The Writing Machine   

Louis Jacobson has a full-time job as a National Journal correspondent. But he still found time to pull together 220 freelance pieces last year. He's well on his way to his goal: filing a story from every state.

There are workaholics, sure. Plenty of them.

Then there's Louis Jackson--a guy who can't seem to satisfy his journalistic urges with a full-time job at National Journal. A guy who spends much of his evenings, weekends and what are loosely termed "vacations" finding and writing stories as a freelancer. A guy who can really make you feel like a slacker.

Last year, Jacobson, who writes about lobbying at his day job as a staff correspondent, published 220-something freelance pieces. They ranged from three-sentence briefs to full-fledged six-pagers. That tally was up substantially from the 180 or so he published in '98.

The two major trips or so he plans each year are really story-finding expeditions to territory he hasn't previously covered. By year's end, he'll be two states shy of his quest to file from all 51 (he's granted D.C. statehood for this enterprise). His contribution roster includes London's Economist; the Washington Post and Washington City Paper; the Wall Street Journal; Lingua Franca; Science magazine; Princeton Alumni Weekly; and National Journal sister publications CongressDaily, Government Executive and The Almanac of American Politics.

Impressive. But it makes you wonder: Why?

"Basically, I enjoy it," Jacobson says over coffee at one of his favorite freelance interviewing spots, a D.C. Starbucks. "I kind of consider myself to be either a Renaissance man or a dilettante.... I just enjoy learning and traveling and meeting interesting people."

The 30-year-old Princeton grad says he loves his full-time gig but is intrigued by a wide range of topics. He writes on science, arts, books, culture, baseball (usually in the form of book reviews), urban planning and electoral politics. In January, the Post published one of his pieces on the rise of old-fashioned, microbrewed sodas in Virginia. In February, he wrote a review of a D.C. gallery's photography exhibit for the City Paper.

Any other hobbies? "I think this is pretty much it," he says. "I like to engage what my interests are in the context of journalism."

Down time? "Not much of it."

Do you have a social life? "Ask my girlfriend."

OK.

"He does, and we do," says Elisabeth Layton, an attorney for D.C.'s O'Melveny & Myers and Jacobson's girlfriend of three years. "I don't think I'd be able to fit it in with his kind of schedule, but he manages to. Lou is more than happy to make time to go out and do something fun.... But he's just as happy to come back and write a couple stories when he comes home, which wouldn't be my choice."

Says Caroline Schweiter, copy chief/books editor at Washington's City Paper: "He's an animal. I have no idea how he does it, really and truly." Jacobson recently got 18 stories out of a 12-day trip. "That's typical of him," adds Schweiter. "And he read two books that he's going to review for me in that time."

Of course, Jacobson wouldn't be able to get all this work done without capitalizing on a few tricks of the freelancing trade he's learned over the years, such as:

Write on a variety of subjects. Jacobson says if he had to come up with story ideas on one topic, he'd quickly exhaust his freelancing options. His flexibility creates more opportunities.

Use editors you know. He decreases rejection and the amount of time devoted to marketing pieces by pitching to editors who know his work and whose needs he understands. After graduating with a public policy degree in 1992, Jacobson held reporting internships with the Wall Street Journal and another at the Economist before joining National Journal in March 1994 as an associate editor. He started writing for the City Paper early on. "I've built my number of outlets pretty slowly," he says. He hasn't added a new one in the last year.

Sell every story three times. He'll give National Journal first dibs on anything he does, but usually it's not relevant to the magazine. He can slightly change an angle on a freelance piece or just resell it for a different readership that wouldn't have seen the article in its original publication.

Pair trips and vacations with work. Jacobson has elevated work-while-on-vacation to an art form. Says CongressDaily Editor Louis M. Peck: "I have dubbed him Wandering Lou, because you never know when he'll announce he's going off to a particular part of the country" and ask if you want stories from that area.

And, perhaps most important: Get a really good accountant.

In 1996, Jacobson found himself with a use-it-or-lose-it frequent flyer ticket. He has family in Montana and hadn't spent much time in the state, so he decided to pay a visit. While he was there, he figured he'd write a few stories. But he amassed so many ideas that he had to extend his planned 10-day summer trip to 15. In what has become his typical story-a-day fashion, he came back with 15 pieces.

He was hooked. That October, he took a 10-day trip to New England, and it was there that the filing-from-every-state goal was born. Jacobson was working on a National Journal story on campaigns in New Hampshire. When he found himself with a bit of extra time, he decided to drive to Maine. He ended up writing a piece for CongressDaily on the Senate race.

His "Why don't I file from Maine just for the heck of it?" rationale took off from there. "It sort of snowballed," he says, growing to "a bit of an obsession now."

The routine is two long trips a year. He'll pick a spot in the country he hasn't visited and, a few months before his departure, make some calls, do some research, then set up interviews. Three or four weeks before the trip, he meticulously plans his schedule. He typically conducts two to seven interviews a day, driving solo. "I would not wish to put anybody else through this experience," he says.

Jacobson has quickly racked up state visits: In December '96/January '97, he ticked off Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas; July '97, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts; January '98, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Idaho (a trip that averaged 300 miles a day for 20 days, the most total mileage on a Jacobson mission); June '98, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, northern Nevada and northern California; early '99, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi; August '99, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin; and most recently, in February, South Carolina.
He's covered additional ground on other excursions, including trips to attend weddings. Friends John Young and Alexandra Bradner weren't too surprised when Jacobson dashed between their wedding events last October and interviews for a science piece for the Washington Post on downloading smells from the Internet. "I think we sort of figured he'd find some kind of way to get a story out of it," Young says.

Jacobson plans to hit South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Michigan this year. That leaves only Alaska and Hawaii to be conquered. His rule is that he has to report and file something from the state for the location to count. Jacobson's weakest excuse for adding a state? Wyoming, where he did reporting for a story datelined Montana. He did publish a photo from Wyoming, though.

During the approximately 30,000 driving miles he's totaled on these quests, he's only been nailed with one speeding ticket. All of this planning leads to an insane amount of freelancing for a guy who has a journalism job he loves.

CongressDaily's Peck says he's pleased with Jacobson's work and uses much of it, but there have been times when the volume was overwhelming. "Once in a while, I've had to tell one of my managing editors, 'Please stop Jacobson before he writes again,' " Peck says, simply because the publication didn't have room for the copy he was churning out.

So, why doesn't Jacobson give up the National Journal work and freelance full time? Obviously, he's making some money for his extra efforts. "I certainly find a financial happiness in [freelancing] too," he says. But he doesn't think just freelancing would give him the income he can earn now. Plus, "I love being in the political game," he says. "I kind of like having an affiliation--having an office."

And when is the last time he took a vacation--you know, a real getaway, with no work involved? In 1998, he and Layton took a trip together: 10 days in San Francisco, Yosemite, Napa Valley. "I had been considering doing a story from there," Jacobson says, "and she talked me out of it."

Layton says it's great having such a planner arrange their trips together, but she has to get him to relax a little. "I had to do a lot of convincing," she says, that "it might be good to spend three days in one national park--Yosemite--instead of stepping foot in as many national parks as possible."t