Walking the Walk   

Journalism reformer James Fallows gets an opportunity to implement his ideas as editor of U.S. News & World Report.

For the last year James Fallows has traveled around the country telling anyone who would listen what's wrong with journalism, a subject he explored in his well-received book "Breaking the News." Now he has a chance to put his theories into practice.

In September Fallows, who has no management experience at a large publication, became the editor of U.S. News & World Report. His goal, he says, isn't to boost circulation (it's 2.5 million), but to improve the quality of the magazine's writing and jettison the political punditry that he believes is of little interest beyond the Beltway.

Fallows, 47, leaves behind an enviable position as the Atlantic Monthly's Washington editor. In that role he worked at home, wrote seven or eight thoughtful, 5,000-word pieces a year, penned books on Japan and dashed out in the middle of the day to play tennis. After two weeks on the job, and after firing 10 U.S. News employees, Fallows talked about his plans for the magazine.

AJR: Why in the world would you take this job when you had such a sweet deal at the Atlantic Monthly?

JF: It's true that I deeply loved what I was doing before. I felt and often said I had the perfect job... The immediate reason was that I'd spent the last year telling people how I thought journalism should be and when there was an opportunity to see can he walk the walk in addition to talking the talk, it was hard to pass that up. The larger point is that the number of powerful editing jobs in the U.S. is a very small number.

AJR: So you've got a news magazine now. What's your idea of what a newsweekly should be?

JF: First, I think the basic franchise that U.S. News has figured out for itself over the last decade is pretty sound. It's a matter of executing well at a steadily better level what they've figured out. The franchise includes being in the game when there are big breaking news events. When an airplane is shot down, when there is a presidential election, the magazine has to show it has breaking news capability. Second, it is alone among news magazines in having a very serious investigative capability.
Third, something that's now becoming commonplace but wasn't a few years ago is sophisticated service journalism. News you can use. The magazine talked about personal finance, health and technology. Many more magazines are doing that, so the level has to go up and up and up. Fourth, while avoiding celebrity coverage--not having a people page with Princess Stephanie or whatever--to try and deal with culture in various dimensions, including religion and family issues, a strong emphasis on schools, an increased emphasis on science. Finally, in both world and national events, finding a way to shrewdly provide context and explanation for events in ways that are still worth it for people.

AJR: Which is always the challenge. If I were talking to the editor of Time or Newsweek, wouldn't they be saying the same thing?

JF: Yeah, it's not as if this is creating particle physics. The ideas are important, but execution is nine-tenths of the game.

AJR: So will there be more staff changes?

JF: The changes I've made so far, as we speak, have all been subtractive. I've always conceived of that as a first step before an additive process of both working with the many skillful writers here and bringing in new people--both very young talents and established people and people who may not want to work for the magazine full time who can form a sort of diaspora. For example, the issue on the stand right now has, I think, a very good article by Charles McCarry. Charles McCarry is a first-rate novelist. He was a CIA agent in the '60s. He wrote a very funny and good article called "Bring Back the Sleazeballs." It was about why our intelligence system has been ruined by prissiness. Charles McCarry doesn't want to work for U.S. News. But if I can call three or four times a year and say, "Can you do a piece on this?" the magazine will be better. There are a dozen people in that situation.

AJR: Jim, this is a huge task for you and a risk. You've gone around the country as Mr. Reformer, handing out this blistering indictment of the news business. What are you going to do to change the culture? Is this something you are going to set up as a model?

JF: No, I would be insane if I said that. I want to make it the best realization of its franchise that it can be.

AJR: Will you write for the magazine?

JF: No. The practical reason is there's no time. The symbolic reason is I want to show I'm serious about this. I have an outlet for my vanity. There's a temptation for writers to say, "Well, I have this embarrassing day job, but of course the real me is reflected through my column." No, this is not some embarrassing day job. This is the real me. This is what I have to make work or not.

AJR: Did you feel this was: Put your money where your mouth is?

JF: Yes. The only thing wrong with that formulation is this is Mort's [owner Mortimer B. Zuckerman's] money.

AJR: Any changes in the first two issues?

JF: (Pointing to the September 30 cover, with caricatures of Bob Dole and Bill Clinton dressed as police officers to illustrate a story about crime) I thought this was an interesting visual way to imply the actual point of the story, which is they are kind of dressing up and pretending to be law enforcement people. There's a certain Village People sound to it. There was an attempt to make a point with a little bit of a wit to it.

