David Corn, investigative reporter and DC bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, gave a National Press Club audience of journalists a crash course in surviving today’s hectic news cycle during a talk about the role of investigative reporting Sept. 18.
Kicking off the chapter’s programming for the coming year, Corn engaged with the audience that filled the club’s Zenger room right from the start, asking each to briefly describe his or her current job. Several former journalists who now are in public relations were interested enough in what Corn had to say to devote the evening to listening to him describe a commitment to details.
Perhaps Corn’s most well-known recent investigative work, among journalists as well as a public that probably doesn’t know to attach his name to it, is the story about 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. At a talk at a private fundraiser Romney talked about the 47 percent of the U.S. population polled as being in support of incumbent Barack Obama, adding that it was also a portion of the population that he said doesn’t pay income taxes. So Romney said a plank in his platform about revising the tax code would not resonate with them.
Corn explained that prior to being was given a recording of that talk, he had been scouring SEC records to scrutinize Romney’s business connections with China. The source of the recording sent it to Corn apparently because it that touched on the China connection, since Corn noted that the then-anonymous source said he was familiar with and admired Corn’s ongoing stories on the topic. A further look at the entire recording resulted in the 47 percent story, which had an impact on the outcome of the 2012 election.
“It showed me that in journalism, when you get to digging, you’re not always sure where it’s going to lead,” he said.
It’s that sort of digging that distinguishes his news outlet, Mother Jones, both online and in print, Corn said, adding that the magazine has a two-month lead time for copy versus the breaking news that goes online. “News and scoops are our bread and butter” with a 24/7 website. But he warned the audience to pay attention to details. “You’ve got to get it out (a story) fast, but you’ve got to get it right,” Corn said. And read the footnotes in all those government reports, because they can lead to surprising stories.
He stressed that Mother Jones is not trying to cover events or speeches or publish breaking news — there are other sources for that, and people have their preferred sources. Corn said his publication’s mission is to tell you what you didn’t already know about widely reported events, or to bring to your attention an issue you ought to care about.
He described how in the not-so-distant-past, sources of information were segmented — and looking back, you can view them as individual activities. One would read the morning paper during breakfast. One would watch the network news at 7 and 11p.m. Once a week or so, the news magazine would arrive, and the reader would catch up on the week’s worth of news from various parts of the nation and the world. Books about events or the last presidential election would summarize a lot of information, and were yet another source of insight as well as a form of recreation, in the reading of them for pleasure as well as increased knowledge.
Today, Corn said, most of the segments are integrated into single web pages, “and that raises the bar for how to grab your attention.” For journalists, it means having to seriously consider what one will spend his time working on in order to add value to the reader.
As bureau chief, Corn oversees a staff of 15 editors and reporters in a modest office across from the National Press Club building. Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University, he covers politics, national security, the White House and Congress. He won the 2012 George Polk Award and a National Magazine Award for breaking the 47% story during the Obama-Romney election campaign. And in 2013, SPJ honored him with a national Sigma Delta Chi Award for “America Under the Gun: A Special Report on the Rise of Mass Shootings.”
Prior to joining Mother Jones, he was the Washington editor for the Nation magazine for 20 years. An analyst for MSNBC, he is also the author of two New York Times best sellers: “Showdown” and “Hubris” (with Michael Isikoff); a novel, Deep Background (hailed by the LA Times as one of the year’s best novels); and a biography, “Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA’s Crusades.” His Twitter feed — @DavidCornDC — has 167,000 followers.
Corn took many questions from the audience, and wanted to keep going even as chapter Vice President Kathy Burns, who arranged for Corn to speak, was eager to hold the drawing for the door prize — a framed poster of a Mother Jones cover. All attendees received a free copy of Mother Jones Magazine. After the program officially ended 20 minutes over its announced end time, Corn lingered to answer even more questions.
The program was jointly sponsored by the DC SPJ chapter and the National Press Club’s Professional Development Committee/Journalism Institute.