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Episode 537: Pamela Colloff’s Now-or-Never Moment with ‘Catch the Devil’
565 Plays5 days ago
"I feel like before I have the confidence to write in the way that I want to write, where I really own the material, I have to spend so much time with people. I will say at the outset, once I walk someone through what it's going to involve after they say yes to talking to me, I'll say I'm going to be around a lot and you're going to get sick of me," says Pamela Colloff, author of Catch the Devil.
Today’s guest, I mean, wow, from the bottom of the diaphragm up, wow. It’s Pamela Colloff. You know her from her National Magazine Award winning work for Texas Monthly and ProPublica/The New York Times Magazine. She’s THE premier investigative reporter in the country and she’s now the author of Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast. It’s published by Knopf.
This book upends what you think a true crime story is about where the true villain isn’t a person at all. It chronicles, among others, Paul Skalnik, a jailhouse snitch, whose non-credible testimony places numerous men on death row, Jim Dailey, in particular, and Pamela takes us through this riveting narrative and punishing commentary on capital punishment and why Florida seems hellbent on being No. 1 in executions.
Here’s just a slice of what Pam is about: She is a two-time National Magazine Award winner, once for reporting and once for feature writing. Her work has been adapted for narrative and documentary films including Tower, which was short-listed in 2016 for an Oscar. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Magazine Writing, Best American Crime Reporting, and Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists. She joined ProPublica/The New York Times Magazine in 2017 after many years at Texas Monthly. Listen, I could go on. You get the gist.
In this episode, we talk about:
- What drew her to Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson
- Speaking with Tom Junod
- The Boys Club of longform writing
- Her start at Texas Monthly
- Being a journalism dork
- The elation and despair
- How every story is a Rubix cube
- The Skip Hollandsworth Method
- Owning the material
- Knowing when to quote and when not to
- Idea generation
- Writing is hard
- How magazine writing and book writing are different animals
- Why Catch the Devil is her now-or-never moment
- Beginnings are the worst
- Being more disciplined with a book vs. magazine writing
- Writing in this attention economy
Pair this episode with Ep. 255 with Maddy Crowell and Ep. 414 with John Rosengren, and many other Atavist true crimey pods, too many to mention here. I’d also chuck in Ep. 224 with Patrick Radden Keefe. He’ll be back on the show for the paperback run of London Calling.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Events Announcement
00:00:01
Speaker
Oh, hey, on August 1st at the Eugene Public Library, I'll be delivering my now world-famous unauthorized biography talk, 3 p.m. That's a Saturday, August 1st, the Eugene Public Library at 3 p.m.
00:00:15
Speaker
Oh, and hey, CNFers, how sad. Sometimes the best idea you can come up with is the thing you wish you had when you were starting out. That's what Pitch Club is at welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. I was such a frustrated freelancer, not knowing how to pitch, not getting any traction. So Pitch Club is that thing that 2010 me, and if we're all being honest, 2026 me, could have used and now can use. Pitches ranging from agent queries, feature stories, and off-the-cuff unhinged essay pitches, source pitches, book proposal overview annotations, you name it.
00:00:49
Speaker
So much more. Forever free. You read a little, you listen a little, And I think you're going to learn a lot. Sell more stories. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com.
00:01:02
Speaker
Every assignment at the beginning, I'm sure this is the one where I will be shown to be a failure that I don't know what I'm doing. Like this is the one that's going to break me.
00:01:18
Speaker
OACN F1. Now I understand. you have many things competing for your attention and your time and the fact that you take some of that valuable time and attention and spend it with this podcast is something I don't take for granted. Not one bit. Thanks for being here.
Creative Nonfiction Podcast Overview
00:01:36
Speaker
This is, of course, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, where I talk to the best in narrative journalism, memoir, essay, documentary film, sometimes, biography. and It's all about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Meara, PodMaxing.
00:01:50
Speaker
Today's guest, I mean, holy shit. I mean, holy shit. Did you see the title? You didn't just, like, willy-nilly download it, right? Did you see the title?
00:02:02
Speaker
From the bottom of my diaphragm up, wow.
Guest Introduction: Pamela Koloff
00:02:06
Speaker
It's Pamela Koloff. You know her from her national magazine award-winning work for Texas Monthly and ProPublica slash the New York Times Magazine. She's the premier investigative reporter in the country, though she'd scoff at that, but she is.
00:02:21
Speaker
And she's now the author of Catch the Devil, a true story of murder, deception, and injustice on the Gulf Coast. It's published by this little independent imprint called Knopf. I hope they're able to stick around, you know. Gotta fight for the little guy. This book upends what you think a true crime story is about.
00:02:39
Speaker
The true villain isn't a person at all. It chronicles, among others, Paul Skalnik, a jailhouse snitch who doesn't get stitches, who prosecutors leverage his non-credible testimony to place numerous men on death row, Jim Daley in particular. And Pamela takes us through this riveting narrative and punishing commentary on capital punishment and why Florida seems hell-bent on being number one in executions. Show notes to this episode and more at brendanomero.com, hey, hey, where you can find show notes and links to all 537, oh my gosh, episodes of this podcast, plus embed form so you can sign up for Pitch Club. Hello.
00:03:19
Speaker
and the werewolf newsletter, Rage Against the Algorithm. That one gets you a riff, four book recommendations, some news, and seven curated goodies. It literally goes up to 11. Make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder.
00:03:42
Speaker
These go to 11. That was cute, wasn't it? Pam wrote me one of the kindest emails after we had our conversation that was, especially coming from her, validating for the enterprise of the show. I have a tendency to think, and this is no mystery, the biggest piece of shit in the world. So I have since printed that email out and taped it into my journal for future reference.
00:04:04
Speaker
Tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock, I will no doubt feel my usual shitty self. Here's just a slice. of what Pam is about. She's a two-time, two-time National Magazine Award winner, once for reporting, once for feature writing. Her work has been adapted for narrative and documentary films, including Tower, which was shortlisted for, oh, I don't know, an Oscar in 2016. Her work has been anthologizing in Best American Magazine Writing, Best American Crime Reporting, and Next Wave, America's New Generation
Early Career and Mentorship
00:04:32
Speaker
of Great Literary Journalists. We kind pull on that thread a little bit.
00:04:35
Speaker
She joined ProPublica, signed to the New York Times Magazine in 2017 after many, many years at Texas Monthly where she got her, cut her teeth, if you will, in the 90s. So about 20 years at that magazine. Pretty crazy.
00:04:51
Speaker
Listen, I could go on, but you get the gist. In this episode, gosh, well well just listen to this list and tell me you're not going to listen through at least until the parting shot. Come on now.
00:05:04
Speaker
In this episode, we talk about what drew her to Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson. Speaking with Tom Junot. The Boys Club of Long Form Writing, Her Start at Texas Monthly, Being a Journalism Dork, The Elation and Despair, How Every Story is a Rubik's Cube, The Skip Hollingsworth Method, Owning the Material, Knowing When to Quote and When Not to, Idea Generation, Writing is Hard...
00:05:27
Speaker
How magazine writing and
Writing Challenges and Techniques
00:05:28
Speaker
book writing are different animals. Why Catch the Devil is her now or never moment. Beginnings are the worst. Being more disciplined with a book versus magazine writing. And writing in this attention economy and how it has affected the way she goes about writing her prose.
00:05:44
Speaker
That is a lot of juicy stuff. I think you're going to want a notebook for this one. I often recommend a notebook for a lot of these anyway. But you're going to want one for this one. Pair this episode with episode 255 with Maddie Kroll and episode 414 with John Rosengren. And actually, many of the other Atavis true crimey pods. Too many to mention, if I'm being honest. I'd also chuck in episode 224 with Patrick Ryden Keefe, who, of course, blurbed her book.
00:06:11
Speaker
ah He'll be back on the show eventually for the paperback run of London Calling. ah But hey, parting shot. Pretty cool, I think. It actually stems from something Pam and I talk about in this show. So a parting shot on pitch meetings.
00:06:24
Speaker
Only pitch meetings for freelancers. But for now, let's cue up the montage riff.
