits and stuff, how do you just handle it to just to protect, you know, the out of his name to make sure you're not getting into any thorny legal trouble? Yeah.
00:08:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I you know i was a i was a fact checker once. I was a research editor for a while. you know i'd I'd worked on really big stories at Outside and received threatening phone calls and emails from lawyers and sources. So um i'm I'm familiar with the nightmares that come with reporting and working on a story like this.
00:08:50
Speaker
I sort of do like two different reads of it, you know, like I get the story in place. And then especially once the story is in fact check, you just push hard on everything. I mean, God bless Allison and Miranda, because I'm sure I asked the same questions.
00:09:07
Speaker
multiple times over the course of a month. you know Just remind me where we got this from. You know you find yourself like digging into the files yourself and reading lawsuits and restraining order requests and all of that to just kind of make sure that you know every every line that's risky is really backed up um so that you're, you're lowering the risk and in anything that feels too risky, you just don't, you don't include in the story. You know, you you, you whittle it down to your strongest material and you run with that, but it's for sure, you know, it's a, it's a muscle that I've developed over
Finding Narrative Threads in Investigative Stories
00:09:50
Speaker
the years. And so you do reach a point where you can read a story and,
00:09:54
Speaker
And you can identify what's going to be what the lawyer is going to want to talk about. you know and and that's that it it was a really reassuring conversation with our lawyer on this round because the things he wanted to ask questions about were things that I had already been thinking.
00:10:15
Speaker
had thought about a lot and had really, you know, dug into but through, I mean, I make it sound like I'm doing stuff. I'm not, I'm just digging into the reporting that Miranda did and that Alison did supplementary to that and all, all of those things.
00:10:30
Speaker
And so as always, when a story of this nature comes across the transom and you're working on it, you just what struck you about this, this story that, that excited you so much about it?
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, anytime you have a really deep investigation like this, i think I think, like, almost no matter the subject, when it's clear in the pitch that you've put in this much work, um we're going to read it closely, you know, because there's there's usually a reason that a writer has spent so much time looking into it.
00:11:05
Speaker
And in this case, the crimes that Jonah pled guilty to, and Jonah's a character in the story, um... the that he pled guilty to in New York, it was a big, big case, you know, like, because it's I think somebody called it like the biggest corruption scandal in modern New York history, which is obviously a city, you know, that's had its share of corruption scandals over the years. So, so that, that really stood out.
00:11:33
Speaker
And then finally, like the LA scene that this guy did, Placed himself into you know, you've got the Kardashians you've got Floyd Mayweather jr. You've got Shaquille O'Neal and Paul Pierce, you know, there are a lot of names that the lay reader is going to recognize and so when you can do ah piece that touches on that type of culture, which is rare in and of itself, but through this really deeply reported investigation, you have a chance to like tell a good story and present all this really compelling material that are, that's in public records.
00:12:13
Speaker
And, you know, we just thought like people are going to read this. Like they're, you know, it's the type of story that like, if I saw it on, on a website, I would be like, Ooh, what, what's that? Jewelry, celebrity crime. Like, let's get into this. Yeah.
00:12:28
Speaker
And I, owe as you know, I always love getting unique challenges to your side of the table. And you already talked about yeah the the structure and some legal stuff, but what ah what else came up over the course of ah developing the the story that ah was maybe unique to this one?
00:12:46
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, I think just like getting the story right was was sort of ah like the storytelling aspect of it, getting the narrative to flow from from beginning to end.
00:13:00
Speaker
And that that's often the case in stories like this where the reporter has done a ton of work and they have all the, material all the yeah I mean, you know, thousands, I think it was thousands of pages, certainly many hundreds of pages of lawsuits.
00:13:15
Speaker
And the writer's impulse, and i don't I don't think there's anything wrong with this, but is to just get it all on the page, you know? and then then the where the editor can step in you know with a little I have some distance and, and I'm able to say, okay, this stuff is not as relevant and let's, let's cut this out.
00:13:42
Speaker
But, but even just kind of like the framing of it and Miranda was great to work with on this stuff where, yeah And Sayward is so good at this. This is really something I picked up from her. A lot of times, like the, you know, maybe like in a section, everything from the second paragraph in a section to like the next to last paragraph in a section is basically what it, it's doing what it needs to do. It's laying out evidence and, and sort of explaining what happened, but you can really change the way a reader experiences that.
00:14:18
Speaker
by ah changing that first paragraph to sort of set the table for, okay here's here's what's coming in this and in how to think about it and how it fits into the broader story.
00:14:34
Speaker
And then at the end, doing some of that same work that that like both sums it up and pushes them forward so that you're just giving readers a sense of like marching you know, with, with great purpose and speed toward the next part of the story.
00:14:52
Speaker
I ask a version of this probably every time we talk. ah But I, what, what people really like about our conversations in these atavist podcasts is ah sort of starting to learn some of the vocabulary and the the language of and what editors see and how to think more like an editor And ah you know what are what are some some questions or ways to look at a chunk of reporting or a potential story can make people a bit more successful when they're developing you know a cohesive pitch for you, but could be for anyone?
00:15:31
Speaker
I think the key to these investigations is when you're pitching them is to find, at least for a place like the atavist, it's to find the narrative thread in there.
00:15:44
Speaker
And that, that's, that's hard to do sometimes. I mean, we get so many, so many pitches that are like clearly have, have required a lot of reporting, and but they're, they're sort of about a topic. Yeah. or an issue, you know?
00:16:01
Speaker
And, and that may work for certain magazines, you know, there's not, there's nothing wrong with those types of almost like public interest stories, but I think writers will probably have more success if they're able to find ah character in them that readers can follow. And it it doesn't always, in this case, it was really just one character, although, you know, some other characters,
00:16:27
Speaker
I mean, we brought in Joe Englanoff and um Peter Voutsis to kind of give readers other characters that they could latch on to and relate to.
00:16:39
Speaker
um But it's, you know, in that pitch stage, I think you want to find... the someone who can help readers follow along because usually there's a character figuring things out. That's why so many of these ah like crime stories end up having a detective at the heart of them. The detective is a great stand-in for the reader because they're they're asking questions. They're saying, this doesn't make sense or like, oh, maybe that lines up with this other thing I've read.
00:17:11
Speaker
So, you know, that's, I'm working on another story now where we're really shifting from a guy accused of some crimes to the detectives putting putting it all together because ah that's just really helpful for a reader. So I think...
00:17:27
Speaker
like my I would encourage writers to write the pitch, step away from it for you know however long they can manage. If it's two days, great. If it's a week, awesome.
00:17:37
Speaker
But then come back to it and just think about it as a story that they're going to tell. you know to like somebody If they were sitting down to have like a beer or a coffee with somebody, what's the story you would tell? It's probably not going to start with...
00:17:55
Speaker
So I've got thousands of pages of documents. you know i I searched PACER and and I found a document. It's probably going to be, here's this person and here's what they were up to. So that, and we talked about framing in the story earlier, framing the pitch works the same way. you know You start with a paragraph that sort of says, this is what the story is about and here's who you're going to meet and what they're going to get up to.
