Thought Process
just touching an elephant in the dark. We have a good grip on our one part, but we don’t know the whole animal. When I started to write fiction, I had to be in the hearts of all of the characters I created, and I realized I was doing this because I couldn’t tell the whole story as a journalist. Why is Washington so broken? Why do people come here with such idealistic intentions only to get into a situation where nothing works? The only way to understand it is to be in all of their hearts. They’re not bad people. They’re not trying to make the system broken. I gravitated toward this kind of writing because I realized that as a journalist or a researcher, I wasn’t able to explain what I was seeing.
Hard Pressed: How Journalist Tom Rosenstiel ’78 Turned to Fiction to Reveal Truth BY ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN ’10
During his four-plus decades as a politics reporter, media critic, and researcher focused on the sustainability of journalism, Tom Rosenstiel ’78 began to doubt that reporters—even the best ones—could adequately capture the precarious moment we live in. A few years ago he started writing political thrillers filled with characters and trends he had observed during his years in Washington and on the campaign trail. In his latest book, Oppo, he explores an election season that will feel all-too-familiar to readers: frustrated voters bombarded with disinformation and feeling alienated by both political parties, and powerful monied interests pulling the strings behind the scenes. Rosenstiel sat down with Alice Miranda Ollstein ’10, a reporter for POLITICO, to talk about why he’s both optimistic and pessimistic about the future of the press, and what makes a novelist better equipped to get at and communicate bigger truths. 12
Oberlin Alumni Magazine: What did you learn as a media critic and researcher that you wanted to include in your novels about the press? Tom Rosenstiel: I didn’t choose to
become a press critic—that was an assignment. But with that assignment, I began to look at my own profession inside out. I was forced to look at its weaknesses and vulnerabilities. And by the time I was at Newsweek in the mid-’90s, I saw real structural challenges to journalism. Newspaper circulation had begun to really decline. A few years later, the audience was shifting to digital but the advertising wasn’t. And journalists were getting further and further away—physically, geographically—from the stories they had to cover. Access became more and more restricted, and everything became doled out in press conferences. I was aware of all these things, and I think it’s partially why I didn’t make journalists the heroes in my stories. I realized that really, we’re
can prove—not everything that you know to be true. That’s a good discipline for a journalist but a bad one for a novelist. As a novelist, you can say everything you think. Let’s say you met [former Ohio Gov.] John Kasich and he told you all about himself, and you thought about his strengths and limitations. You could quote him, but you couldn’t tell the reader what you really thought of him. And there are limits to what he’ll say to a journalist. What is he really thinking in the little voice in the back of his mind? It’s also gotten worse over time. When I was covering the Gingrich Revolution, there were Republicans who would sit down and tell you what they really thought, including about Gingrich, even people on his leadership team. They knew that if they said it was off the record, we wouldn’t publish it. That gradually evaporated. OAM: So what are you now able to communicate that you couldn’t under the constraints of journalism?
CO UR T E S Y OF TOM R O SENS T IEL/PHOTO - ILLUS T R AT I ON BY RYA N SPR OWL
Q&A
OAM: Did the constraints of journalism and the fear of being accused of bias prevent you from painting that bigger picture? TR: Yes. You can only write what you