00:06:38
Speaker
It has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Pleasing, I guess, to a biographer than that they would be able to look in the coffin of their subject. You are the Dan Patrick of creative nonfiction. How about that? is This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:07:02
Speaker
I understand you wrote your undergraduate thesis on Tom Wolfe. so Oh my God, that is a a deep cut and really hard to find. I don't know how you knew that, but yes, that is true. And hopefully, I don't believe it's been digitized, thank God, because it's, I'm sure, extremely embarrassing. But yeah, t take me to ah what was it like studying Wolfe?
00:07:30
Speaker
for your undergraduate thesis. Sends you on a new journalism kind of path, doesn't it? what what ah What a great question. Oh my gosh, I haven't thought about that in so long. Yes, I wrote, I i did the honors program, honors English program at Brown, and we had to write a thesis for that. And I, you know,
Story Investigation Process
00:07:50
Speaker
this was the early 90s. was obsessed with new journalism and the new journalists and in particular,
00:07:59
Speaker
Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson and folks like that. And but i haven't thought about this in so long. It's so funny. My my writing couldn't be more different now than than those writers. So it's interesting to think yeah back. But I loved and loved the voiciness of that writing. i loved the risk taking of that writing. i loved everything about it.
00:08:25
Speaker
think I wrote about Hell's Angels, which is a book that Hunter S. Thompson wrote that people don't talk about very much, where I'm sure I'm getting this wrong. I'm remembering this from long ago, but I hope this is somewhat correct, that he, in the book, sort of explains that he doesn't know how to wrap up the book. And he deliberately, because of that, provokes this epic fight with the Hells Angels, like a physical fight with the Hells Angels so that he has a dramatic ending. i found that approach to writing to be so exciting and interesting. And I think it actually gets at something that I really worry is being lost right now, which is that writing was really fun to read.
00:09:11
Speaker
It was... fun and joyful and an adventure and, you know, like I said, took risks. And I feel like as we've, um over the past few years, sort of as men's magazines have
Generating Story Ideas
00:09:26
Speaker
died out and a lot of different venues in which you could be a little bit more voicey or experimental, as those venues have disappeared, long form writing has gotten more serious. And of course, like, I definitely write serious stuff. But i I miss, I miss that old work. Yeah. And speaking of someone who can push the boat out in terms of voiciness, and um that that degree of style, I remember reading an interview with like you and Tom Junot from like, 2013 or so. So there was someone who was maybe cut of that fabric who could really push the envelope and could scale back, but also scale up.
00:10:07
Speaker
To that extent, what what do you remember about that exchange that you had with Tom and and talking long form, gosh, now 13 years ago, which seems like an entirely different era altogether?
00:10:18
Speaker
Seems like such a different era. That was in Atlanta. And i I don't, it's funny, I don't remember the specifics of it, but i remember just being so in awe that I got to talk to Tom Junot. mean, he was just, and still is, just this sort of next level practitioner of this work. His new book was mind boggling. I'll get back to that in a second. But i I remember that trip to Atlanta because I believe it was for the city and regional magazine awards. And we were, so we went to dinner at some point that weekend. And I remember being at a, at this long table of writers in a restaurant.
00:11:06
Speaker
And i was the only woman at the table. it was like 20 people. And That's how magazine writing was for a long time. but By
Changes in Long-Form Journalism
00:11:18
Speaker
that point, things had gotten better, but that definitely was sort of the world that I entered in the 90s. And one of the things I so appreciated, remember talking, when I talked to Tom that weekend was, though he was of that world, though he had come up through that world, he, i don't know, he he just,
00:11:42
Speaker
we we had We spoke somehow as equals. I certainly did not feel like an equal to him. But he just, I don't know, he he can do things with words that I really, i still just remain in awe. His physical descriptions of people are so, like most recently in his book, his physical description of his father, you can smell him, you can taste him, you can hear him, you can you are, you're not just in the room with him, which is what we all try to do. You're like standing right next to him. i can feel him breathing. And
00:12:19
Speaker
To be able to do that with words is such a gift. I don't know anyone who writes descriptions like he does. Well, and to your point about you know being the one woman at a table of 20 other people, I mean, when you were anthologized in um Next Wave, and I love Mike Sager and Walt Harrington, but it's like there are 19 writers and like three of them were women. like you You included, and least you bat lead off in this in this collection, which is which is nice. But it gets to the idea of like...
00:12:47
Speaker
At least then and maybe maybe even still now, i don't I don't know the extent of the the breakdown, but it's just it seems like that long form magazine writing was ah hyper masculine and certainly geared towards that.
00:13:00
Speaker
i I think so. And i I think whenever I get too nostalgic about the old days, and I definitely do that too often, i really try to remember things like that, which were not great. And it extended beyond that. I mean, it was it was such the the atmosphere of the boys club sort of permeated everything back in the 90s. And I think one of the things that was interesting about doing this work when the people who had all done it before were all white men, everyone, was sort of allowing, giving myself permission to to do this work and to take big risks. And i was never, I've never been a voicey writer, but I've always liked experimenting with different ways to tell stories and to find different ways to connect with the reader.
00:13:57
Speaker
What do you think gave you that agency to
Pamela Koloff's Book: 'Catch the Devil'
00:14:00
Speaker
try to to enter that world? I mean, so much of it. And I was so fortunate in this, but I had the ridiculous good fortune to be hired as a staff writer at Texas Monthly when I was 25 years old and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. And I feel bad saying that because there just are not opportunities like that anymore. But it it was...
00:14:26
Speaker
In that era, you would just take a chance on someone who was doing work that you thought was interesting, even if they didn't have a lot of clips.
00:14:36
Speaker
i I had you know put together so a bunch of different writing. When I was in college, i I did independent studies. And through that, i would do I would produce about three long form type pieces per semester.
00:14:53
Speaker
There wasn't a class for this. There wasn't really even an outlet for it. I eventually found an alternative publication in Providence that would publish some of what I was writing. But Texas Monthly, it was like you know I suddenly had a front row seat to just some of the greatest writers of that time. So I don't know how many people would even remember Gary Cartwright, but he was the Hunter S. Thompson of Texas Monthly and just a really larger than life figure. Skip Hollinsworth really took me under his wing and was amazing.
00:15:30
Speaker
When I mentor doesn't really even capture what Skip was to me, you know, he would call every couple days and really just ask me what I was working on, brainstorm with me how to make it better. he did all of that with a lot of humor and just was so incredible. And I could go on and on Mimi Schwartz, Michael Hall, so many incredible people. And what we did, there was a cohort of us. We were all in our twenties who started off there around the same time. Katie Vine and John Spong and I and several other people. And we would periodically like ask Gary Cartwright out for drinks and we would bring old stories of his that we had annotated. like We would have gone through them like the journalism dorks that we were. like you know Not just underlining our favorite lines, but writing in the margins, you know like, how did he do this? and like How did he get this?
00:16:28
Speaker
And we would sit, we did this with Skip and others as well, but we would sit there and and just literally have him walk us through some of his greatest stories.
00:16:39
Speaker
And he was so flattered that like the 20-somethings were interested in what he had to say. And I don't know, I just always thought like, gosh, this is so much better than paying to get like a master's in journalism.
00:16:56
Speaker
i'm i have this PhD level um education I'm getting at this place. So I think um both seeking out mentors there and then again, at that time, we all sort of worked in this like bullpen kind of giant room.
00:17:16
Speaker
And so I could hear other reporters making their you know initial phone calls and I could hear how they would make you know get people to talk to them. i remember, you know I was still am, I get very, very nervous to call people for the first time to cold call them. And i remember having my calls critiqued, like I would leave some very meek message for someone like, hu I'm so sorry to bother you. you know i I'm with Texas Monthly. I hope you call me back. And I'd hang up as quickly as I could. And, you know, someone I worked with would say, you know, over the divider, like, yeah, I don't think they're going to call you back. Like, so there, there was this, um, some of it was like hazing. Right.