00:18:20
Speaker
and And that can really help things flow from there. Yeah, I feel like, and you know we've articulated this different ways at different times, is and ah writers are excited about a potential story, but they kind of jump the gun, and it might have not resolved it itself satisfactorily for narrative purposes. So it's like, you might be like, this is really cool, it's unfolding right now, but we don't, for the purposes of a pitch, we kind of need to know how it ends.
00:18:47
Speaker
you know by and large, yeah you if it's somewhat ongoing, of course, you know, that we don't know how it ends, but you're like there has to be quite a bit of resolution up there, like no mystery for you, but we can save the mystery for the reader later.
00:19:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's that's an incredible point. And I i can't tell you how often i I send pitches back to writers just saying, this isn't done yet. and And like, look, i I feel bad asking writers to do more work.
00:19:15
Speaker
yeah um But you're right. So often they... they find just enough to get really excited about it. And they're like, oh, I can see where this might go.
00:19:28
Speaker
you know and they want And they want to pitch it. But we we want to know where it is going to go yeah and and feel pretty confident about that. So we want sources lined up. We want to know, even if we don't know exactly how it ends, we want to know that like...
00:19:45
Speaker
It's an ending that's somewhere in this general vicinity. you know one One of these things is going to happen. We're either going to find the guy or and it'll look like this, or we won't.
00:19:57
Speaker
and But here's how we can still sort of wrap it up in a way that feels satisfying to readers. Yeah.
Transition to Miranda Green Interview
00:20:03
Speaker
Oh, awesome. Well, Jonah, it's always fun just getting your side of the table and getting that insight and getting writers and reporters thinking more like an editor, which will only help them land more stories and stuff of that nature. So as always, great ah great talking to you, and we'll kick it over to so Miranda now.
00:20:21
Speaker
Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to talk
00:20:32
Speaker
Nice.
Miranda Green's Journey in Investigative Journalism
00:20:33
Speaker
All right, we got Miranda Green here, an investigative journalist based in l L.A. who focuses on politics and climate change. She previously worked at HuffPost and Floodlight News.
00:20:45
Speaker
Her interests focus on the intersection of dark money, the fossil fuel industrial complex, and the manipulation of news to spread misinformation. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, just to name a few.
00:21:01
Speaker
With this out of his piece, we talk about how she earns trust, how she navigates background, deep background, on background, on the record, off the record, all that shit. The structure of the piece, the finding, and and the finding of the harm in an investigative story. You can learn more about Miranda at mirandacgreen.com.
00:21:25
Speaker
So let's just get after it. Here is Miranda. Huh.
00:21:37
Speaker
any number ways procrastination can get into our lives. And I wonder how it manifests for you.
00:21:45
Speaker
ah That's such a great question. i I honestly think that sometimes procrastination for me, especially on stories like this, is that I just go down the most ridiculous rabbit holes instead of staying on top of the you know the the next thing that needs to be addressed or you know paying attention to the timeline or my calendar or deadlines.
00:22:07
Speaker
I'll just find something really random in the story. And for example, this piece is so heavily reliant on lawsuits. And so I will just read 170 pages of a lawsuit just to make sure there isn't a juicy bit in there that I want to include.
00:22:24
Speaker
And there always is a juicy bit, but did I need to go 170 pages in? The story is already 10,000 words. I probably didn't need it. So that... That has happened a lot. I think that happens to me a lot. I'm just curious by nature and it ends up getting the best of me when it comes to timelines.
00:22:41
Speaker
I know it's like a loud unlimited time. We can find always like another little nugget like, oh, this will be good. Let's sub out that piece of information for this one because it's just a little bit better. it's just a bit more evocative.
00:22:55
Speaker
And it's like you could truly do this until until you die, really. Yeah. This is the longest story I've ever written. And so I've had to, it's really been a lesson in being really thoughtful with the details you need to include because you have to remind yourself that what you think is interesting might not be as interesting to the reader because you are very close to the material. I've been working on this story for over a year now. Yeah.
00:23:24
Speaker
And so I want to include everything because I've spent so much time on it. But at the end of the day, it's about making sure the information you know and you've uncovered is presented in the best way to captivate readers.
00:23:36
Speaker
And I had an editor once tell me in college, a professor of mine, actually, who said to me, you know, the reader never misses the quote that doesn't make it in. you're the only one who's like dying to keep that quote in because you love it so much. But it's really rare that the reader ever knows that there is a quote there that and they're not reading.
00:23:56
Speaker
And so that is something I've had to remind myself over and over again when I've you know allowed Jonah to kill some of my darlings here because it's really about the the ultimate story. Yeah. Well, sometimes you end up, well, you said a moment ago you would read 170 pages of lawsuits or in the case of say book research, you might read an entire 300 page book to get like this one little nugget that you want that labor to mean something.
00:24:23
Speaker
And when you go through all those, when you go through all that legwork to make that happen and then you end up having to cut something, it it feels like, it feels like wasted work and it's hard to, it's hard to let those go.
00:24:36
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely is. But again, it's, you know, especially for a story, you know, out of this piece where it's, you know, supposed to be cinematic, it's supposed to be read like it's, you know, almost a real, a fiction, not a nonfiction.
00:24:51
Speaker
That's when you have to remind yourself, you did the hard work, you got all the data to feel comfortable and confident to write this story in this way. It doesn't need to all be included, at least that's what I kept telling myself.
00:25:03
Speaker
Yeah. How did you arrive at your particular lane of an investigative reporting as a journalist? I used to be a political reporter in D.C. I covered the first two Obama administrations and the first administration for Trump the first four years.
00:25:21
Speaker
I was on the 2016 campaign trail and then I was working out of Capitol Hill um up until 2020. And I was you know doing a lot of political scoops and I was looking at government spending and I was looking at misspending and I was doing a lot of public records requests and diving into emails that people had written internally.
00:25:45
Speaker
and I just found those kind of juicy bits to be the things that made my eyebrows stand up. And I realized audiences really responded well to those kind of revelatory um stories that really showed what was happening behind the scenes.
00:25:59
Speaker
and not just what people were saying were behind the scenes, but you're kind of almost catching them in the act with some of these these pieces. And so when I left DC and moved back to Los Angeles, which is where I'm from originally, and wanted to cover...
00:26:15
Speaker
you know, news out here, I really gravitated towards national stories that had a bit of a fraudulent kind of element to it or kind of a seedy underbelly to it.
00:26:27
Speaker
Because I know that that exists on a like much larger scale than I think most people realize. And it's super captivating to be able to tell the behind the scenes story, which takes a lot more effort to dig up. But once you have it, it's so, so, so good.
00:26:43
Speaker
I know when I think of investigative journalism, it's it's very over it's overwhelming in lot of ways, just the the ah the vast amount of information you need to get, the patience you need to retrieve certain information. So what were maybe some of your early growing pains and lessons you learned as you got your start in the this ah this lane of journalism?
