A news story by Pooja Krishna
Pens and pencils scratched against the surface of paper as eager journalists, both young and old, gathered to hear what writers Michael Kruse, Molly Ball, and McKay Coppins had to say about political reporting in today’s day and age.
Molly Ball, a staff writer for The Atlantic, talks to at least a dozen people at every political event capturing the different opinions of American voters.
“I think that the American voter is a sort of untapped resource in political reporting,” Ball said. “These people are dying to have their voices heard and nobody really listens to them in a real way.”
Ball says that she tries to see things from the perspective of someone who does not live and breathe politics.
“All you can do is write the story and put it out there, you can’t control what effect it has,” Ball said, regarding both voters and presidential candidates.
Michael Kruse, a senior staff writer at POLITICO, has the job of profiling these candidates.
“One way I’ve done that is to focus not so much as where they are, but on where they’ve been,” Kruse said. “I hope there will be more opportunity to cover people more than power.”
“I hope there will be more opportunity to cover people more than power.”
McKay Coppins, a senior political writer for Buzzfeed News, believes that the best way for these political figures to get more coverage and airtime is by getting off-script.
Having written the infamous “36 Hours On The Fake Campaign Trail With Donald Trump,” Coppins is a self-proclaimed “Trumpologist.” He believes that there are two different ways to cover the candidate: as Trump the phenomenon or Trump the human.
Ball elaborated on this claim, “I have found Trump to be much more interesting as a political phenomenon than as a person.” Ball said, “so rather than writing biographical articles or profiles about his personal history and how he grew up, I have been much more interested in seeing what he is reflecting back to us about America, and why he has proven so surprisingly appealing to this seemingly newly activated segment of the electorate.”
Coppins believes that Trump personally dictating most of his tweets helps him connect with his audience better.
“Hillary Clinton is very much still in the 2012 model of Twitter, where I think it is her staff running this account,” Coppins said.
Kruse agreed with this statement, “@realDonaldTrump is a big part of his perceived authenticity; the punctuation is off, there are misspellings.” Kruse said, “The way he uses Twitter is, I think, a reflection of who he actually is, more so probably than Hillary Clinton’s [Twitter].”
Kruse does not see the problem of coverage of Trump, because he believes Trump to be a man of importance now.
Regarding Trump’s followers, Ball believes that politics can also be about identity and tribalism; as voters feel unstabilized, they think drastic times call for drastic measures.
Ball thinks that it is especially important to cover voters when they are “crazy or weird or have very unorthodox opinions.” Ball said, “If you just read the polls or the front page, I don’t think you would appreciate how weird people’s opinions really are and that’s part of the process.”
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