00:18:00
Speaker
But that, I don't know that atmosphere at that time was, was everything. It's how I learned so much. And I feel guilty saying that because I don't, I don't know for
Discussion on Florida's Execution Rate
00:18:12
Speaker
writers starting off right now what the equivalent of that is. i just know it's not all being siloed in our own homes on Zoom. Maybe it's like finding community in other ways. Well, I think someone like yourself speaking forthrightly about it on a podcast of this nature and probably several others. So people who are unfortunately kind of siloed in their own home offices instead of in newsrooms because we've so lost that.
00:18:40
Speaker
this is in a way ah we can make a distributed newsroom of sorts where people can maybe eavesdrop and say like, oh, okay, like Pam gets a little nervous with cold calling.
00:18:51
Speaker
I get terrified with cold calling. this is This is normal. And then we can ah you give kinship to to those kind of to to those people and then hopefully they can spread from there and maybe, you know, of course develop their skills, but also help others along the way.
00:19:07
Speaker
I literally have gotten that from this podcast because I think you always imagine, yeah i always think of the movie Adaptation. Okay. So Adaptation is about a screenwriter who can't write a screenplay. And in his imagination, when he pictures Susan Orlean, who's doing a different kind of writing, she's doing magazine writing. She's just sitting there looking beautiful and the words are flowing and She's, you know, tapping away. And I always thought that was such a hilarious irony of that movie that Charlie Kaufman didn't recognize that we all are in the agony that he's in, that we're all uncertain. that we never, we're always finding our way through the dark and that he, in picturing another writer, thought it was easy. And I feel like your show and and some other podcasts as well sort of um demystify some of that. Yeah, I think that that really helps. in the the Yeah, because it's nice to know that writers of national magazine awarding status and Pulitzer Prize winners and everything of that nature, like they're wrestling with doubt also. And the 2 a.m. voice that wakes them up every day telling them they're a piece of shit. And and in the face of that, they put together amazing work that is affecting change. And if not if not change, at least creating novelistically, verifiably true art that is like, oh, this is a meaning-making thing that can maybe stand the test of ah a time or at least maybe a generation at least.
00:20:47
Speaker
Yes. Well, i every assignment at the beginning, I'm sure this is the one where I will be shown to be a failure that I don't know what I'm doing. Like, this is the one that's going to break me.
00:20:59
Speaker
I mean, there's, there, there are the different stages, right? There's the elation after finding a great idea and then the despair that no one's going to talk to you. And then the elation when people talk to you, and then the despair that you have this amazing material, but you have no idea how to write it. You know, it's just this endless rollercoaster, but it's funny to have been doing this for so long and still have so much self-doubt and uncertainty. And I think Maybe it just goes with the territory.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. like What do you make of that? The more skilled you've become, the more experienced you've become, the more accomplished you've become. It's still really, really hard. It's really hard. Well, to go back to Gary Cartwright, I remember asking him about this after a particularly tough close on a story. This was...
00:21:45
Speaker
I don't know, late 90s, early 2000s. And i was really struggling just because it felt like every story took so much out of me. still feels that way, quite honestly.
00:21:57
Speaker
And I sought him out. I said something like, gosh, this is so hard. Does it get easier? and he just laughed. And he said, when it gets easier, it's time to hang it up.
00:22:11
Speaker
And i that's not let me Let me take a step back from that and say that's not to say that we shouldn't all try to find ways to do this work in a healthy way, to exercise, to see friends, you know to um to have more balance. But I think what he was saying is like when this work gets boring, when you feel like you really know what you're doing, that it's you're you're not finding your way in the dark anymore, then maybe you should move on to something else. And I i loved that. and And it also gave me an appreciation, i think about this a lot now, that I feel so lucky at this point in my career to be doing work that is endlessly challenging. Like it it is every story is a new, you know, Rubik's cube
00:23:05
Speaker
and to try to figure out. And that's, we're we're so lucky to do that kind of work. Yeah. And I'm glad you brought up Skip Hollingsworth earlier. And in the, this story that I had read, I believe it was from 2017, where you talk a little bit about him. There's something called the Skip Hollingsworth method.
00:23:26
Speaker
if If it's a method you still employ, what is that method? Okay, so I think what that might have been, referr well, there are several things that might have been referring to, but I think what it ah probably is referring to is he read a draft of a story of mine. i couldn't tell you which story.
00:23:43
Speaker
And his rewriting instruction was to take all the quotes out. And once I'd taken the quotes out to revise it, and then once I had revised it to decide what quotes to put back in.
00:24:00
Speaker
But he said, but you've got to do a draft where the only voice that's in there is yours first. And was such good advice because in that particular story, and I think this happens in stories where I'm having more difficulty, I was leaning really hard on quotes. And yeah what he was trying to say to me is, you have to figure out what the story is saying. You have to tell the story. And then...
00:24:28
Speaker
thoughtfully choose where you need someone else's voice and judiciously put that back in. Um, it might also have been referring to Skip's bimbo theory of interviewing. uh, that is so this would help if, if your audience knew Skip personally, but he, he is just ah the most like delightful effervescent personality you could ever encounter. And, ah Whereas my inclination is always to over-research everything before I arrive at the interview and to like show the person, i do this less now, but to show the person that I'm so knowledgeable and almost like I have to earn their respect.
00:25:18
Speaker
Skip would often do that without betraying that. And then he would show up to an interview and and be like, wow, so what's podcasting? Like, how do you do it? Like just the most broad um questions imaginable.
00:25:38
Speaker
And he got great material out of people just coming to them totally fresh. Now, it wasn't like he totally knew what he was doing. He'd done his homework and if he needed to follow up with something specific, he could.
00:25:51
Speaker
But I think there's something to that of just... ah i as i As I do this more, while I still do the same level of preparation, i am really working on coming in and trying to leave a lot of space for the person I'm interviewing instead of showing them how much work I've done.
00:26:17
Speaker
yeah Yeah, exactly. Because if you come out at at to knowledge, but it's like, well, why am I even here to talk about it? You already know it all. yeah um So yeah, you the whole idea of doing narrative journalism and you narrative book length journalism is like you need to get them talking and get into their headspace in a... Yeah, it does help to have that baseball card knowledge and maybe even a little bit more about them. But yeah, the whole idea is to is to get them talking or in the podcast sphere or ah an interview show of any nature. The idea is to get the other person talking. It's not about the host. it's not about the reporters. It's about them. And to that point.
00:26:56
Speaker
So i will make my crazy list of questions, which is, you know, usually absurdly detailed and many pages long. And I'll spend a lot of time working on that. and But I put it away when I get to the interview. So i I usually start off without any of that in front of me. And of course, the work that went into it is then informing the conversation.
00:27:23
Speaker
But I just try to have as normal of a conversation as possible for as long as I possibly can. And it's not until there's sort of like, OK, okay you know, now we're going to shift gears and I'm going to try to remember all the things I haven't asked that person that I pull out my notes. And I, i instead of like, i used to do, I used to be like embarrassed about looking at my notes. And now after I've had the conversation with them, I'll be like, you know what?
00:27:50
Speaker
um I'm just going to look at my notes that I prepared before I came here to make sure I've covered everything. And then I have them out very visibly in front of me. I don't know why i used to be so self-conscious about that. Like I had to furtively look at, anyway.
00:28:06
Speaker
you know yeah It could be that I, you know, like we're over here, I have a monitor with, you know notes and stuff from stories and quotes that I've curated that we may or may not get to over the course of our conversation. i have like a notebook down here too. And I'm i'm self-conscious in that you you can see me. And so like if I'm peeking over here or looking down, it might look like I'm not paying attention to you. So I'm sure you understand this because, you know, you'll you'll be looking down at notes. But it might be that degree of self-consciousness that if we're not engaging in eye contact or looking down that we've checked out and that the other person is going to feel like, oh, I'm boring them.
Storytelling for Change
00:28:40
Speaker
Totally. That's totally, that's, that's absolutely it. And I feel like when you ask people, you know, a lot of times I'm interviewing people about the most difficult thing they've ever been through in their lives. Right. yeah And so just creating the space for that and having the, the room for that and having them feel comfortable with me.
00:29:04
Speaker
um There's so much work that goes into making people feel comfortable, establishing trust, establishing like rules and guidelines and all that.