00:27:06
Speaker
I think with investigative reporting, it really just comes down to you have to be super curious and you have to just keep on tugging on all the threads. And that is, you know, you have to be aware of the fact you're going down rabbit holes and you have to be able to pull yourself out, but you have to keep moving on to the next one. Because with investigative reporting, the best stories are obviously bulletproof. You want to really be able to prove the rumor you heard or the document that you got handed. You want to know that it's real. You want to be able to prove it's legit. You want to be able to nab the details, but then you also want to be able to tell the story of why this matters and who's harmed by this.
00:27:49
Speaker
And finding the harm is oftentimes the hardest part of investigative reporting because sometimes things happen and they're nefarious and no one's written about it and it's a scoop and it definitely is deserving of being told, but it's not as impactful if nothing really happened because of it.
00:28:09
Speaker
It's a good story, but it's not, oh my God, I can't believe this happened. Tons of people are injured or that you know they were hiding you know health records or something like that. And so I think the best investigative stories are be able to are able to prove that there's that extra element. And that is the hardest one to prove.
00:28:27
Speaker
And you have to be able to find people who are willing to go on record or you have to find a human face to it. And you have to really get readers to care ah about that.
00:28:39
Speaker
And most readers only care because they can see it happening to themselves. They can see that happening to other people. It's like, holy crap, if it this is happening in Arkansas, this could happen in Massachusetts.
00:28:52
Speaker
And so those are, you know, that's the hardest part about being an investigative reporter is you have to be good with the data, you have to be good with sourcing, and you have to be good with really the narration and the the heartstrings.
00:29:03
Speaker
And of course, you want it to have a bit of impact. And I will say that... I came into writing this story with an investigator's hat on.
00:29:14
Speaker
And that was sometimes to my detriment because I wanted to reveal everything. I really wanted to prove everything, get all the documents, all the FBI files, all the grand jury testimony.
00:29:30
Speaker
And there was a point where I had to realize I didn't need that. You know, I had enough to really tell a compelling story and prove that this was happening in a way that no one else has.
00:29:42
Speaker
And it was okay if I didn't tie every loose end. And that was a little bit antithetical to the investigative reporting hat that I've had on for a lot of my career.
00:29:55
Speaker
How do you sniff out stories? I usually start with just an article or a story I've read.
Story Discovery and Financial Challenges in Freelance Journalism
00:30:02
Speaker
I read something and it piques my interest. And I have so many notes in my phone and about random things that I've like, oh, that could make a really interesting story. So I think that that just, or someone says something to me and i'm like, oh, that would be really interesting to dig into. It could be a person I've never heard of or an event that happened.
00:30:23
Speaker
ah some obscure library that existed or some random expert that I would love to call and see if he has any ideas. And then i kind of collect a lot of this information. And when I'm looking for a new story, I kind of go back to them and I start Googling them and looking for more.
00:30:38
Speaker
um I've also found that oftentimes when I find one story, I people who are I interview for those stories have good ideas for other areas to dive into.
00:30:50
Speaker
So I frequently will finish up a story and say, you know, do you anything? do you know there's any other elements here that I should be looking into? does this make you think of other stories that would be interesting?
00:31:03
Speaker
And I frequently have a lot of people kind of tip me off to other areas to dig into, which has been really helpful. As you mentioned, this this out of a story and other investigations, I imagine they take a long time. And this one took a year.
00:31:18
Speaker
How do you balance the economics of being a journalist when you are investing that much time and resources in one story with, you know, with other things that maybe help pay the bills or, you know, just what does that look like for you, I should say?
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a really real question. And I don't really have a great answer to that. I was lucky enough that when I started this freelance story, I actually was working full time as a reporter elsewhere.
00:31:45
Speaker
And they had a policy that you're allowed to freelance if it was on a topic that didn't have to do with what you were covering. yeah And so I... I'm finishing this story now as a freelancer.
00:31:56
Speaker
And, you know, the more and more hours I spend fact checking and going through legal, I'm not getting paid extra for that, you know, and so, you know, this is the conundrum that I think most freelancers do face, which is, you know, the atavis is paying me decently for this story. And,
00:32:14
Speaker
I'm very excited about the rights I was able to negotiate for it, which I think is kind of a big part of this for journalists and something more of them should be thinking about when they do write these big cinematic pieces. If I really broke this down per hour wage,
00:32:28
Speaker
I think I'd cry. So i try not I try not to think about that in the grand scheme of things because I'm very excited. But if this was something I was trying to do as a full-time reporter and I only wanted to do long-form stories, I don't really know if it would be a feasible thing that I could do to sustain myself.
00:32:46
Speaker
And I do think that's ah a reality that a lot of reporters who try to do this kind of reporting phase that not a lot of people talk about, that it really isn't sustainable. You know, a lot of freelancers have to take on content work on the side to make freelance journalism sustainable because journalism itself just, you know, we're not getting the Vanity Fair 10,000 or, you know, I don't even know. I think they were getting like, there's there's a couple articles that have come out recently that a lot of people have talked about where they were sending them all over the globe and they were getting all the IP rights and they were living these, and you know, incredible lives.
00:33:22
Speaker
That is not the reality today um as much as I wish it were. I actually started my first job ever in journalism was at Newsweek. And so I got a glimmer of what that heyday looked like.
00:33:34
Speaker
You know, they used to have... barbecues, um overlooking the White House ah with fireworks, all expense paid. Newsweek flew out families on helicopter to Governor's Island for annual retreats.
00:33:50
Speaker
And all of these reporters got to you know report from Paris and Greece and you know doing these crazy stories and Oh, I really wish that it was still like that. i would love to tell those stories. But, you know, i still think that there's a lot of great stories to be told with the budgets that we have. They're just not quite as glamorous as it used to be.
00:34:10
Speaker
Yeah, I like hearing you talk about this this idea of there there might be a wing of a freelancer's business that is content work. And it's, as Louisa Thomas told me like years ago when she was on, you know there's there's the writing you don't tweet about. you know it's It's the stuff that kind of keeps the keeps the lights on so you can subsidize pieces that are a bit more ambitious and cinematic. like It's still work that takes an incredible amount of time and resources and bandwidth.
00:34:39
Speaker
ah that you can't sustain writing a one or two of these a year. like You need something steady to to help bolster this kind of journalism. Yeah, I think a lot of reporters talk about it as it's a bit of a trade-off. you know you It's the same thing. I've heard this. No, I have not written a book myself, but I've heard it's very similar to book writing.
00:34:59
Speaker
There are some lucrative books, but there're getting those kind of deals have become fewer and far between But there's still benefit to writing a book. You get your name on a book. You can get part of a speaking series. You now have credibility when you're pitching other stories.
00:35:15
Speaker
So even if maybe you're not making a ton of money off the book itself, It's a launchpad. And so I think some of these cinematic stories are similar. And not only is it a launchpad, but it's a passion. You know, it's you're doing it for yourself as much as you're doing it for the paycheck, which, you know, let's be honest here, none of us got into journalism to make money. So, you know, that's kind of that's, you know, we're doing this because we love the work and we're good at it.