AJR: You've talked about how there's too much writing about the process of government. Is that something you'll change here?

JF: Yes... The trick is to use events that come into the news as springboards to the really interesting question of what it means to your life. In this case [the September 30 story on crime], there was a political fight about crime in which we tried to say: What's really interesting is what this tells us about crime itself. Is the drug problem getting better or worse? Do prisons do a good job?

AJR: Are you going to stay away from stories that promote discord or push political spin?

JF: You can run a lot of stories now on whether Congress is going to change hands. We may run zero or very few stories, because the answer is, nobody knows. Reasoned predictions where there is a greater chance the predictions are going to be right are worth something... But political prediction most of the time is just so much thumb-sucking. And I don't plan to run much of it.

AJR: What about polling? Relentless polling is ultimately so destructive. To me, it creates apathy.

JF: I agree. Polling, like fire, is a tool for good or evil... If there is a way to use polling as a reportorial tool you wouldn't otherwise have, I've no objection. The horse-race stuff I think we'll do none of this year.

AJR: You deposed two top editors and the magazine's star political writer Steve Roberts before you even walked through the door. What was your rationale?

JF: My rationale for the way I did it was, if you're going to make changes that I thought had to be the case to take the magazine up the next step, you can do it fast or slow. All of my experience in life has told me that doing it fast is better. No matter when one does this it is horrible. No sane person can enjoy this.

AJR: You've certainly made your thoughts clear about journalists accepting speaking fees [Fallows has been a harsh critic of the practice]. This magazine, however, had a reputation for trying to get their writers speaking fees and TV gigs. What's going to be different?

JF: It is both necessary and an active good for writers in this age to get their message out through many media. I hope they're on radio shows and TV. I hope they're doing as many things as they can to get the news of the magazine and the identity of the magazine out. There is a line, however, when people start living for that--when you are living your life for TV to become a pundit. You know the difference when you see it.

AJR: Was Steve Roberts a casualty of speaking fees?

JF: The speaking fees issue was not the issue between us. Let me be careful to say he was willing to accommodate what he believed were my views in that regard. He has worked with tremendous open-heartedness for the magazine over the last 10 years. He was willing to do whatever was possible to sort of make friends with me... It was instead a basic disagreement that I considered to be unbridgeable on the purpose and emphasis of political journalism.

AJR: What about speaking fees at U.S. News?

JF: U.S. News has had in the works a policy on what is and isn't proper to do on whether they should accept fees. The resolution, which was underway before I came on the scene, says that if there's a group you're covering, you shouldn't accept money from them. This is not the Time magazine approach, which says you can't do it. Because a number of people here have, as part of their terms of employment, been getting a substantial outside income, I didn't feel I could unilaterally impose some ban saying, "You can't do this anymore." The ethics committee will have a new policy with tighter rules on what people can or can't do. Essentially, if there is any kind of group that has an active or major legislative agenda, whether or not it's on your beat, you can't take money from them.

AJR: Are you comfortable with that?

JF: Why would you think I would not be? Because it's too loose or too draconian?

AJR: No, I just would expect you might take a stronger stance against doing it.

JF: We are going to do something nobody else has done, which is regular periodic disclosure in the magazine of the groups to which people have spoken and the take.

AJR: Are you close friends with Mort Zuckerman?

JF: Not close in that I'm not going to his wedding two days from now. But over 16 years, I've talked to him frequently.

AJR: But this clearly is part of his empire and people here want to know, when push comes to shove, and he questions a story as he's done sometimes in the past, what are you going to do?

JF: The first answer I give to that is I've worked for 16 years with Mort at the Atlantic and some episodes have come up, and he's always done the right thing... Let me give you an illustration. In the current issue, John Leo has an extremely tough column about [Random House Publisher and President] Harry Evans. Harry Evans is a very close friend of Mort Zuckerman's. Harry Evans was an editor of this magazine. I believe Mort is the godfather of Harry Evans' child. And Mort read it before it came out. Mort asked us to let Harry Evans know this was coming out. Which seems to me perfectly appropriate... Mort had no further involvement whatsoever.

AJR: Any other thoughts?

JF: Yes. I do not at all view U.S. News as a canvas on which to paint out my life obsessions. Second, the one thing that drove me crazy in reaction to my book is my popular image of the moment as some sort of humorless character. I don't think many people who know me think I'm a person lacking in mordant humor. Partly what I want to do here is to make this magazine funny. Not funny, ha ha ha. But witty.