Jeff Sharlet Thread

 

I'm saving this Twitter exchange here because for some reason Threadreader cannot access it, likely because the account is locked. 

Jeff Sharlet is a well-known journalist whom I have followed for years, author of The Family and co-founder of the website Killing the Buddha. 

Sharlet: I confess that I read almost all of the Trump books by access reporters who hold material back. I learn a lot! But it’s not my way, & I can promise you that my new book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, is not based on trading for access to power.

Part of the reason, I should admit, is that I’m terrible at that kind of access journalism. Like, just not good at it. I can’t imagine living my life developing those kinds of sources, even as I’m often grateful to journalists who do.

But access to power just isn’t what I’m interested in, as a writer or as a person concerned by they threat of fascism. My writing life has been organized around the question of what the margins can reveal about the center of things.

I’d be terrible at jockeying for connection with a bunch of type A big-brained, Ivy-educated reporters. I’d lose that contest every time. I’m not dismissing the contest; I read & often value their work. But there is other work to be done, at the margins.

And in more ways than Twitter has counted, access journalism obscures important aspects of reality—not least of which the way power is constructed & experienced far from the bodies in which it’s concentrated.

LC:  I hate myself for watching MH because of her ethics in journalism but she knows a lot and I want to know what she knows. It’s very annoying.

JS:  I don’t hate myself for it. I think people proudly proclaiming they’d never read Haberman are being silly. Obv it’s not my kind of journalism, & it comes at cost; *&* at same time she uncovers *a lot.* I’ve read almost all of em, and Confidence Man is one of the most insightful.

MM: I understand what you mean!  My "way" is to think slowly and deeply about a topic, and wait until some sort of narrative throughline makes itself known to me.