James Fallows speaks
In 1997 America's 'Conscience of Better Journalism' was the new editor of U.S. News & World Report. For a few days in D.C. I watched him try to make his news magazine better, punchier and funnier.
![MAGAZINE Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Monday, April 7, 1997 •BUT INSIDE From parenting to partnering, Life Support explores contemporary lifestyle issues. This week's lineup: Today: Psychologist John Rosemond says parents have the power to prevent arguments with their children. PEOPLE, PAGE D-3. Tomorrow: What to do when two friends are at each other's throats? Less is more. Wednesday: It seems parents are buying into their children's race for status in high school. Thursday: PT stands for "physical therapy," but some have nicknamed it "pain and torture." Whatever it's called, it works. ALSO INSIDE Dear Abby . ... . ... . . . D-3 Kids' Corner . . . D-4 Horoscope . D-5 Television . . . . . D-6 In the hot seat Aris Economopolus photos U.S. News editor James Fallows makes last-minute corrections and suggestions as deadline looms on a Friday afternoon. of the media his book savaged Stories by Bill Steigerwald U.S. faces News the editor Fallows Q&A: James Fallows scrutiny Christmas toys in Third World factories to how easy it is for the average citizen to buy lethal military weapons. Fallows' intent is to put more punch and humor into a magazine that long ago was given the nickname U.S. Snooze. Though that moniker no longer applies, U.S. News has always been more serious, more fact-oriented, more practical and more politically conservative than its two larger, splashier and pop-culture-happy competitors, Time (circulation 4.1 million) and Newsweek (3.2 mil- lion). Now, observers and rivals alike want to see if he can practice the kind of journalism he preaches. Clackety clackety. Fallows is having trouble concentrating on his editing/ memoing/typing. The problem is the young free-lance newspaper photographer who's been staking out his office for more than an hour. He's a nice kid, just trying too hard to capture the perfect, unposed 1/250th of a second of raw editorial action. But he's getting on Fallows' nerves. And Fallows is already a teeny bit annoyed that the photo shoot was scheduled on casual-dress Friday, which means he was caught tieless. Clackety clackety. Last week was a fairly tough work week for Fallows- - medically, not journalistically. On Wednesday he had minor dental surgery that left him too woozy to make it to work. He kept in virtual touch from home by phone and computer, however, and at 10 the next day he was back at U.S. News' headquarters in the West End section of Washington near Georgetown. Fallows worked his usual 10-to12 hour Thursday. He held closed- SEE FALLOWS, PAGE D-2 n "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine Democracy," -James Fallows argues that the news media is held in such low esteem by the public for a lot of good reasons. Journalists, he contends, have become too triviaminded, too negative and too cynical. The Washington press corps, he says, is particularly out of touch with the common man. They are more interested in getting on political TV shout shows and covering the -byplay of daily politics than pursuing what he says "is the essence of real journalism" - the "search for information of use to the public.' Fallows named famous names in his book Sam Donaldson, Judy Woodruff, Brit Hume, George Will. He was particularly tough on "buckraking" journalists like Steven Roberts of U.S. News and his wife, ABC's Cokie Roberts, for taking huge fees to speak to trade associations they might have to cover. When Fallows took over at U.S. News last fall, it surprised no one that Steven Roberts was one of the first to be let go, though he still works for the magazine's corporate sister, the New York Daily News. Fallows has been battered pretty good by the press of late. The Washington Post, working the hypocrisy angle, recently got him to reveal that he made $45,000 in speaking engagements in 1996. longer gives speeches for pay. Fallows is so defensive about the subject that before the first question was asked during an interview last week, he blurted out that the money he's getting for his Three Rivers Lecture Series appearance (which he set up last summer) will go straight to charity. @: How do you feel about the way you have been treated by your fellow journalists? A: I may be reaping some of the bitter fruit of having criticized in print people who are not used to being criticized. My larger point is, while there are a couple things I take offense at in criticism of me and the magazine, basically I think it's all fair comment. Really, the only point is, over time can we put out a good magazine? That's all that really matters. Q: You've said that one of the jobs you want to do is "make the important interesting." But isn't that what journalists are supposed to do all the time? A: Yes. I'm not discovering the atomic bomb in saySEE Q&A, PAGE D-2 is a poet for the computer age From Robert Pinsky's "The Figured Wheel" The figured wheel rolls through shopping malls and prisons, Over farms, small and immense, and the rotten little downtowns. Covered with symbols, it mills everything alive and grinds The remains of the dead in the cemeteries, in unmarked graves and oceans. Sluiced by s salt water and fresh, by pure and contaminated rivers, By snow and sand, it separates and recombines all droplets and grains, Even the infinite sub atomic particles crushed under the illustrated, Varying treads of its wide circumferential track. son Wednesday night. Pinsky is happy to oblige. The forum will be honoring him with its annual Charity Randall Award, a $2,000 prize that recognizes poets for their contribution to both the writing and the performing of their work. The honor harmonizes nicely with his plans as poet laureate. "My deepest conviction about poetry has to do with its bodily presence in our