00:35:40
Speaker
I will say what was so different about this this story, this is this specific story was the longest story I've ever written, but it also is so different than any other story I've written because it's so reliant on legal filings.
00:35:55
Speaker
And so... I kind of felt like not only was I taking my spare time to write and research this story, but I was also almost becoming like a mini lawyer. I feel like I almost went back to law school because I was spending so many hours reading dockets, looking at PACER, learning how the judicial system works, both on a federal and a state level, you know, understanding how FBI investigations work, understanding what it means when, you know, things have been filed under seal and,
00:36:26
Speaker
What, you know, something that's been dismissed with or without prejudice means. And i actually did try to save money because Pacer is very expensive. So if anyone has ever tried to write a story based off of documents, you know, the Atavis is, you know, re-expensing, but I obviously didn't want to have $12,000 in expenses for them based off of Pacer alone.
00:36:49
Speaker
So I actually would go down to the courthouse and sit at the terminals and spend hours just typing up notes from the dockets and paying them to kind of print off key things to save money. And I was down there one day at the Santa Monica courthouse and I was there for like my third day in a row, just sitting at this sad little desk in a hallway.
00:37:10
Speaker
And this man came up to me and he's like, Hey, and just, I've seen you here before. And I just wanted to ask, are you a law student? Yeah. ah And I was like, no I feel like I probably should be though, but I'm an i a reporter. think i'm doing this for a story.
00:37:26
Speaker
and he kind of gave him a chuckle and he walked away. But you know I felt like I was working on my paralegal degree or something like that in the story. And so that helped keep me going because sometimes when you go from writing full time and then writing in your spare time, you're just like,
00:37:42
Speaker
It's so many words on a paper. you know how I don't know how you shift your mindset. you know I don't know how people who write books do that from writing all day to writing again. So at least this flexed my brain a little bit differently.
00:37:54
Speaker
How did you get your head around the language of all those documents? and therere they're so They're so dense and in a language that is not not not to our ear.
00:38:07
Speaker
you know You've got to do a lot of translating in that regard. So how how did you learn that?
00:38:13
Speaker
think it was just trial and error. You know, i just rolled my eyes so hard when I when I was giving about to give you that response. It was a lot of it was trial and error. You know, I've I've read legal documents before. You know, when I was a political reporter, I used to have to you know, I i also had to cover Congress and they write in a very legalese way when they're, you know, putting out.
00:38:33
Speaker
um Any sort of hearing testimony too. So it's not that I'm this going through dry language is not something that's impossible to do, but it's finding the quotables in that legalese, which is the hardest part as a reporter.
00:38:50
Speaker
But I think I got really lucky with this story. And this is why I was interested in this story is because there are just so many juicy bits. And I think a lot of these lawyers did, to their credit, go out of the way to make it kind of scandalous and salacious.
00:39:06
Speaker
You know, they included text messages that I could then create dialogue out of. They included screenshots from Instagram accounts. They, you know, even direct quoted scandalous parts from other lawsuits that had happened. So they really helped me kind of connect the dots over the timeline and having it from a lawyer's perspective on what they think proves their case also helped me understand kind of the the legality of this too. And, and what is kind of what they were using to try to prove their points as I was trying to say, you know, who's saying what, right.
00:39:41
Speaker
And so it was super time consuming, but there were a lot of needles in the haystack by doing this. And, you know, now I know on any other story I move forward, you know, I, in my investigative reporting, I've so often relied on looking at public records or even looking at tax documents.
00:40:00
Speaker
But I very rarely look up to see if any of these parties have been involved in lawsuits. And there's some great stuff in some of these civil lawsuits. And so if you have some extra money, PACER, I think, gives you ah you know some some without paying you right up front. But it's definitely worth the dig if you if you want to go that extra mile. All right. So how did you arrive at this story?
The Jonah Rechnitz Case Exploration
00:40:21
Speaker
I had written a story in 2021 about one of the largest jewelry heists that had happened in and in the history of the country, in modern history, that actually took place in California.
00:40:36
Speaker
I wrote it for New York Magazine, and it was about a jewelry heist that had happened in Northern California, with Brinks and Brinks truck was robbed in the dead of night. And it was a bit of a whodunit, kind of wrote it like an Agatha Christie style novel where you have all the players.
00:40:52
Speaker
And because we don't know who did it it, kind of left the readers to determine who they thought was the most likely culprit. And they still have not announced any um leads on that.
00:41:04
Speaker
I interviewed a lawyer for the story who represented the jewelers who were robbed, who lost their jewelry. And he's an insurance lawyer. So he oftentimes represents them when they can't, you know, they've been so robbed and they they're trying to get their insurance to pay up.
00:41:22
Speaker
And he said to me, you know, if you like this story, i have a story for you. You need to look into this guy named Jonah Rechnitsch. And so, of course, my, you know, my ears perked up and I said, all right, I don't know anything about this guy. But, you know, tell me what, you know, I did a cursory Google search of him and he's all over the Internet.
00:41:43
Speaker
But the most recent the most recent article. articles about him were really about his time back in New York. you know This is a man who, he's from Los Angeles originally, but went to school on the East Coast.
00:41:56
Speaker
He started building up a bit of a real estate empire out there, started his own company in the Diamond District. He had connections through his old employer there. And then- As he started trying to kind of become a bit of a big shot in the New York realm, um you know, he's he's Jewish, he's he's in this Orthodox, very close knit group of Orthodox Jews.
00:42:20
Speaker
Lots of them are big spenders. There's lots of money here. their clout is oftentimes based off of how much money they have or the assets that they have or appear to have. And he was really making a push for this. And in doing so, he got connected to a couple other men who were bribing officials within the and NYPD for special treatment.
00:42:44
Speaker
And he ended up getting caught. He was turned into a secret government cooperating witness. And he flipped on the two men that he had been running this kind of scheme with. And he was, you know, he he admitted to he admitted that he was guilty of, um I think it was wire fraud.
00:43:05
Speaker
And his, you know, the two guys that he worked with ultimately were sentenced to to time spent in jail. But Jonah did get a sentence and he still, this was back in 2017, 2016, 2017, has still not spent a day in prison.
00:43:24
Speaker
And despite the fact that he pled guilty, despite the fact that there's no question about whether he has, you know, did anything wrong, he ended up parlaying that into kind of a second chance at life in Los Angeles. Yeah.
00:43:38
Speaker
He moved back to his hometown in Los Angeles and he started a kind of rebirth as a, as a jeweler to the stars. And that's kind of where my story starts.
00:43:49
Speaker
Yeah, I love how in a moment, a moment in the story kind of after all those proceedings fell out in New York, how he basically abdicates for the West Coast. And it's a very, it's like, what do what do a lot of American reinvention stories start? Like they they turn West and to to remake themselves. And that's where the story, you know, really gains a different level of altitude.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah, and I think when I first wanted to tell that story, that was the that was kind of the turning point to me. you know i I felt like this was not the last we had heard of Jonah Rechnich, though that is what I think most people thought. you know The time that he had spent in New York was written about by the New York Times and the New York Post, and it was salacious, and it was crazy, and it was the biggest scandal in and NYPD history at the time.
