Collins shares insight in lengthy, wide-ranging Q&A
Gail Collins is a trailblazing journalist, bestselling author and the first woman to head the editorial page of The New York Times. She is currently an op-ed columnist at The New York Times.
Her witty columns often leave readers on the verge of tears both from their hilarity and their uncanny ability to point out the incredible inefficiencies in government. Collins visits campus Wednesday night for a lecture inside the Gambrell Auditorium on her book “When Everything Changed: The Amazing
Journey of American Women to the Present.” The lecture begins at 6 p.m. She will sign books afterward.
She spoke with The Daily Gamecock last week. Here’s a little of her take on South Carolina politics, her journalism career, Washington D.C. and what makes a good columnist. The interview has been edited and shortened for space.
All in a day’s work: My columns are mostly what’s happening. They are generally better when they’re in the news. People are happy when they can read something that relates to something else they’re reading. A lot of the stuff I write is right on deadline. Other things are things I’ve been working on for a while that I have in my back pocket in case of crisis. But people think columnists have a lot of columns in their back pocket. It’s not true. They get used quickly.
On being a good columnist: Being a good columnist requires bringing information to the table and doing your own research. Reporting is a big part of the job. Nobody wants to just hear your opinions.
On her career’s defining moment: When I was young and first in the business, I was in Connecticut and got laid off. I started a statewide news service, and when I was doing that, my goal was to get all the little papers in the state information about what their state legislature was doing. It sort of became a mission from God for me a while. Nobody knows what their state legislature is doing. It was me and [now New York Times editorial page editor Trish Hall], and the two of us would sit there every day and think how can we make this interesting so someone will read about the state legislature. We’d do quizzes and all sorts of things. That taught me most about how to write because I was so desperately trying to make the information interesting and each of these individual papers wanted individual stories, so I was writing a lot.
On the next generation of journalists: When we went from regular typewriters from computers, I could see a difference in how stories sounded and the way they were written. They became crisper, and we could control them so much better. Now with new media, the way people read is so much different. Their attention span is so much shorter, and their ability to come in and out of the news is so much greater. It’s going to require a whole new kind of writing that hasn’t been generated yet — you’re going to create a whole new kind of writing that changes how people take in information.
How the New York Times has adapted to the digital age: Our whole perception of our readership has changed. It used to be that we were in theory conscious of our readers — now, looking back, I realize that we hardly gave them a tumble, and that the degree to which our readers figured in was really minimal.
We were writing for ourselves and the other kinds of people and hoping the rest of the world would be interested too. The presence of the readers in our lives is so much greater now — not a single thing happens in my life now that I feel like 200,000 people can’t comment on if they’d want to. But we’ve learned that it’s very important not to get obsessed with comments on our website. There are certain kinds of things readers want to comment on — if I say Obama really screwed this up, stuff that’s very contentious and argumentative and political and if it hits hot buttons that gets on the news, that stuff gets a ton of comments, a ton of views, a ton of emails. But when Nick Kristof writes about Darfur, which he won a Pulitzer and changed the course of history for that region, he knows he’s not going to let a comments and letters.
On reading the comment section: I read through them fast to make sure no one is pointing out some kind of error or misinterpretation — simply somebody making an argument that I missed a point or something — you’re interested to look at it. But readers often debate the issues back and forth among themselves more than anything.
On why her columns are so funny: As I went along as a columnist, what I didn’t want was to make the readers feel like shooting themselves. I want them to see there’s light at the end of the tunnel and want to keep the readers going. And it’s possible to convey quite a bit of information while you’re entertaining the readers.
On South Carolina politics: Your columnists and writers have a great arena for writing. South Carolina has always produced these high-profile, colorful and very intelligent but sometimes crazy people. It’s a wonderful place to write and report. I always look forward to the presidential primary season there.
Advice for young journalists: If you want to be a journalist, you follow your heart. If you’re writing and working and learning and talking about things that have touched your heart, you’ve won the game with whatever job you’ve lined up with.