00:29:15
Speaker
Well, I love when you brought up you know Skip's thing of removing the quotes and then having the confidence to have authority with the material and then cherry picking the right ones. And um Matthew Wolf's brilliant new book, Fires in the Night, about the Earth Liberation Front that just came out. He does that masterly. There's almost no quotes in it, but it's one of the most deeply reported and researched books I've ever read.
00:29:37
Speaker
You know, we had a conversation about that. And um I love that idea because I tend to outsource material to the sources like i you know we want to hear them. um You don't want to hear me. right um But the fact of the matter is you need to take agency and shape it in your own voice. i just would love for you to run with that a little longer about like trying to develop and forge that confidence to, yes, take your reporting, put it into your own words, and then use the best zingers to really drive a point home.
00:30:09
Speaker
Absolutely. So I feel like before I have the confidence to write in in in the way that I want to write, where I really like own the material, yeah i have to spend so much time
Reflections on Pitch Meetings
00:30:21
Speaker
with people.
00:30:22
Speaker
So so i I will say at the outset, you know, once I sort of walk someone through what it's what it's going to involve after they say yes to talking to me, you know, I'll say something like, I'm going to be around a lot and you're going to get sick of me at some point. And it's not...
00:30:44
Speaker
that, that, that length of time I'm spending with people. um and and to be clear, it's not always in person. Like I just finished a story where a lot of it was done by phone and zoom and text, but I was in constant communication with my sources for about six weeks, like just throughout the day, every day in various ways. So But it's spending, for me, it's like spending enough time with people that I feel like I have the right to describe what I'm describing in a story and to tell their story, sometimes in a somewhat omniscient way.
00:31:29
Speaker
And that their voice comes in when they say something that's either unique in the way that they phrased it or is really just like kind of makes you like suck in your breath. Like, wow, what a quote. And other than those two things, I don't quote a lot. um There have been a few pieces, not since my Texas Monthly days, but where I would have long block quotes from someone. And sometimes
00:32:02
Speaker
i it's been a really long time since I've done that. But just to give you a quick example, I wrote a story about this town called Roby, Texas, where 43 people won the lottery, won this like outrageously large jackpot together, and then how that sort of destroyed the town. And the second section was entirely one quote from the main character of my story talking about the day they won. Like,
00:32:31
Speaker
walking walking through how it happened that they realized they had won. and that was because the way that he told it, there was nothing I could write in my own words that would ever approach the way this man with his West Texas, very particular small town, West Texas way of speaking told that story. So sometimes you can really steer into voice, but that's more unusual for me to do. you bringing up that that particular story, and then of course there's your book, and then there's any other number of long stories that you've written, and then there are also false starts and stuff of stories that don't get off the ground.
00:33:09
Speaker
you Coming up with ideas is paramount to, ideas are your currency, and I think some people don't and so don't realize that sometimes some they don't get off the ground. Sometimes it is a numbers game, and then knowing when to rip the cord and move on is a skill unto itself. um But just just for you, how is um you know how do you generate the story ideas that you know the that ah that that you're able to hopefully run with, be it for the ProPublica, New York Times, or even in a book? Sure. So when I started at Texas Monthly at 25, again, having no idea what I was doing, we we had a monthly staff meeting where everyone who worked the magazine came. And before the meeting, each writer had to submit five questions.
00:33:57
Speaker
fully developed story ideas. So not just like, it would be cool if we wrote about this,
Conclusion and Recommendations
00:34:02
Speaker
but you had made some calls or you had done some real research and you had fleshed out. So it was two things. It was coming up with five ideas that were viable ideas. So really you have to come up like 20 ideas to get down to five. And then you had to flesh them out and you had to write them up and they were put in a packet that was distributed to everyone.
00:34:27
Speaker
And then you would get called on, you know, whatever editor in chief thought was a good idea on your page, you would get called on to talk about. So this is what I mean about being in this like accidental PhD program there.
00:34:42
Speaker
There were so many things about that that built these great muscles, right? So to pull that off every month you know, every second of the day you're looking for story ideas. There's nothing that is not fodder. There is no conversation that is not something that might lead to a story idea.
00:35:02
Speaker
i felt like it made me, i mean, I was already a curious person, but just, you know, made me talk to anyone and everyone and ask them more about their lives. So that was really good training.
00:35:14
Speaker
i think now there's so many different ways in which stories come to me And I mean, going back to what you said, it really is everything. Like, you can be good at all the other parts of this job, but if you can't come up with, if you if you can't consistently come up with strong story ideas, you can't do this. So it, but it's a muscle.
00:35:37
Speaker
That was my point in talking about those meetings and what was asked of us. I would be in a panic every month starting off doing this. Maybe I'd have one idea or things that were kind half-baked whatever. And it's an exercise and it's a ah a muscle you build over time. So now a lot of times it's um checking in with different people who I know are fascinated with the same strange things that I am in the criminal justice world. There are a few academics I'm always in conversation with. There are practicing attorneys I'm talking to. i correspond with a lot of prisoners ah just because I keep in touch with people I've written about.
00:36:26
Speaker
I read voraciously. and just There's no one I encounter in life who I think might not give me a great story. so Oh, and then there there's an extensive series of Google alerts on various people and themes and ideas that I'm interested in And i have now manifested two different people I had Google alerts on have contacted me in the past year.
00:36:54
Speaker
of course not knowing I had Google alerts on them and I thought, okay, this is good. I've like to somehow manifested this, but I think you just, it's relentless, right? It's like, you're always looking for things. And, and there's always that feeling with, with other writers.
00:37:10
Speaker
There's a pretty small cohort of us who write about criminal justice of being like, seeing a story of theirs and thinking like, damn it, I wish I'd thought of that first. That's so good.
00:37:20
Speaker
ah ah ah To that point, like when you were in the bullpen with younger writers and then, yeah, this cohort of doing writing about criminal justice stuff, capital punishment or whatever, and you're like, ah, damn. Or even like a David Grant's Trial by Fire, a story that's very inspirational for you. like That's kind of that encroached kind of in your turf in a way. And and then you know for those of us who are of weaker mind, raise his hand right here. It can be like, oh, I'm like, that that motherfucker. like i'm like, Super jealous or like really competitive. Oh, never have moments like that. I'm very high-minded.
00:37:57
Speaker
But yeah, that how have you maybe metabolized maybe competition or maybe even those little pangs of envy to, i don't know, just like, all right, I'm going to keep my eyes on my own paper, so to speak.
00:38:08
Speaker
I think, well, sadly, i mean, as this industry has been whittled down, you know, and now it feels like so few people are are doing this. That honestly, I don't mean I don't have my petty moments. I so most certainly do. But it just feels like anyone who's pulling this off right now, it's a triumph, right? Like like the rising tide lifts all boats. Like, thank God other people are doing immersive, long narratives. In the case of the Cameron Todd Willingham story, i had been working on that story and gotten pulled off of it to work on like a lifestyle piece at Texas Monthly and came back, this was in 2009, I believe, and came back to that story
00:39:02
Speaker
And sorry, I should explain Cameron Todd Willingham was executed by the state of Texas in 2004 for crimes that he, I believe, many people believe he did not commit.
00:39:16
Speaker
And anyway, i came back to the story and I called his mother in Oklahoma and i was like, okay, I'm finally, you know, sorry for the delay. I'm finally back on this. it had been a while, like,
00:39:27
Speaker
can't remember exactly how long. And I remember she said something like, you know, you know, just the nicest reporter came through here. I don't know if you know each other. He's from New York and his name is David Grand. And like, I cannot explain the physical sensation that...
00:39:49
Speaker
that I had in my body at that point. And to be clear, I was very not far down the road with that story. Like that would have been truly devastating if I'd been two thirds of the way and I was like in the earliest stages of that reporting. And then spent however many months just like every morning searching to see if his story had run and obviously not doing the story. And then I i have this like very visual memory of sitting and reading his story when it came out and just
00:40:25
Speaker
being like, oh my God, this is like maybe the best magazine story ever written. And thank God, like he was the person to do it. You know what i mean? Like there was so much I learned. I've written a lot about that piece, but there was so much I learned from watching him do it. So um yes, there are totally moments of jealousy. For me, it's more like gosh, I wish I could, you know, like, I wish I could write physical descriptions like Tom Junot. I'm terrible at physical descriptions. Like, I really, really struggle.