lives," he said. "It's essential that poetry be read aloud, and what I want to do is add to the Library of Congress' SALLY KALSON Mars and Venus do literature his is too good not to share. Be forewarned, however, that it comes from the Internet, so its source and legitimacy are unknown. I have decided to think of it as the real thing because it's funnier that way. This is a creative writing assignment supposedly turned in by two college English students. The task was to experiment with the tandem story, where two writers alternate, contributing one paragraph each, until a complete story emerges. In this class, students were to pair off with the person sitting next to them. "Remember to re-read what has been written each time," the professor instructed, "in order to keep the story coherent." Here is the assignment submitted by Rebecca and Gary, last names omitted. first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for 1 lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. "But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question." Now the story changes hands. "Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a yea ago. "'A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,' he said into his transgalactic communicator. 'Polar orbit established. WASHINGTON, D.C. ames Fallows is about to lose his cool. It is Friday afternoon, deadline day for U.S. News & World Report. He is in his sunny corner office, doggedly doing what any sharp editor of a major national news magazine should be doing at this late hour - - - - - - - reading copy at a computer terminal. Clackety clackety clackety. Sitting up altar-boy straight, banging his keyboard loud enough to be heard out in the hallway, Fallows fires off electronic memos to sub-editors or inserts major and minor questions and comments into story files: "Is this correct?" "Has someone checked the math?" "Could this be made more clear?" Since last fall, Fallows - 47, 6-foot2, California-grown but Harvard- and Oxford-educated - has been editor of U.S. News, circulation 2.3 million. US A Laura HOW TO Get Into a Great College 3 Since early 1996, thanks to his book "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine Democracy," he's also been America's reigning Conscience of Better Journalism. Fallows, who will talk about the state of journalism tonight at The Three Rivers Lecture Series in Oakland, is a thoughtful author/writer whose editorship at U.S. News is being closely followed by media-watchers. They want to see what changes he'll bring to the smallest of the Big Three weekly news magazines. Some change has already occurred: the replacement of most of the top section editors with his own people. Readers should have noticed that since September U.S. News has turned out a number of solid cover stories. They have ranged from exposes of America's porn industry and the manufacture of U.S. lau By Bob Hoover Book Editor, Post-Gazette day after 2 feet of snow A _turning buried Robert to Boston Pinsky's normal. last life He week, was had reshoveled his walk and was enjoying his furnace again after electricity was restored. But, for Pinsky, normal means being in demand, and right now he's the hottest guy in American poetry. Pinsky, 56, becomes the 39th U.S. poet laureate next month, replacing Robert Hass. His phone has been ringing with requests for readings and interviews since James Billington, the librarian of Congress, made the announcement two weeks ago. But the request to talk from Pittsburgh carries the extra weight of Sam Hazo; in an amazing bit of luck, Hazo signed up Pinsky long before his appointment to read in the final program of the International Poetry Forum's sea- 'Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far.' But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit." Change writers. "He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities toward the peaceful farmers of SkyIon 4. "'Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,' Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman? she pondered wistfully." Change writers. "Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anuudrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. "The president, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The president slammed his fist on the conference table. We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty. Let's blow 'em out of the sky!" Switch. "This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent." Switch. "Yeah? Well, you're a self tered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium." Now I pose the question: Do these two people find each other truly revolting? Or are they revealing a perverse sexual tension, the kind where two people stand noseto-nose spitting insults until passion overtakes them? Your call. Either way, at least we now know what would have happened if Emily Dickinson ever met Calvin and Hobbes. Sally Kalson's column appears every Monday in the Magazine. archives by getting Americans to read their favorite poem on tape. Everybody and anybody - - - - - - - President Clinton, S Sen. [Jesse] Helms, Rep. [Barney] Frank, a cook, a policeman." Pinsky realizes that his new position, long viewed as a ceremonial post and a way to honor a long career, is now an activist one. First Rita Dove, then Hass, worked far beyond the few requirements of poet laureate to spread the gospel. In her second term, Dove collapsed with exhaustion. Hass, her successor, kept his health, but followed a full schedule that included poetry readings before service organizations around the country. "I am aware that a tradition [of activism] is now in place," said Pinsky, whose own schedule includes teaching at Boston University, music lessons with a jazz saxophonist, the writing and translations of poetry, and a regular column with the Internet magazine, Slate. In naming him, Billington cited SEE POET, PAGE D-6](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!iR5Y!