Questioning journalism's past, present, and future
Depth Perception’s second year documented a challenging time for journalism. See how some of the industry's best reporters answered — instead of asked — the tough questions.
The past 12 months have been a wild ride for journalism, sadly one with more lows than highs for the industry. Despite this bad news, every week over the past year Depth Perception published a piece celebrating the best reporters who produced some of the boldest reporting and deepest dives.
Our most popular interview of the past year was with Jacob Soboroff, who discussed his role in the devastating (and prescient) Trump immigration documentary Separated. Jeff Sharlet has also dug deep into both the Trump administration and his supporters as he shared in his interview, which didn’t shy away from blaming the media for [waves hands] all this.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, according to Sarah Kendzior, who discussed in her Depth Perception interview her memoir about a family road trip that explored what in the U.S. is still worth fighting for.
Journalism is absolutely one of the things worth saving. Long Lead launched Depth Perception two years ago because we could see attention to in-depth reporting — and the people who produce it — fading. Cuts to outlets, the mercurial priorities of social media algorithms, and all sorts of other distractions are making it more challenging for the most though-provoking, impactful work to be seen. But the changes facing our industry are also creating opportunities, and brave reporters like Tim Mak, who is reporting from the front lines in Ukraine, innovative editors like Zach Seward, who is pushing the industry forward with new AI tools, and sharp leaders like the misinformation journalist-turned-satire CEO Ben Collins — each interviewed in Depth Perception this past year — are pressing ahead despite the headwinds.
Long Lead and Depth Perception isn’t relenting, either. I’m excited to round up next year’s interviews and see what pearls of wisdom the industry’s best and brightest have shared on another trip around the sun. Until then, enjoy these highlights from the past year’s “Leading Questions,” a collection of recurring queries we pose to journalists brave enough to answer them. —John Patrick Pullen
Why did you become a journalist?
Ashlee Vance: I always knew I wanted to be a writer — I thought more of a novelist than a nonfiction writer. I never worked for my school paper or anything like that. I was a philosophy major, and when I was a junior in college, I wanted to live in San Francisco one summer. And I found an internship at Information Week magazine in 1999, so kind of the peak of the dot-com boom. I ended up writing, I don’t know, 50 stories during the summer, and I just found I fell in love with it. I never really even considered being a journalist, and definitely not a tech journalist. I was not a very techie person, but my first story was a scoop — a stupid, minor scoop [about Microsoft retroactively fudging press information], but it was a scoop. I loved the adrenaline rush that came with that and just got hooked.
It feels like it's straight out of the book White Noise. It's bizarre. How is it that there’s a zone for miles and miles on end in all directions where people are just deeply afraid, and have been for months, that their oxygen isn’t safe, and we’ve all just been carrying on like it’s nothing? TheTimes did one flyby story. Did they even go there? It sounds like if you even go there, you feel weird. I’m not even sure if it's safe for me to go.
I think that what I've found with this story is, more than anything else, beyond government failure, is a profound failure of our press. I do feel like this story is the most important story I’ve ever worked on, because it's an embodiment of all of the worst things about living in the Trump era today. It’s just different layers of governmental failure and communications failure and a toxic soup of chemicals and fear and conspiracy with a bunch of grifters mixed in.
What’s the best journalistic career advice you ever received?
Pamela Colloff: Some of my favorite advice came from a Texas Monthly writer whose work I love, Skip Hollandsworth. Skip’s advice for interviews was, instead of walking in having read everything and nodding along to everything the person’s saying and trying to show them how well-versed you are in everything, to just be as open as possible and say, “Can you explain that to me like I’m a kindergartner?” To ask these really, really basic questions.
He also read a draft of one of my stories where I had leaned really heavily on quotes to make the points I wanted to make. He told me to rewrite the story, taking all of the quotes out. He said, “You can stick a few key quotes back in later, but I want you to take all the quotes out so that you can really embody your voice and say what you’re trying to say.” That helped me more with storytelling than anything.