00:44:37
Speaker
funny that things have come back to full circle here because now we're dealing with Eric Adams with the second largest, you know, scandal in New York, but this was supposedly the first largest one.
00:44:48
Speaker
But then he kind of fell off the radar. You know, looking at Google, you would think that, you know, maybe that was that. But the second I started looking at him online and seeing, realized, oh, this guy has been busy. He it has he hasn't been quiet.
00:45:02
Speaker
There are lawsuits after a lawsuit after a lawsuit filed against him and this new company. And for a man who quite literally told the judge that I'm going to be a better man, i am going to be above board, I'm going to be a religious man, i am you know i i was a disgrace, I was a social climber, I'm not going to do that anymore,
00:45:23
Speaker
Everything that these lawsuits were alleging were saying the polar opposite, that there was no new leaf turned over, that he was just using the same playbook, but this time in Los Angeles and this time of jewelry instead of real estate.
00:45:37
Speaker
And that's, you know, kind of this idea of fraud can take many shapes. Right. But once you have this idea of how to pull off this and get people to trust you, you can kind of utilize that in any business sphere.
00:45:53
Speaker
And that's what a lot of these lawsuits were alleging, that this this was the same guy doing the same tactics, but with a different no different sheep's clothing. Earlier in our conversation, you talked about with investigative work of trying to find the harm. So in this story and in this cast of characters, where did you find that harm?
00:46:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think the question I had going into this was, do I believe that these jewelers are victims? I think that is really hard when you do a story that is kind of connected to grift and fraud.
00:46:29
Speaker
Do you feel like the reader should feel bad for them? And so I was really scared. skeptical of that reading these lawsuits because you know you can allege anything you want in a lawsuit. Obviously, a lawyer is supposed to be truthful, but there's still some, you know you have a perspective that you're trying to put forward.
00:46:49
Speaker
So reaching out to these jewelers and speaking to them, many of them on backgrounds, you know some off the record, but I had ah many people you know, face to face interactions with some of these victims to really get a sense for me as a reporter, do I think that this, you know, how do I want to write this story?
00:47:09
Speaker
Do I want to do this as a story that no one's trustworthy and they're all bad? um And it's just a shady, shady underbelly, which is a story in itself, but a different kind of story. Or do I want to Tell this story from there's legitimacy here, you know, there is wrongdoing here. and And I think it I think that the the facts back that up.
00:47:31
Speaker
And I do really feel like for the most part, you know, they're. there were people that were duped and they really do believe that they were duped. And i I, you know, there was a ah court found that to be the case and, and, and at least one of the major situations. And so I started going down that line of saying, well, how did this happen?
00:47:53
Speaker
And I really felt like the underlying question that kept pulling me through this story why is This happened, but why is he still free?
00:48:05
Speaker
Why have there been no ramifications for this? We have dozens, we have over a dozen lawsuits. He's been found guilty. He just keeps on waiting for official sentencing. That's the only reason why he hasn't, you know, spent any time or even been on probation.
00:48:24
Speaker
He's still flying constantly all over the world with Floyd Mayweather. He posts about it. You know, it's all over the internet. How? How is that still possible?
00:48:36
Speaker
And so that is, you know, the question I kept asking myself and kept asking others. And they kept asking me as I was interviewing from the story, because there's this idea of just, if we live in a country that has this judicial system, why does it seem to not be working? Hmm.
00:48:52
Speaker
Have you yourself reached a satisfactory answer to that question?
00:48:59
Speaker
Officially, now
00:49:06
Speaker
i mean, i i i didn't go into this thinking I was going to be able to crack the DOJ or the FBI. So I think i i knew that it would be really hard for me to be able to prove or get them to talk to me on the record beyond what they've already made public about what's going on here.
00:49:26
Speaker
And I've, I've spoken to a lot of people, lot, there's a, there's this really big rumor mill here. I mean, his time in Los Angeles almost spans a decade and he's moved on to Miami since then.
00:49:38
Speaker
and A lot of those individuals talk to each other. And when a new lawsuit is filed, they reach out to that person and they have meetings with that person. So there is a bit of a brotherhood that is essentially been started by these alleged victims.
00:49:53
Speaker
And they all have... ideas of what's going on. But, you know, what I was able to prove, what is definitive, what is in the lawsuits is is what's in the story.
00:50:06
Speaker
And I do think there is legitimacy to why they're questionable. I do think that they have a reason to be confused. But, you know, the the Justice Department, it operates in secrecy for reason.
00:50:17
Speaker
grand juries are secret for a reason. They want ironclad cases. So when they do make them public, they want it to be a pretty tight ship. And so I don't think I think I understand that I understand why they're not talking to me as much as I'd love them to talk to me.
00:50:35
Speaker
A moment in the story, you quote um Jerry Kroll, who is the an insurance lawyer, and he said, this is one of the few businesses, but kind of the diamond jewelry business, left on earth that's done on Handshake, where it's based on trust.
Trust and Secrecy in the Diamond Industry
00:50:48
Speaker
So like just take us to the to this business and the world building therein, and this is kind of how this is the framework under which the story gets murky and allows all this to take place.
00:51:01
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that is something I really tried to understand early on in this story too. It's this idea, trust reigns so supreme in this industry.
00:51:12
Speaker
It's almost like, Unless you know someone, you are not even going to get in and The diamond industry in New York and in L.A. is, you know, it's not all, but a large portion of it is are Jewish individuals.
00:51:27
Speaker
Many of them have ties to Israel. a lot of the diamonds come from they are... and they are operating on reputation and, you know, someone comes and says, Hey, I want to buy something from you, or can I be this, you know, a liaison, I want to sell this to my client.
00:51:47
Speaker
They're not going to work with you unless they can call two or three other people who can vouch for you. And I think that's pretty clear. You know, they don't really want to take, there's no need to take a risk on someone who doesn't seem legit.
00:52:00
Speaker
Um, I think Jonah did have that reputation. um he he was well known in the community. he did have that background. He had people who were willing to vouch for him.
00:52:11
Speaker
And He proved he had the celebrity clients. You know, he proved he knew people. He had it on his Instagram with Jadel. And so I think, you know, that is something that worked to his favor.
00:52:24
Speaker
ah What the problem was that a lot of these jewelers found as they tried to sue him is that they didn't necessarily have enough to prove what had happened with the jewels or that he hadn't actually paid them back because so many of these deals happened with a handshake or were maybe not fully signed on the dotted line or the terms changed. you know He called them and he said, actually, i have this other person. I'm going to sell them for this price, whatnot.
00:52:55
Speaker
And they were kind of done over the phone and not proven, I think made it really hard for these jewelers to Prove to the court that they were defrauded. Fraud is something that's very hard to prove in the court of law.
00:53:07
Speaker
And so, you know, many of them ultimately didn't win their cases, withdrew their cases, or actually just turned to their insurance companies instead to try to get the money back because it just wasn't as fruitful to go the civil lawsuit route.