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80a7af52-a238-463a-904d-a96b846ce7f6_860x1557.jpeg "MAGAZINE Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Monday, April 7, 1997 •BUT INSIDE From parenting to partnering, Life Support explores contemporary lifestyle issues. This week's lineup: Today: Psychologist John Rosemond says parents have the power to prevent arguments with their children. PEOPLE, PAGE D-3. Tomorrow: What to do when two friends are at each other's throats? Less is more. Wednesday: It seems parents are buying into their children's race for status in high school. Thursday: PT stands for \"physical therapy,\" but some have nicknamed it \"pain and torture.\" Whatever it's called, it works. ALSO INSIDE Dear Abby . ... . ... . . . D-3 Kids' Corner . . . D-4 Horoscope . D-5 Television . . . . . D-6 In the hot seat Aris Economopolus photos U.S. News editor James Fallows makes last-minute corrections and suggestions as deadline looms on a Friday afternoon. of the media his book savaged Stories by Bill Steigerwald U.S. faces News the editor Fallows Q&A: James Fallows scrutiny Christmas toys in Third World factories to how easy it is for the average citizen to buy lethal military weapons. Fallows' intent is to put more punch and humor into a magazine that long ago was given the nickname U.S. Snooze. Though that moniker no longer applies, U.S. News has always been more serious, more fact-oriented, more practical and more politically conservative than its two larger, splashier and pop-culture-happy competitors, Time (circulation 4.1 million) and Newsweek (3.2 mil- lion). Now, observers and rivals alike want to see if he can practice the kind of journalism he preaches. Clackety clackety. Fallows is having trouble concentrating on his editing/ memoing/typing. The problem is the young free-lance newspaper photographer who's been staking out his office for more than an hour. He's a nice kid, just trying too hard to capture the perfect, unposed 1/250th of a second of raw editorial action. But he's getting on Fallows' nerves. And Fallows is already a teeny bit annoyed that the photo shoot was scheduled on casual-dress Friday, which means he was caught tieless. Clackety clackety. Last week was a fairly tough work week for Fallows- - medically, not journalistically. On Wednesday he had minor dental surgery that left him too woozy to make it to work. He kept in virtual touch from home by phone and computer, however, and at 10 the next day he was back at U.S. News' headquarters in the West End section of Washington near Georgetown. Fallows worked his usual 10-to12 hour Thursday. He held closed- SEE FALLOWS, PAGE D-2 n \"Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine Democracy,\" -James Fallows argues that the news media is held in such low esteem by the public for a lot of good reasons. Journalists, he contends, have become too triviaminded, too negative and too cynical. The Washington press corps, he says, is particularly out of touch with the common man. They are more interested in getting on political TV shout shows and covering the -byplay of daily politics than pursuing what he says \"is the essence of real journalism\" - the \"search for information of use to the public.' Fallows named famous names in his book Sam Donaldson, Judy Woodruff, Brit Hume, George Will. He was particularly tough on \"buckraking\" journalists like Steven Roberts of U.S. News and his wife, ABC's Cokie Roberts, for taking huge fees to speak to trade associations they might have to cover. When Fallows took over at U.S. News last fall, it surprised no one that Steven Roberts was one of the first to be let go, though he still works for the magazine's corporate sister, the New York Daily News. Fallows has been battered pretty good by the press of late. The Washington Post, working the hypocrisy angle, recently got him to reveal that he made $45,000 in speaking engagements in 1996. longer gives speeches for pay. Fallows is so defensive about the subject that before the first question was asked during an interview last week, he blurted out that the money he's getting for his Three Rivers Lecture Series appearance (which he set up last summer) will go straight to charity. @: How do you feel about the way you have been treated by your fellow journalists? A: I may be reaping some of the bitter fruit of having criticized in print people who are not used to being criticized. My larger point is, while there are a couple things I take offense at in criticism of me and the magazine, basically I think it's all fair comment. Really, the only point is, over time can we put out a good magazine? That's all that really matters. Q: You've said that one of the jobs you want to do is \"make the important interesting.\" But isn't that what journalists are supposed to do all the time? A: Yes. I'm not discovering the atomic bomb in saySEE Q&A, PAGE D-2 is a poet for the computer age From Robert Pinsky's \"The Figured Wheel\" The figured wheel rolls through shopping malls and prisons, Over farms, small and immense, and the rotten little downtowns. Covered with symbols, it mills everything alive and grinds The remains of the dead in the cemeteries, in unmarked graves and oceans. Sluiced by s salt water and fresh, by pure and contaminated rivers, By snow and sand, it separates and recombines all droplets and grains, Even the infinite sub atomic particles crushed under the illustrated, Varying treads of its wide circumferential track. son Wednesday night. Pinsky is happy to oblige. The forum will be honoring him with its annual Charity Randall Award, a $2,000 prize that recognizes poets for their contribution to both the writing and the performing of their work. The honor harmonizes nicely with his plans as poet laureate. \"My deepest conviction about poetry has to do with its bodily presence in our lives,\" he said. \"It's essential that poetry be read aloud, and what I want to do is add to the Library of Congress' SALLY KALSON Mars and Venus do literature his is too good not to share. Be forewarned, however, that it comes from the Internet, so its source and legitimacy are unknown. I have decided to think of it as the real thing because it's funnier that way. This is a creative writing assignment supposedly turned in by two college English students. The task was to experiment with the tandem story, where two writers alternate, contributing one paragraph each, until a complete story emerges. In this class, students were to pair off with the person sitting next to them. \"Remember to re-read what has been written each time,\" the professor instructed, \"in order to keep the story coherent.