What do you see as the value of longform journalism these days? And how do you think it might change in the coming years?
Chris Hayes: I feel totally humble about the future. I just really, truly, to my core, do not know what’s going to happen. I think it’s a pretty tough spot for journalism right now. In many ways, I think it’s as bad as I’ve seen it in a bunch of ways. There’s the increasing power and co-option of the platforms that turn everything into content, particularly the algorithmic feed as the central way people are getting news, which I think is just a disaster. The slow death, both in market terms and also culturally, of news or journalism, like a separate and distinct entity, is really bad.
But there’s the Jurassic Park quote, “Life finds a way.” I do think that you’re already seeing some green shoots. People are trying new things that are working. And I think that people do want true information about the world. It’s a little like people walking around super-smog-filled cities reaching a point where they’re like, “This sucks. I don't like this.”
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What’s one app, tool, or service that you can’t do your work without?
Chris Geidner: A good CMS. Life after BuzzFeed News has been a true “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” moment. Our CMS was excellent, and I still miss it constantly.
The Substack CMS is good and very workable, but it’s still not home.
What’s the worst journalistic career advice you ever received?
Virginia Heffernan: “Oh, don’t worry. Just get tenure at TheNew York Times, and you’ll never have to worry about work again.” Though I did get a union job there, the Times suffered setbacks and we were offered buyouts. And, in the middle of a divorce, I had to take a higher-paying job at Yahoo! News. So the idea that I would just coast with tenure and die at my desk, like William Safire, was probably not a very good thing to hope for.
What is a widely accepted journalistic rule or norm that you hate?
Olivia Messer: I talk about this in my opening letter from the editor for The Barbed Wire. It’s the most articulate I’ve yet been on this topic: “Many of us have even pretended not to have a viewpoint — a bizarre task that requires the person doing the writing and information-gathering to imagine they weren’t born in a body, didn’t live in a place, and never experienced hardship….” [Read the rest here.]
What’s the biggest threat to journalism right now?
Judd Legum: I think there is a concerted effort — I think it's part of the right-wing movement generally, but specifically the Trump administration — to threaten and intimidate journalists. That's the biggest obstacle standing in the way.
Even the basic protections like New York Times v. Sullivan and things that prevent you from getting sued just for writing something critical, even if it's true, those are up in the air right now.
What does the future of journalism look like to you?
Marisa Kabas: I’m not sure I can say with any certainty what the future of journalism looks like, but I can tell what it is not: cable news hosts cozying up with Trump at his pool club or ones who feign ignorance about the political motivations of Nazis. I am worried about crackdowns by the new administration, but I’m also heartened by the independent spirit taking hold in journalism. In some ways, having a generation of journalists with little to lose has created the perfect conditions for calling bullshit on the wealthy and powerful.
What makes you feel hopeful for the future of journalism?
Oliver Darcy: The people. Despite the bad economics and the grim nature of the 24/7 news cycle, reporters still show up each day, ready to gather and deliver the news. It is not glamorous work, nor is it the most financially rewarding. But most of the people who do it are united and motivated by the shared mission of informing the public. And while I am not certain what journalism will look like a decade from now, I do know that that north star will still be there.
Enjoy more great journalism from Long Lead:
“The Age of Incarceration,” by Morgan Lieberman. Some of the last survivors of Japanese American incarceration share haunting memories of injustice in this multimedia photo feature
“Long Shadow,” by Garrett M. Graff. An RFK Human Rights and Edward R. Murrow Award-winning podcast series that examines what people know — and what they thought they knew — about the most pivotal moments in U.S. history
“The Last Drops of Mexico City,” by Jérôme Sessini and Rodrigo Cervantes. A collaboration with Magnum Photos that explores a drinking water crisis in one of the world’s largest cities — and the global challenge it foreshadows
“An Unnatural Disaster,” by Jacob Kushner. A feature that charts the birth, life, and gradual destruction of Canaan — a city that rose from the rubble of Haiti’s catastrophic 2010 earthquake
I have recommended your substack. Please check mine.