00:40:58
Speaker
I'll be like... he had hair and brown eyes. so frily but I can do landscapes, but not people for some reason. So anyway.
00:41:09
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Well, that's, yeah, that's a great way of, ah you know, of phrasing it ah as well. um But you've written so many like really, you know, memorable, long, long magazine pieces.
00:41:23
Speaker
When did you know that Catch the Devil would be you know for like magazine versus, okay, this is my foray into writing a full-on book? so I think I was always really scared to write a book. you know i ah Writing is hard. ah Writing magazine stories is hard. and It just seemed like the what I knew a book would involve was so Herculean, that it it was very intimidating. And there were so many people who like gave bad advice in describing what book writing was. i remember one person said, just think of it like 10 magazine stories, which is very much not what it is. Like, right um I'll answer your question in a second, but just to address that,
00:42:14
Speaker
One of the shocking things when you've been a magazine writer for decades and then you try to do a book they're totally different animals. Like pacing alone, character development, sustaining a ah a story arc over 80 or 90 or 100,000 words is just whole other thing. and We can talk about that more later. But going back to your question, I spent a year researching this story and wrote a magazine article for the New York Times Magazine and ProPublica.
00:42:51
Speaker
and it felt like I had just barely scratched the surface of the piece. And i hadn't felt that necessarily before when I had written these epic, the innocent man is 26,000 words. i think blood will tell is 21,000 words. um I felt like I had done what I wanted to do with those pieces.
00:43:16
Speaker
So this felt different. And I also, you know, Shortly before before all, ah like while I was working on the story, John Grisham of all people wrote a ah novel that was based on, and he he gave ample credit in the book, but like in the end of the book, he explained that it had been inspired by a story I had written.
00:43:43
Speaker
And the book was very, very different than the story. But I remember when that happened thinking like, well, why am i not doing this? like Why am I not taking my stories and expanding them in this way? so And and it also at that point in my career kind of felt like it's now or never.
00:44:03
Speaker
There was so much happening in the events that I had written about in the article that was still happening. like When I wrote this article, a death warrant came down for the man on death row who was in this article.
00:44:21
Speaker
And when I published the story, he was on death watch. He had gotten a stay, but he was literally 30 feet away from the execution chamber at Florida State Prison.
00:44:35
Speaker
so It just felt like there's so much more here and I want to follow it wherever it goes. in your latest New York Times piece, and but also in Catch the Devil, that when these men are on Death Watch, or on maybe maybe it's more Death Row, and they they hear the guards stomping and the keys jingling, and they're wondering if it's going to be their cell to then be taken to Death Watch. like just that It is so just chilling to to hear that. and the to
00:45:08
Speaker
You really kind of... put us in their headspace of, oh, this has my death warrant been signed. And it's it's really, well, it's incredibly moving, but it's just like, it pulses with a kind of terror that you feel for them, you know no matter what they may have done when they were out of prison. It's like you you do feel for them in that moment, that terror. Thank you so much for saying that. Thank you for reading my most recent story, which was published an hour before the Supreme Court handed down all its end of the year rulings. And
00:45:40
Speaker
So you may you and my mother may be the only people who read that story. So thank you. ah well Even in that story, which kind of kind of piggybacks on stuff you write about in Catch the Devil as well, with that um with the priest at the heart of it who has been kind of tasked with being with these condemned men in their final days and hours and the toll that takes on him. um But yeah even for you reporting on the stuff you've reported on for the book and for all your other stories— Like, what is the toll that, you know, it takes on you and how do you gird yourself against that?
00:46:18
Speaker
So this is hard to describe because so much of what I write about is, I realize, dark and intense. But the people who I get to spend time with to tell these stories are people.
00:46:33
Speaker
by and large people who I feel like my life is a lot richer with them in it. And, you know, i always think about the perspective that I have as someone who spends a lot of time talking to people who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, the things that they long for or the things that they savor when they have the chance to get them or um I'm thinking in particular of one exoneree who I've spent a lot of time with, the way that they describe just the most ordinary things. So this exoneree, Anthony Graves, someone I wrote about earlier in my career,
00:47:15
Speaker
He had been on Texas's death row and and then was freed, but he talked about what it was like to go into a grocery store after you've been in solitary for years. And the all the colors and the textures and the smells and the the way light falls on different things. And I mean, the way he talked about going to the grocery store was like, how one of us might talk about going to the greatest, to see the greatest work of art we've ever seen. You know, the way these men talk about the food they long for or putting their feet in the grass, things like that.
00:47:57
Speaker
I feel like i have ah I'm lucky to have that perspective. Another thing is the potential for writing to change things. And There are you know there's some stories that I've written that made actual real things happen in the world, and that is the greatest feeling there is. And then there are other stories that haven't done that, but they have put a light on people who really needed that light on them, if that makes sense. you know it yeah It highlighted something that is either important to make readers think more deeply about, or maybe it focused on people who are working in the trenches of something and no one's paying attention, but it's so important what they're doing. And a moment ago, you said how you know this particular story as a magazine story asked more of you. It wanted to be bigger. ah So what was it about you that was like, oh, this is the one that I that I truly need? that What was it telling you that made you need to get this? This is this is the book one. So I've been looking for a jailhouse snitch story for a long time. And the reason for that is that, you know, whenever I would start reading about a case and try to decide whether it was the next thing I was going to write about, whenever a case had a snitch, it was always a big red flag.
00:49:22
Speaker
It was a sign that something was wrong with the case. Not necessarily that the defendant was innocent, but that something wasn't right. There wasn't enough evidence, or maybe there were more nuances to the case, or the punishment they were asking for was too extreme, extreme or what have you.
00:49:42
Speaker
And when I found this case, and we can talk about how I found it, but when I found this case, it it illustrated all the things that I wanted to say it had a really, really fascinating and complex and sometimes hilarious and sometimes mendacious character at its center.
00:50:09
Speaker
who could through our own interest in con man narratives and just interesting characters sort of carry us through all the inner workings of the criminal justice system. Like if I write a story or a book that pontificates about how bad jailhouse informants are, it it's not gonna move anyone, no one's gonna care. But if I write a book that's about a really over the top con artist who's been married to nine different women, uh, who's this charming bigamist, uh, sort of a, i always think of him as this sort of like 1970s Jack Nicholson type of guy who, you, you know, he's up to something bad, but you're not sure exactly what, but he's so charming. You're along for the ride. Like If I can use a character like that to unpack all these things I am interested in about why the criminal justice system is broken, that's a great way to tell a story.
00:51:10
Speaker
How did you find the story? Sure. In 2018, I published a story called Blood Will Tell that was about a small town murder case and junk forensic science.
00:51:24
Speaker
And it was published in two parts in the Times Magazine and ProPublica. And i got this avalanche of mail afterward with people who wanted me to write about particular cases. And this happens a lot.
00:51:39
Speaker
and It's really hard to sift through all these cases because there are all sorts of terrible things you're reading about and everyone portrays themselves as innocent and so on and so forth. But there was one email that really stood out. It was from a woman named Laura Fernandez, who's at Yale Law School. And of course, her credential got my attention, but she wrote to me and said that she represented a man on Florida's death row named Jim Daley. and that she had been so concerned that his case was a miscarriage of justice, that she had reactivated her law license after many years of not practicing so that she could represent him.