00:53:21
Speaker
Even at the start of our conversation, you talked about this idea of being ah comfortable and confident, you know, with with the material to proceed to to write 10,000 word narrative. So what throughout your reporting and your research, at what point did you start to transition into that period of comfort and confidence that you could that you had enough here to run with?
00:53:43
Speaker
i I feel like it was a mixture of doing the interviews with these individuals independently. I didn't tell any of them who I was speaking to. Hearing the same thing over and over again from them.
00:53:56
Speaker
So I started realizing, okay, there is a trend here. There is a and a motive of operation that I'm picking up on here. And then reading the lawsuits and seeing that backed by, you know, legal backing made me feel really confident. Like, okay, I'm not just relying on my gut here.
00:54:16
Speaker
I'm not just relying on face-to-face interaction and my reporter's instinct, but I'm actually, you know, feeling confident now because I'm seeing some proof in the pudding.
00:54:27
Speaker
I've spent a year on this following you know rabbit holes, trying to confirm with documentation, with emails, with communications with federal agents. you know and And I think one of the biggest, there there were two main instances in this story that I think made me feel, okay, I'm really onto something here.
00:54:47
Speaker
And they both were with lawsuits that a jeweler and a guy who gave a personal loan to Jonah put out.
00:54:58
Speaker
ah One of them was a lawsuit. It was a joint lawsuit that um Peter Marco, Peter Voutsas is his name, and ah David ra Ravinsky and frank Victor Franco-Naval, they did a joint ah essentially attempt to force bankruptcy on Jonah's company, Jadel, to get their money.
00:55:21
Speaker
And in that bankruptcy attempt, the federal government stepped in and issued ah request for empmporaries or i think it was a temporary or partial stay.
00:55:34
Speaker
And that to me was kind of like, okay, there's something here. and I'm not crazy and thinking like, why is this still going on? They clearly are paying attention.
00:55:46
Speaker
Like they are paying attention in some regard. I don't know how far this goes or how deep this goes, but this is the first indicator that, okay, someone else is is looking into this. There is something weird going on here.
00:55:58
Speaker
That was kind of what drew me into this story. And I i read the request for this day. And in order to submit that request, they had to divulge a lot of details, including the fact that they had actually recovered some of the jewelry And they recovered some of the jewelry because the Fish and Wildlife Service and the FBI had done this check at this guy's home looking for ring-tailed lemurs, which is like, what?
00:56:20
Speaker
And then instead they found jewelry, which is like, what? And to me, is a movie. feel like I could see this scene where they get the lemurs and then they get this diamond necklace at the same time.
00:56:34
Speaker
That to me was kind of like, okay, keep going. There's something here. Keep digging. And then i you know i looked at the lawsuit that Naval had filed against Jonah about not getting money back on a personal loan that he lent Jadel.
00:56:51
Speaker
And the judge ruled in his favor. And he specifically said, this is clear fraud. And so that, again, made me feel like, okay, there's smoke and fire here.
00:57:03
Speaker
There's a there's a we're seeing a lot of the same patterns emerging that he you know, that that he was accused of in New York. Keep going. Keep digging.
00:57:15
Speaker
You spoke a moment ago about the the trust that's involved in the diamond and the jewelry industry. And there's also quite a bit of trust involved in in journalism and getting getting sources comfortable talking to you. So how did you cultivate the trust you needed to get the information you needed for the story?
00:57:38
Speaker
I was really persistent and I was really consistent. And I think that's probably the number one thing. And I maybe would have to ask the people I talk to because I don't want to put words in their mouth.
00:57:50
Speaker
But I think I made it really clear that I wasn't just a i kind of splash in the pan here or flash in the pan here. I was digging into this and I was staying on this story.
00:58:01
Speaker
When I talked to a couple of the people that I spoke to for this story, they, you know, they kind of split into two camps. There were individuals who, well, maybe three, there were individuals who wanted nothing to do with this and never wanted to think about it again and didn't want to touch Jonah and were just like, frankly, seemed really afraid of him and wanted to be done with the whole thing. theyve They had moved on. Yeah.
00:58:23
Speaker
There were individuals who were disgusted by what happened, but were unwilling and and and ah and probably afraid of of putting their name on it and didn't want to be connected to it in you know direct ways. And then there were individuals who were the opposite and who were like, this guy's been doing this for too long. And i This is not right.
00:58:48
Speaker
And some of them had been hoping that you know this had gotten attention. They'd been waiting for years for this to get attention. They filed lawsuits specifically to get attention. Their lawyers put all these details into their filings so that there would be a legal record showing this had happened.
00:59:05
Speaker
And no one had really dug into it and looked. And so they were super eager that I was finally you know doing the due diligence to do this. I will say, i don't think a single one of them is happy that I've taken a year to write this story.
00:59:18
Speaker
i think they all would have loved this to have come out nine months ago. I still get what's your ETA texts from some of them almost weekly, but I do hope that they're ultimately happy with the end product because, you know, I really went to, you know, extremes. i've I've met with a lot of them in person.
00:59:39
Speaker
I've had multiple phone calls with them. i will, I've, a lot of them, even when I was doing fact check for this story, walked them through the exact things that they were being quoted for.
00:59:50
Speaker
to make sure that it was accurate so that they were aware of the allegations, including some things that might not have made them look super good because, you know, again, the allegations go both ways. I want to quote Jonah at his word as much as I possible in these stories. And so I think that, you know, my ultimate goal here was to feel like I was trustworthy. i was super transparent about the goal of this story, which was to tell the truth.
01:00:14
Speaker
You know, i'm not advocating for them, but I'm telling, you know, story of what actually happened. And I think that, you know, hopefully they you they felt like, you know, they could trust me and they they knew that I was going to do that.
01:00:26
Speaker
Yeah. And there's navigating attribution and source. So on the record, that's self-explanatory, but it can get a little murky with like background and off the record. And how do you define both and approach both with a particular person?
Source Management and Story Development
01:00:44
Speaker
I honestly tried. I found out that it's I try not to use the like the words at all. I find out that most normal people don't really know the difference. They don't know what it means.
01:00:55
Speaker
And so what I will usually do is I will just say, hey, Can i quote you? No. Okay. So how about we talk, you know, off the record means I won't quote you.
01:01:09
Speaker
I'm not going to use anything you say, but with your permission, i might try to see if I can, you know, yeah I can, I'm going to follow this down the line. I'm going to see if I can find someone else who can verify this. And oftentimes that's totally fine.
01:01:22
Speaker
I will say on deep backgrounds, I'll oftentimes say that to me means I can talk to you. i can paraphrase what you're saying, but I can't quote you directly.
01:01:35
Speaker
And I can't, I'm not going to use any sort of identifying information on backgrounds, you know, means I will quote you. And I'm going to say, as you know, told me by a lawyer or something like that.