\" Here is the assignment submitted by Rebecca and Gary, last names omitted. first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for 1 lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. \"But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.\" Now the story changes hands. \"Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a yea ago. \"'A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,' he said into his transgalactic communicator. 'Polar orbit established. WASHINGTON, D.C. ames Fallows is about to lose his cool. It is Friday afternoon, deadline day for U.S. News & World Report. He is in his sunny corner office, doggedly doing what any sharp editor of a major national news magazine should be doing at this late hour - - - - - - - reading copy at a computer terminal. Clackety clackety clackety. Sitting up altar-boy straight, banging his keyboard loud enough to be heard out in the hallway, Fallows fires off electronic memos to sub-editors or inserts major and minor questions and comments into story files: \"Is this correct?\" \"Has someone checked the math?\" \"Could this be made more clear?\" Since last fall, Fallows - 47, 6-foot2, California-grown but Harvard- and Oxford-educated - has been editor of U.S. News, circulation 2.3 million. US A Laura HOW TO Get Into a Great College 3 Since early 1996, thanks to his book \"Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine Democracy,\" he's also been America's reigning Conscience of Better Journalism. Fallows, who will talk about the state of journalism tonight at The Three Rivers Lecture Series in Oakland, is a thoughtful author/writer whose editorship at U.S. News is being closely followed by media-watchers. They want to see what changes he'll bring to the smallest of the Big Three weekly news magazines. Some change has already occurred: the replacement of most of the top section editors with his own people. Readers should have noticed that since September U.S. News has turned out a number of solid cover stories. They have ranged from exposes of America's porn industry and the manufacture of U.S. lau By Bob Hoover Book Editor, Post-Gazette day after 2 feet of snow A _turning buried Robert to Boston Pinsky's normal. last life He week, was had reshoveled his walk and was enjoying his furnace again after electricity was restored. But, for Pinsky, normal means being in demand, and right now he's the hottest guy in American poetry. Pinsky, 56, becomes the 39th U.S. poet laureate next month, replacing Robert Hass. His phone has been ringing with requests for readings and interviews since James Billington, the librarian of Congress, made the announcement two weeks ago. But the request to talk from Pittsburgh carries the extra weight of Sam Hazo; in an amazing bit of luck, Hazo signed up Pinsky long before his appointment to read in the final program of the International Poetry Forum's sea- 'Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far.' But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.\" Change writers. \"He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities toward the peaceful farmers of SkyIon 4. \"'Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,' Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman? she pondered wistfully.\" Change writers. \"Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anuudrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. \"The president, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The president slammed his fist on the conference table. We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty. Let's blow 'em out of the sky!\" Switch. \"This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.\" Switch. \"Yeah? Well, you're a self tered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.\" Now I pose the question: Do these two people find each other truly revolting? Or are they revealing a perverse sexual tension, the kind where two people stand noseto-nose spitting insults until passion overtakes them? Your call. Either way, at least we now know what would have happened if Emily Dickinson ever met Calvin and Hobbes. Sally Kalson's column appears every Monday in the Magazine. archives by getting Americans to read their favorite poem on tape. Everybody and anybody - - - - - - - President Clinton, S Sen. [Jesse] Helms, Rep. [Barney] Frank, a cook, a policeman.\" Pinsky realizes that his new position, long viewed as a ceremonial post and a way to honor a long career, is now an activist one. First Rita Dove, then Hass, worked far beyond the few requirements of poet laureate to spread the gospel. In her second term, Dove collapsed with exhaustion. Hass, her successor, kept his health, but followed a full schedule that included poetry readings before service organizations around the country. \"I am aware that a tradition [of activism] is now in place,\" said Pinsky, whose own schedule includes teaching at Boston University, music lessons with a jazz saxophonist, the writing and translations of poetry, and a regular column with the Internet magazine, Slate. In naming him, Billington cited SEE POET, PAGE D-6")
April 7, 1997
In June 1998, U.S. News’ owners sacked Fallows — who wrote a 19-page letter to his staff….