00:52:21
Speaker
And I'd never in all my years of doing this seen seen that. So that intrigued me, but sadly, i don't think that would have been enough had it not been for this sort of throwaway line at the end of her email in which she said that there had been a witness or the star witness against her client, who was a former police officer turned jailhouse informant who had testified against him. And i can't remember if in that email she said that he was this veteran con artist or not. That certainly would have intrigued me. But it was finally that like needle in the haystack, like okay, maybe this is the story I've been looking for. This is the case where I can really, really tell about the damage of a jailhouse informant. And it's an interesting enough character that you're going to want to be along for the ride. Yeah, you wrote this about Paul Skolnick. Yeah, my relationship with Skolnick had begun with a con. When I first met him in federal prison, he sized me up instantly. He saw my hunger for a story no other journalist had. Not just any story, but a story that mattered. A story with real life and death consequences. So he gave me exactly what I wanted. He promised he would reveal everything, and in the end, of course, he delivered nothing. Yeah. That's exactly right. So I start the book with my first meeting with him where he tricks me, which I thought was important because I i think it's easy with any story about a con artist to think like, oh, these idiots, like I would never fall for this. right And so I start the book where I i go to see this man, Paul Skalnik, in federal prison. This is in the fall of 2018.
00:54:09
Speaker
And at that point, I know that he has helped prosecutors send upwards of 40 people to prison over the years, a number of them to Florida's death row, based on lies that he has told on the stand about having heard these men's quote unquote confessions.
00:54:32
Speaker
And i knew that he had been in and out of jails and prisons for 30 years. So i knew exactly who he was. And I went to try to get him to go to come on board with me for a story that, you know, rather than me piecing together what he had done, that he would walk people through it and we would have things from his perspective. And at that point he was old and sick and sitting in federal prison. And I thought he might actually be willing to do this. And
00:55:03
Speaker
So ah what I describe in there is just that he immediately sized me up. And this is what he did with everyone. you know what's the What's the thing this person wants?
00:55:15
Speaker
And then he would give them that thing. So for me, it was, I really want this story. And so, you know, he, he strung me along and said, you know, I, I think the story really needs to be told. i think you're the person to tell it. I want to help you tell it.
00:55:33
Speaker
Talk to the warden, come back here as much as you can write to me in between and I'll help you tell this story. And I was elated and called my editor and I was so excited that I'd gotten this story.
00:55:47
Speaker
And of course he As I say there, he gave me nothing. There was months of um wishy-washy communication where he hadn't received the letters or something going on in the prison mailroom and and he wasn't feeling well.
00:56:02
Speaker
And I realized, okay, he's not going to give me anything. So my job here And that's really what kicks off the book is i have to go, like my revenge is finding out everything that he didn't want to tell me. Not revenge, but well, i maybe so actually.
00:56:20
Speaker
yeah I think what's really kind of cool about the book and maybe ah somewhat of a sleight of hand that you perform is that you open the book really with you know an opening chapter on Skalnik. And so we think that, okay, we're going to be with him maybe the whole time.
00:56:36
Speaker
But then it it quickly becomes about you know Jim Daly more or less, and we're like more or less following him and his trials throughout. And then Skalnik, of course, pops up.
00:56:48
Speaker
But it's it's almost Jim's story, but he's not the one you feed us first. Yeah, so that was ah probably, that took so much time trying to figure that out. So my brilliant editor, Hilary Redman, and I tried so many different configurations of this.
00:57:08
Speaker
And in the end, it was just so clear that Skelnick was the way into the story. And at the same time that he's so amoral and he's so, he he does so many bad things that you wouldn't want it stay with him for the entirety of a book, that you want you you want to also be with characters who whose whose interior lives you can describe and who have heart. And so a lot of my reporting and then writing became both about Jim Daly, this man on Florida's death row, who's there because, ah in part because of Skalnik's word, and then also the women and girls that Skalnik left behind and the sort of collateral damage that comes about when prosecutors' offices
00:58:02
Speaker
trade bad information that he was peddling for freedom. They would let him out in exchange for testimony in these cases, and then he would go out and cause more damage.
00:58:15
Speaker
Yeah, they're ah oh in the next wave, like in this author's ah sort of afterward to a story, you know you you're right, that often the first thing I figure out about a story is how to end it. And then I try to figure out how to get the end to the end as efficiently as possible. And figuring out a story's first section can unhinge me, but endings are pretty intuitive. um So hearing you just work through the permutations of the beginning, i i sense that even here, whenever this book came out what have close to 15 years ago, like getting into a story is still it's still like the struggle. how are we going to what is this going What expectations is this going to set
00:58:53
Speaker
Absolutely. And it's so funny to hear you read that now because this book, more than anything I've ever worked on was the book I didn't know how it was going to end. I mean, you know, Jim is still on. Jim, at one point in the writing of this, had an execution date and was within 10 days of that execution date and could at any moment, at any time, receive another execution date. So one of the things that was the challenge in writing this book was I didn't necessarily know what we were moving toward. Was was this ending with jim with Jim's death or or not? um But beginnings, oh my God, beginnings are the worst.
00:59:42
Speaker
They're just the worst. And I think ah My favorite writing is always like after, like both as a reader and a writer is after you get after over that hump. Like there's so much like wind up and you have to set so many things up and you're um finding your, the tone, the writing style. There's so many different things you have to establish in those first couple paragraphs. yeah And it's, for me, it's, it's more when it gets,
01:00:12
Speaker
going and you've established the characters that you can really have fun with things. And also ah what struck me about the book too, and some of the world building of it is being in the 1980s, Florida and the, the newspaper culture and how crime was covered and specifically how like the young girl who was murdered, how she was characterized in the newspapers too. So just what struck you about that and how she was, and I'm blanking on her name and you'll know it, but um about how, know, she was characterized as, you know, part of the, you know part of the,
01:00:47
Speaker
part of the building of the story. Yeah. Shelly Boggio. Yes. I'm so glad you picked up on that. There's so much in there. I mean, I was a teenage girl in this era of the eighties and I remember I wasn't in Florida, but I, there was so much in revisiting that time that was so shocking about the way that um girls were seen both by the media, by law enforcement. So Shelly was 14 years old when she was murdered um this is the case that Jim Daley
01:01:19
Speaker
was sentenced to death in, and there's another defendant serving a life sentence in this case who has repeatedly confessed the crime and then recanted. But she was basically written about in the local paper as a bad girl. you know She didn't go to school all the time. She was out late at night, and you know look look what happens when you're a girl like that. I think the thing that shocked me more than that is there's 12-year-old girl in the book, this girl, Karen Parker, and she encounters Paul Skalnik and she is a very precocious girl and she is fascinated and eventually infatuated with him. And he takes advantage of that and, and preys upon her.
01:02:08
Speaker
And she later goes to police and explains that he molested her. And when she does this, ah again, she's 12 years old. She is hooked up to a polygraph.
01:02:22
Speaker
She's given a polygraph exam ah by a male officer. Family's not with her. Paul Skelnick, the man who testifies against dozens of different men, is never given a polygraph exam. And while I don't believe that polygraph exams are accurate in any way, at the time, people believed they really determined whether someone was speaking the truth or not.
01:02:48
Speaker
And I just thought that double standard was so fascinating. Well, and the cost of what happened to Karen, too. I think even her father or parents, were like they didn't believe her. And then yeah she ran away that year when she was 13, left home for good when she was 14, taking refuge at a runaway shelter. And here you drop in a quote, and this what goes back to our earlier conversations. Like, I didn't trust anyone for a long, long time. And even just that, you you hear the...
01:03:16
Speaker
just the the cost of this isolated traumatic incident and how it can just reverberate for a lifetime. Yes. I'm so glad that you noticed that because I had told that whole passage in an omniscient voice And i I went to Hillary, my editor, and I was like, I've got to have this quote in here. Am I allowed to do that? What are the rules? She was like, yes, you're allowed to do that. It's not like you sign a contract saying I'm only, anyway. But it it it is different in magazine writing.
01:03:49
Speaker
It's um much, you use quotes differently than you do in books. So that was something I had to learn. ah But you brought up pacing earlier, and you know it's different from magazine stories, obviously, as it is for a book. And the pacing, i mean, it it becomes a riveting, especially when when Jim's death certificate is signed and you're like, okay, the clock is now ticking. and resetting and resetting and then, and so forth. So just what was the the challenge for you to, to, ah to make sure that the pacing was satisfactory, you know, in book form, which is a, yeah, an altogether different muscle.