01:01:50
Speaker
And, you I will maybe tell them that's what that means, but oftentimes they don't know the difference between off the record, on deep background, on background, on the record. So I try to go to extremes to say, i'm going to quote you on background. Are you okay with me saying you are a lawyer for the witness?
01:02:09
Speaker
Yes, great. Okay, cool. Or i will say, i' i want I really want to quote this section. Are you okay with me quoting this if I say blah, blah, blah? And sometimes they say no. So for me, it's it's just...
01:02:21
Speaker
Having a very transparent conversation with each person to make sure they're not blindsided. It's less about the the labeling and it's more about just making sure that we have an understanding and we have an agreement and it goes both ways.
01:02:37
Speaker
Hmm. And the entry point for the story is kind of this thing that involves the Kardashians and everything. And so when you're thinking about the writing and setting down the structure the piece, you know, where how are you thinking about your way into it?
01:02:52
Speaker
I'm usually starting the story with the most grabby piece that grabbed me That made me want to dig into it. I usually feel like when you go with your gut that way, it it really helps you in the long the long haul.
01:03:08
Speaker
And with this story, I actually tried to start it a different way with the lemurs because to me, that was the thing that pulled me in. But it was just too confusing.
01:03:22
Speaker
People were introduced to lemurs that maybe thought this was a story about exotic animal trade, and then you never hear about them again. and and it just didn't work as much as I loved that.
01:03:34
Speaker
And so I went to the next one. And to me, it was this this turning point in this story was his holiday jewelry showcase. Because he had been in New York, he moved to LA, everything seemed to be going swimmingly for all parties involved, according to the lawsuits.
01:03:52
Speaker
There was legit business transactions happening. Jadel, his company was growing. Everyone was happy. They were getting their money back. They were getting paid. This diamond jewelry showcase is supposed to be his kind of like big I've made it, you know, party. He had people from New York that he had done dealt with in prior years flying in to see how far he's come.
01:04:16
Speaker
All of the connections he'd made in Los Angeles. Kris Jenner is hosting this for him at one of Ellie's most premier hotels. uh, hotels and Then a month later, all of these lawsuits are filed saying, where is our money?
01:04:31
Speaker
It was really kind of the turning point in my mind where things went from good to bad and where everyone really went from trusting him and being happy with their business dealings to saying, what is going on here?
01:04:46
Speaker
And so I felt that that was a really good place to start, you know, right at the beginning of the end, essentially. Yeah, so much of the story is about and greed and fame.
01:04:57
Speaker
And that opening scene is just a wash in greed and fame. Yeah, it had all the had all the elements of what makes a story like this kind of compelling. It's, you know, ostentatious wealth in its most obvious components.
01:05:17
Speaker
It's reality TV show characters. It's... you know, my main character hosting and being kind of the, you know, I guess he was the co-host to Kris Jenner, but, you know, kind of, you know, making this all happen.
01:05:31
Speaker
And it was kind of the calm before the storm, you know, everyone was cheersing each other's success and that image of wealth and success and fame cracked pretty quickly.
01:05:47
Speaker
As you're setting down to to write and you've got all your materials, yeah what are the kind of ah rituals and routines that you like in place so you can get a good session down?
Writing Process and Advice
01:06:00
Speaker
You know, I don't really have a routine. i i wake up in the morning. i tell myself I'm going to work out. It's about 50-50. i make myself coffee.
01:06:11
Speaker
That's 100%. Then I sit down at my desk and I will myself to get to the next task ahead, you know? And it kind of depends on how excited I am about writing it. You know, i think this story was a lot of excitement.
01:06:27
Speaker
And so it was not hard to get down and really want to tell the next chapter. But I would be lying to you if I told you I was one of those reporters that has this like regimented routine.
01:06:38
Speaker
I have tried so hard to be one of those reporters with that routine. And I just I'm not, you know, sometimes mornings are my time and sometimes evenings I'm up until midnight writing. It just kind of depends on how i feel each day and kind of what part of the story I'm on.
01:06:54
Speaker
What part of any of this brings you the most dread? Oh, i don't know That's a good question.
01:07:05
Speaker
I'm deep in the fact check part of it right now. um So I would say, i would say, don't know dread is the right word, but I think, especially if as an investigative reporter, so much of the stories that you do are based off of proof.
01:07:21
Speaker
And so fact check is the most, the part that you dread the most, but you also are like need the most. So it's the hardest because you wait to the very end and now you have to really hope that the way you wrote it is right compared to the facts. And you have to almost remind yourself what they are and you have to go back and you are having people point them out and you have to tweak words. And and it's so hard as a writer because you off this is where you lose so many of the things that you like. you know You're
01:07:52
Speaker
You're tweaking words that you think are beautiful because you have to be really specific. And the lawyer is telling you, no yeah this is too leading. And you don't really know if he felt that way. You can't write it that way.
01:08:05
Speaker
But it's also the most important part because... you know, you want accuracy. You don't want to get sued. You want to make sure it's so fair. And i am so thankful for the fact checkers I've worked with. I am so thankful for the lawyers that I've worked with because they allow me to be excited when the story comes out to feel confident that it's bulletproof.
01:08:27
Speaker
So I both dread it, but I also could not live without it. So it's kind of this, you know, damned if you do damned if you don't scenario. yeah Yeah. Yeah. The um yeah what part of the the the process, be it the reporting or the writing or rewriting, energizes you the most? Like, where's the juice for you?
01:08:46
Speaker
I really love the digging. i really love documents. I really love finding data points. I really love I really love uncovering stuff that no one's had the time to look for. I don't want to say took the chance to because i it is really a luxury of time. That's what these freelance stories are. That's what these long dive stories are. you have the luxury to spend time on these stories and really look And then i really love you know talking to the people that I interview for the stories and getting to understand what makes them tick and how this happens and you know ah the timeline. i think that I wouldn't be able to write the stories anymore.
01:09:36
Speaker
And compellingly, if I didn't have those human interactions, you know, I could have written this story, probably, and i could have written a version of this story, go to qualify that with just legal documents, and it probably would have still been juicy.
01:09:52
Speaker
But I would have never been able to explain how this kept on happening, how these alleged victims kept getting taken advantage of why no one spoke up, why they trusted him, why they kept letting this happen over and over again. And it wasn't until I, you know, I spoke to some of them and, and really understood what their experience was personally, that it made sense to me. And I could write it from a humanistic perspective. And I didn't just write them off as, you know,
01:10:20
Speaker
people that were easily taken advantage of. You know, this was complicated as most things in life are. Sometimes people really want to see the best in individuals. And especially when it's a business deal that could benefit you, you definitely want to.
01:10:33
Speaker
i And, you know, I had really limited interaction with Jonah himself. I would have loved to have been able to have that kind of interaction with him too. And I did try.
01:10:45
Speaker
on multiple occasions, which I did outline in the story, but I reached out to him early and I, you know, we were supposed to meet in person and, you know, i constantly was straightforward with him about, you know, what I was doing. And I would have loved to have been able to understand him more too, in that sense, in terms of what, you know, what made him tick.