01:04:27
Speaker
It really is. So ah to give you a sense of how the pacing was a challenge, whenever i would arrive at something in the book narrative that maybe I had covered a tiny bit of in the magazine story. I did this so many times. I would think, oh, today's going to be an easy day because you know I can just take... And I did this so many times. I would i would ah you know copy the piece from the magazine, like the paragraph I was thinking of, and I would plunk it into the book manuscript.
01:05:02
Speaker
And every single time I would have to cut it because they had totally different DNA. They didn't match in any way. And so the pacing of a book, you know, you, you are asking so much of a reader.
01:05:17
Speaker
I think I hand handed in a hundred thousand words and it runs at about 80. Hillary really wanted to make it taught, you know, as, as taught as possible. But um I think that you're asking so much of readers that my my impression going into book writing was, oh, this is going to be so fun. I can go down all those rabbit trails and explore all those things you never get to do when you're on a magazine deadline.
01:05:47
Speaker
And I found actually the opposite. It was like i had to be more disciplined in a book because i can't lose you because I'm asking you to go such a farther distance with me, right?
01:06:01
Speaker
um So how do you keep that pace? How do you both like breathe air into the narrative in a way that you don't in a magazine piece?
01:06:12
Speaker
And at the same time, how do you keep that that pace so that people don't turn the page? and I always think with magazine writing, um you know most people who are reading the New York Times Magazine now are reading it on their phone. And so i always think about the fact that my words are competing with a reader's texts and notifications and alerts and calls and whatever else they were doing on their phone before.
01:06:42
Speaker
And I have to write in such a way that I'm making them swipe those things away and stay with the narrative. And that is always so challenging. Not saying I always succeed in doing that, but that's what I'm trying to do. And it was the same with the book, even though it was in longer form.
01:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah it's crazy how yeah the attention economy as such as it is, has it's brutal, fundamentally corrupted our capacity to sit with something longer. And that you the fact that you even have to think about making people like, oh is this worthy of swiping away this Instagram notification? Or am I going to go into the app and like maybe forget about this great story from Pam that I was reading and and then lose yourself for 20 minutes on Instagram? It's like it that's what we're competing with now. It makes me really sad and it definitely has changed certain things about how I write. I don't don't do long landscape descriptions anymore. I don't do long wind-ups. I don't do meditative. They're they're definitely, I write shorter paragraphs than I used to. And and at the same time that that,
01:07:46
Speaker
It is sad to recognize that things have changed so much. I think anyone who pretends they haven't does so at their peril. I mean, this is the world we live in I've seen my own reading habits change dramatically.
01:08:00
Speaker
We have to respond to that in some way, you know. I think we we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about, especially with your um with Catch of the Devil, but also in your recent piece for the New York Times, was about how Florida has just been accelerating the pace with which um signing death death certificates and Ron DeSantis doing that. and like far exceeding the rest of the the country. um So just like just take us to that and yeah what's happening there and and how that makes the Jim Daley's case all the more grim, really.
01:08:34
Speaker
So the most recent piece I did for the Times Magazine and ProPublica grew out of some of my book reporting that there's a little bit of it in the book, but the book is really just narrative. So last year ah and this year, no excuse me, let me rephrase that. This year, Florida has executed more men than all other states combined. Last year, Florida executed 40% of the people who were put to death in the United States. So these are just like astonishing numbers. And I didn't see people talking about it. I mean, outside of the tiny little world of people like me who care about this stuff, I didn't see people talking about it. And I wanted to understand why. And the the story became, because I couldn't answer the why, because public records laws surrounding this make the decision process so opaque, and Governor DeSantis, who sets these dates, really has said very little on the subject.
01:09:38
Speaker
I ended up writing this story about what the impact is on the ground, on the real people who have to carry out these orders. so I'm always interested and you know we we change laws and make legislation at this very high level in state legislatures or in Congress, but then they're real people who have to carry these things out. And so in Florida, i focused on a priest who was walking men literally through the last days of their lives, through a former death row warden, and through others whose lives have been really changed by this pace of executions.
01:10:20
Speaker
m Yeah. and and all the And all the more you know tragic is that someone like Skalnik, who is in informing on someone like Jim Daly, just making up a story and the prosecution runs with it. And it puts him with the story. He shouldn't even be behind bars. It's not a matter of he did something, but he shouldn't be on death row.
01:10:42
Speaker
What I would say about that is the the book is about different kinds of storytelling, right? Like there are the stories that Paul Skalnik tells that are too good to be true, literally, but they're useful to prosecutors who need a conviction or who want a death sentence. Um, third there, there are the stories that, um, Jim Daly tells that his co-defendants tell, it was interesting to me who was believed and who wasn't. And
01:11:18
Speaker
how the the criminal justice system, once it has accepted a narrative as fact, once jurors have heard live testimony, once a verdict has been handed down, there's almost no turning back. It's so difficult to sort of unring that bell. And where that intersects with this accelerated rate of executions happening right now in Florida is Florida has, they have,
01:11:48
Speaker
30 death row exonerees in Florida, the the highest number of exonerees of any state in the nation. So we know that mistakes are happening. We know it's possible to get this wrong. And so when when you're working on this accelerated pace with that knowledge, that's pretty terrifying.
01:12:06
Speaker
Yeah, and which like builds to this crescendo where you write, like but my revulsion at that moment was not reserved for Skalnik, who had known he would be rewarded all those years ago for telling just the right story. It was the entire apparatus that enabled and encouraged him, for the detectives who incentivized him, for the prosecutors who represented him as a truth teller, for the trial judge who allowed jurors to hear Skalnik's testimony, for the appellate judges who rubber stamped it all, paving the way for the governor to one day sign a death warrant. And that right there kind of just, it is a something of a crescendo. Well, thank you. You're making me so happy that you, um that was a part I worked on a lot because I wanted people to understand that Paul Skalnik is not the villain of this book. He does a lot of villainous things, But our frustration, are maybe even anger, really shouldn't lie with him. it should lie with a system that emboldens and empowers someone like him and that loses sight in the end. I mean, the the reason
01:13:12
Speaker
that Paul Skalnik is deployed in these cases is because in you know prosecutors are seeking um justice in their minds for victims' families and and to, and in Shelley's case, you know make someone pay a price for what was done to her.
01:13:34
Speaker
And in doing so, in so many of these cases, you can see that um sometimes prosecutors can lose sight what happens in the process. When you rely on someone like Skalnik, the damage to the whole system, the degradation to everything around it is profound.
01:13:54
Speaker
I can't believe he survived in prison with the reputation he had so one of the reasons or the reason he survived in prison was he was so often put off by himself in you know some sort of cell where he was not in the mix in general population and this to me made his stories all the more incredible like everyone knew he was a jailhouse snitch and he's housed apart from other people but he makes up these stories about you know
01:14:28
Speaker
whenever he's taken out to the prison yard or he's walking past someone's cell that they just blurt out a confession. And I mean, there are parts of the story, like there there is some black humor in the book of just like, how is it possible that anyone believed this? But they did.
01:14:47
Speaker
And ah with that that paragraph I read earlier, you know your revulsion, like that to me is a very ah restrained but voicey paragraph. like that's That's where you can have voice without it being Wolfian or David Foster Wallace. yes you know That's where you are imparting a degree of style, but it is understated. Yes. I mean, to be clear, if I had any idea how to write like David Foster Wallace or Tom Wolf, I would totally write like that and be extremely voicey.
01:15:19
Speaker
um I feel like I can only get voicey after I've earned it. And in the book, the last quarter of it is in the first person. And I feel like by that point, hopefully, you know, I've, I've earned the right to do that. um But it also was the part of the book that I lived through the other parts I was excavating. And, you know, someone like Karen Parker, the 12 year old girl we talked about, you know, I had to go through so many different public records and her name was redacted and I had to figure out who she was from context clues and then track her down and convince her to talk to me and all these things that that was a different kind of work and ah a different kind of writer might have written the book entirely in the first person about that discovery.
01:16:06
Speaker
But I didn't want to be in the way until I could be sort of a vehicle for the storytelling that it needed. Yeah, that's a brilliant way of phrasing it, Pam. um Fantastic. Well, I need to be mindful of your time. i feel like I could totally, I'm sure a lot of people talk to you like this and they were like, I could talk to you for three hours, for four hours. It's your it's your skill, 100%. I feel, but no, I have to tell you, i will just say, i am so grateful for this conversation and I hope you don't have to record this part, but this was a particularly brutal deadline I just went through. I, it really helps to have had this conversation about craft and you're, you're like, it means so much to me that you went back and read all this stuff and asked such thoughtful questions. So thank you.
01:16:57
Speaker
Oh, of course, Pam. Well, the one thing I love asking as I close these conversations down is ah for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners. And that can just be like anything you're excited about. So what would you recommend for the listeners? So I just got a galley of Robert Kolker's new book. Oh shit, I've got that too over here. Yes. I'm so happy to have this. So um ah Bob, as he goes by, ah wrote this book, The Vanishing Family. And i literally, like, I'm so excited for the day on book tour when I get to just sit somewhere, like maybe in transit. to the next thing and read this. This will be my reward. But um for folks who don't know, Robert Kolker wrote Lost Girls and Hidden Valley Road to just, I mean, triumphs of narrative nonfiction. And he's the absolute master of ah telling a rich, immersive, character-driven with
01:18:02
Speaker
exhaustive reporting, but you don't feel that. You just feel the great storytelling. And the book is about ah family that has a genetic mutation um that where 50% of people will get this particular type of dementia that's very early onset. I think it starts in your 40s.
01:18:25
Speaker
And it begins with... um like behavior that's not appropriate, having affairs and things like that. It's not immediately obvious. I think I'm, parent I haven't jumped in yet, but that it's dementia and each person in the family knows they have a 50, 50 chance of getting this and they've lost half of their family to this bizarre and horrible disease. So um he just has this way. And I think because I'm also drawn to dark,
01:18:56
Speaker
subjects. He has this way of writing that I like to study where um he writes about things that are tough, but he does so in a way where you're just like, you're you're just gobbling up every word. It's so beautifully done. So I can't, I can't wait to read it.
01:19:12
Speaker
Awesome. And I love hearing you say, you know, to read it and to study it almost like, ah you know, you're the the elder colleague you had in the 90s where you're underlining things and you're then picking his brain. That would be, you know, ripe ground for another podcast down the road where we do the film study. and and um But but i hope um that door is open. I hope we can we can open it down the road, Pam. But ah I'm just so grateful that we got to talk about, you know, your approach to the work and your wonderful book, Catch the Devil. So just thanks so much for the time. Thank you so, so much. I so appreciate
01:19:49
Speaker
Awesome. Man, that was something, wasn't it? Thanks to Pam for coming on the podcast and for having such nice things to say about her experience on the pod. I i am ah i am buzzing.
01:20:01
Speaker
from her kind words. I think it would be in poor taste to read that, but I will just say it was very kind. Be sure you're following the show's Instagram page at Creative Nonfiction Podcast and that you're subbed up.
01:20:15
Speaker
on the podcast wherever you listen to them and as well subbed up at Pitch Club and the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm. Something struck me in this conversation. Well, ah many things for being honest, but one was parting shot worthy and speaks to my desperation as a 46-year-old journalist and author. It's this notion of the pitch meeting.
01:20:36
Speaker
and This was the great benefit of being in a vibrant newsroom, specifically a magazine newsroom that routinely publish long-form reporting, artful journalism, as Walt Harrington might put it.
01:20:48
Speaker
As Pam said in this conversation, they were all forced to come to the meetings with ideas and pitch them in front of the group, you know flesh out those ideas, maybe pre-report them out a bit. And yes, many were not worthy, but if you had to do a bunch of these every month and essentially workshop them and listen to others pitch theirs, you can envision a scenario where you can get quite good at crystallizing an idea into something that will keep you gainfully employed.
01:21:14
Speaker
Now, how many of us who don't have the benefit of a media institution ah force ourselves into this kind of pressure cooker of idea generation and idea development? The rigorous pre-reporting done again and again to ensure that there is, in fact, a story there.
01:21:32
Speaker
I'd say very few of us in the freelance world.
01:21:37
Speaker
Maybe we drum one or two ideas for a month or one or two over a year and we wonder why we can't land anything. and Maybe we don't pitch as often as we should because it's hard and tiring, time intensive, labor intensive.
01:21:53
Speaker
On some level, it sure as hell is a numbers game. But we don't have the peer pressure of bringing ideas to a conference room where we maybe have ah a minute to sell the editor-in-chief, who's sitting at the head of the table in front of the group, of an idea worthy of a full-blown assignment.
01:22:10
Speaker
Imagine what that would do to your sense of story and your nose for story. I'm not so sure if these meetings happen anymore, but readers and writers and editors are worse off for it. I know the Atavis team has pitch meetings where they review queries, but it's just among you know the the editors, really. But it's not like there's a staff full of writers bouncing these ideas off each other, not unlike how a writer's room operates in television, where you just throw out ideas, and then through that group think you start to really crystallize on a narrative.
01:22:42
Speaker
I guess what I'm saying is maybe I need to build something of this nature that is a wing of the pitch club bungalow. Or to keep piggybacking on the actual club theme, like a VIP suite of the club where writers are invited in to pitch ideas in front of a cohort where the pitches are workshopped, basically given thumbs up or thumbs down.
01:23:04
Speaker
Not to discourage anyone, but to say that needs more work or that's an idea you might want to give up on and move move on to something else. Similar to how the Texas Monthly team worked through ideas. yeah The purpose being if you subscribed and paid to be part of a pitch club cohort.
01:23:21
Speaker
You would find five or six ideas a month, and you would find ways to work through them. You'd have more skin in the game and accountability if this was a couple hundred dollars to be in this cohort, ah you know a small cohort.
01:23:38
Speaker
You'd have no choice but to improve. you know Once you put some money on the line, you're going to go find some ideas. And because you'd be bringing five to six ideas to the VIP suite every month, say for a four-month stretch, that's 20 to 24 ideas you might have not have otherwise ginned up.
01:23:55
Speaker
And you mean to tell me you couldn't maybe find one real zinger there that you can land somewhere? i don't know. Again, it's a numbers game. If you bring that many ideas, I think you're going to land something.
01:24:08
Speaker
Now, will I do it? Maybe. It's kind of it's so it's a way that I can give Pitch Club away for free but have this VIP experience. I could see survey the the Pitch Club audience, which is starting to nudge near 1,000 subscribers, which is pretty cool. But platform being currency, I want to keep see that keep seeing that grow.
01:24:28
Speaker
That's going to make me, as i as I say a lot, that that is what will ultimately make me attractive to publishers. And as my editor for the Frontrunner said ah yeah after...
01:24:39
Speaker
ah The rejection of the one particular baseball biography, me being who I am, not being tethered to a media institution like The Athletic or ESPN, I have to make my own weather. And it's very hard for us who aren't tethered to a legacy media institution to make our own weather.
01:24:58
Speaker
yeah We don't have the backing of that institution giving us altitude or a a a thermal to so let us to glide up on. you know We have to create that somehow, and that's all the more challenging.
01:25:15
Speaker
and So that's why I'm always saying, that's why I give so much away Pitch Club and stuff like that, because I just i want the platform. I want the concrete platform I can put in front of gatekeepers and be like oh, wow, this guy's got an audience.
01:25:28
Speaker
Making my own weather, I guess, as they say. In any case, the VIP suite could be this thing for four months or so where, yeah, maybe you pay 500 bucks and there will be five or six of us in that room and we meet every month and we you pitch the ideas you got, kind of workshop them, be like, and you know, you got one there, I would go back to that one. And it's just this notion of bouncing these ideas off each other and maybe you'd be like, oh, you know what, that would be a good fit for this outlet.
01:25:59
Speaker
Oh, I think you're pitching that to the wrong outlet. You should go here and and so forth with it. And that way it's actual, you know, it's putting it into practice, right?
01:26:11
Speaker
I think we would all get better. i don't know. It's an idea. But as you know, I have a lot of ideas and I'm not big on execution. sometimes i'm I'm an idea factory, but when it comes to actually implementing it, sometimes I just get tired.
01:26:28
Speaker
So very tired. So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do interview, see yeah