01:11:06
Speaker
But i was limited in that. And so I really tried to, you know, again, as a reporter, give him the benefit of the doubt, use his words that he had put on record, you know, accurately, and you know, try to understand him as best as I could from that.
01:11:25
Speaker
ah When you did run into him, ah just take us to that moment. This guy is ah he's kind of a hulking figure, and I imagine he can be pretty threatening or intimidating, perhaps. And I suspect so. It feels that way to me, the way he composed and comported himself.
01:11:43
Speaker
So yeah just take us to that moment when you finally you but you finally do get him in person, and kind of by happenstance. Yeah, I wasn't really sure what to expect because i had read so much about people's interactions with him, most of which were not good. And I knew that he, reading text messages that had been included in these lawsuits, I knew that he was really good at um deflecting. And i' had already gotten a bit of that in my interactions with him when I was trying to meet him in person and he kept changing the time and he kept changing the location and
01:12:17
Speaker
and kind of, you know, there was always a holiday coming up or something. And so I, first of all, wasn't sure I was ever going to meet him. I went to the Santa Monica courthouse, I think four separate occasions, hoping to meet him.
01:12:30
Speaker
And every time it was a Zoom call, so I never got the chance. But on that last time i did, and he was actually very forthcoming.
01:12:40
Speaker
You know, he remembered me, remembered, was willing to talk to me. His lawyer had no idea who I was, didn't want him to talk to me. He waved him off. You know, he was very much like, ah you know, nice to meet you. I've got a story for you.
01:12:55
Speaker
we got to set up a time to chat. Everything that you've been getting told is is wrong. Let me tell you the real story. And unfortunately that never happened.
01:13:06
Speaker
I would have been very interested to hear what he had to say, but it you know, it was, you know, it went from we'll talk later and then just never, it just never happens. That never set up a time.
01:13:16
Speaker
And then when I called him at the very end to try to set this up, you know, he never responded to my list of, I think it was more than 80 questions that I sent him specific questions to respond to.
01:13:29
Speaker
So it's very interesting because I think As a reporter, you have, you know, you you want to approach everyone as having a story to tell. And I still am very interested in hearing his side of the story. I just didn't get that chance.
01:13:44
Speaker
Did you get a sense in your limited interaction with him of maybe why he was people could trust him? Yes.
01:13:55
Speaker
I mean, he's very charismatic. He is warm. You know, he, I wrote this in the story, but he acted like we'd note and we knew each other. Like we were long lost friends or something. We'd be, you know, talking for forever when in reality, our you know, our communications had been mostly via text message and been very sulted and mostly just been me asking dates. I was kind of surprised by that, but I, it made sense that,
01:14:22
Speaker
based off of what people had told me about him. that that and i and it made sense because how else could someone like this make friends with all of these individuals? And so many people knew him. And you know his network is vast across multiple states.
01:14:38
Speaker
And you know i don't think that most people would do that with individuals they don't like. So I knew he had to be likable in some regard. So that part kind of that part made sense to me From a a writing perspective and an advice perspective, yeah know, what is some advice, um some of your favorite writing advice, and be it something that you've received from a cherished mentor or just something hard won through all your experience that ah that that rings true for you?
01:15:06
Speaker
I feel like this is not a unique answer, but it definitely really helped me when putting this story together. There's kind of two pieces of advice that editors have given me that really help when you're getting started on taking a big bite out of something like that, which is when in doubt, follow the timeline.
01:15:26
Speaker
just go from beginning to end. Like maybe you can switch it up at the beginning, which is what I did. i kind of went back in time a little bit, but like just follow the timeline. It's the easiest thing and everything else will fall in line and write in scenes.
01:15:40
Speaker
And so before I wrote this story, I actually kind of did, and just took a piece of paper and I just wrote what were like the five or six biggest scenes that I definitely wanted to blow out and put color to in this story.
01:15:52
Speaker
And like the diamond showcase was one of them. um Some of the men approaching Joan Anglanoff outside of his office was another one. You know, the, the match ah the Floyd Mayweather match with the Ethereum max and the, the ticket sales, that was, you know, a big instance that I definitely wanted to make sure I got in there.
01:16:13
Speaker
And so that kind of kept me going. So I knew, okay, I need some connective tissue to get here, but now I'm going to really blow those out and I'm going to, really, you know, utilize the text messages and stuff like that. i only sent this story to two people to read before my editors to get some feedback.
01:16:32
Speaker
And I sent one to a good friend of mine, Byron Tao, who's a reporter in DC. And he said to me, well, the good thing about this story is this is probably the hardest story you're ever going to write in your life.
01:16:44
Speaker
So if you can get this done. Yeah. You're good. Because it really is kind of an over a decade. It's this guy's time. It's it's what's been happening to this main character over and over again. And it's not just as a jeweler or, you know, as someone doing ticket sales or as someone with crypto, it's, it's as he's reinvented himself essentially through all these different gigs.
01:17:08
Speaker
And so I tried to go into that thinking about that, like, okay, if I can do this, I can do anything. Right. So I'm going to try to do this as, you know, as, as compellingly as possible. And i I want, you know, people to get to the end.
01:17:24
Speaker
Nice. And Miranda, the final question I always love asking people ah is to provide a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there. And it could just be anything you're excited about. A lot of people recommend books, but I often try to steer them towards something that ah might not be bookish. It could be brand of coffee, a pair of socks, fanny pack, whatever.
01:17:43
Speaker
and So what what would you recommend for the listeners? Okay. I am actually reading. I don't really cover tech that much, but I am very interested in what makes people tick and narratives and fraud.
01:17:57
Speaker
And I have a background in politics and I have been really enjoying, I've been listening to it as an audio book, but it is a book. Unfortunately, I'm sorry for you, but um I've been enjoying the book, Careless People a lot.
01:18:09
Speaker
which and is, yes, it is written about, it's a former Meta employee who did policy for them as Facebook was kind of going from being a tech company to being this world power that we now know and really talked about the inner workings of how it went from self-identifying as being just this kind of like engineer company to having this power to potentially sway elections.
01:18:34
Speaker
And I've found it riveting. So that's what I've been listening to in my car rides. Oh, fantastic. Well, Miranda, that's that's wonderful. And ah this story is just bonkers. way ah Just a moment ago when you brought up like the crypto and the boxing and the ticket thing, was like, oh, my God, like this story went there, too. Like I just this goes now this goes places and it's amazing. And you keep it all together.
01:18:55
Speaker
It masks for masterfully. So um just ah an amazing story. And i just thanks for carving out the time to talk some shop. This was awesome. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
01:19:11
Speaker
Yes.
Podcast Conclusion and Story Access
01:19:12
Speaker
Sweet. Oh, man. Thanks to Jonah, the Atavis Magazine, magazine.atavis.com. and Miranda for taking the time. Yes, be sure to go to magazine.atavis.com to read the story and consider snagging one of those spots at the Archer City Writing Workshops.
01:19:32
Speaker
It is time for me to go. Man, like I said, no parting shot. Sorry for those who listened this far. Stay wild, CNFers. And if can't do interviews, see ya.