Posted by chicagomedia.org on August 25, 2009 at 12:59:59:
NAME: Ana Marie Cox
TITLE: National Correspondent/Host, "The Inside Story"
NETWORK: Air America Media
MARKET: National
BORN: San Juan, PR
RAISED: Mostly Austin, TX and Lincoln, NE
BRIEF CAREER SYNOPSIS:
Graduate school (UC Berkley, History PhD Program) drop-out turned new media start-up refugee (Suck.com, Feedmag.com, Inside.com), brief service as itinerant content monkey (AOL, National Geographic, Chronicle of Higher Education), turned down a job as a television script assistant to become the founding editor of political humor website Wonkette.com, loyal service to Time magazine as a correspondent and hostess for their political blog, Swampland. Finally discovered by Bill Hess and mustered into service at Air America, where my job description is in ongoing development.
1. You're so identified with new media that it's interesting that you're now doing "old media," the radio show and frequent TV appearances. What brought you to radio? Do you see radio as remaining relevant in the new media era?
Television and radio are "old media" only in the way they're currently distributed. I think of my appearances on TV and my radio as video and audio content, respectively, and the idea of people watching moving pictures or listening to the news is never going away. We may have to change the way we think about getting that content TO people but there's never not going to be a reason to use those methods to tell a story. Or a joke, which is form of a story.
Bill brought me to radio through discussions that emphasized finding a way for me to do and produce what I already love doing (political commentary with a helping of direct observation -- i.e., reporting) with new tools (video and audio). I didn't know quite what I was getting into but the company has let me find my own way and I think the show I'm doing now -- "The Inside Story" -- is a great indicator of more to come: it's irreverent but passionate, has great, young new voices and we've been experimenting with the kinds of things a political radio show can do. My favorite experiment has been "The Inside Story Radio Theater," where the guests and I re-enact an episode somehow related to the news. So far, we've read transcripts from press conferences and an excerpt from Sen. Barbara Boxer's new romance novel, among other things.
2. You've been doing stuff on the web since the Suck days, so you might be classified as a pioneer of the form. When you started writing on the Net, did you anticipate that you would be looking at a career doing it? Was there ever a point, whether at Suck, Wonkette, Time, or now, that you thought, geez, should I go out and get a REAL job?
I didn't think Suck would last long enough to put on my resume. I am still without a "real" job in the sense that I understand "real" jobs entail drudgery and homogeneity and my current jobs and most of my more recent ones aren't like that at all.
3. You've been one of the more widely-followed celebrity Twitterers (tweeters?); Why do you do it, and do you think it's beneficial for media people - like, say, radio hosts - to follow suit? Is it of practical benefit, a hobby, a goof, or something else? And should you have created a separate Twitter account devoted to tweets involving pants?
I can't speak to whether others SHOULD be on Twitter, or even if it's beneficial. Sarah Palin and Paula Abdul are both on Twitter and that's been kind of a disaster. It depends on what kind of person you are and what you want. I look at Twitter as just another way to distribute content and experience has shown that coming up with funny observations about the things I see isn't as fun if other people don't know about them. Also, you'll never really know if they're funny -- or, uhm, not. The Twitter community has let me know, believe me. The Twitter community provides instant feedback on, well, everything -- that's been helpful to my writing and reporting, especially since I am basically a solo act down here in DC. I work from home, there's no one at Air America (or anywhere, I think) that has the same job I do, so finding smart, interesting people to give me ideas and/or pushback is especially important.
As for practical benefit versus goof, well, I don't distinguish between things I do for work and things I do for play. And that lack of separation does reap practical benefits: I don't think Claire McCaskill would have agreed so readily to come on my fledgling show if pretty the first words out of her mouth when I met her was "Your Tweets are hilarious!" (For the record, hers are too.)
4. Do you prefer having inside access - White House briefing access, access to insiders, invites to the "right" parties - or the days when you were writing as more of an outsider? Is it easier - or more fun, or more interesting -- to report from the inside or snipe from the outside? (I'm thinking of this the way that some sports columnists never go to the ballpark, preferring not to be influenced by players' and coaches' personalities or deal with the other writers, while others do the locker room thing)
I'm going to have to object to your bifurcation again, I'm afraid -- or at least the idea that there is simply "inside" and "outside." I sort of consider myself to be on the porch: close enough to the inside that people there will talk to me politely but not so close that I get mud on the rug. It's a pretty good place to be, actually, if you don't mind cold in the winter and hot in the summer. And though I'm growing increasingly fond of that metaphor, I'll try to be more concretely descriptive of where I think I am in the Washington mediascape.
Basically, I think it's more fun and interesting to see how close you can get to the major players even if you're still sniping at them.
5. Going back to radio, to which talk radio hosts, if any, do you listen? Why? Who do you like, and who can't you stand to hear?
This is a little embarrassing but I'll just come out as say it: I when it comes to talk radio, I listen to A LOT of conservatives. I'm fascinated by Rush and listen to Sean Hannity just enough to remain convinced he's not that smart or even very good at being a radio host. Rush, on the other hand, is worth studying for technical purposes, even if the content is often not just wrong-headed but factually inaccurate. Beyond that, I love Terry Gross and consider her to be a big influence on the show I'm doing now. I have tried in the past to listen to Laura Ingraham but her sense of what is worth having a conversation about is unfathomable to me, and so she's one of the few talkers I'll switch from; though it's a conundrum: she also has what I consider to be the best bumper music in radio, barring This American Life.
6. Who are your influences, as a writer, a journalist, a media personality?
Aforementioned Terry Gross, Ira Glass and his band of merry TAL producers, PLUS, in no particular order except by how they come to me:
Joan Didion, "Mr. Show" (HBO comedy series from mid 90s), Harold Ross (first editor of the New Yorker), Janet Malcolm, "Arrested Development," David Allen (of "Getting Things Done" fame), Billy Lee Brammer (author of "The Gay Place"), Rachel Maddow, my husband (ooops. Maybe should move him to first...), Stephen King, David Simon & George Pelecanos ("The Wire"), Esquire's political coverage in the 60s-70s, Tucker Carlson, Matt Labash (another Weekly Standard writer), Jake Tapper (old friend, ABC WH correspondent, hardest working man in show business), my best friend, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, Molly Ivins... and she's a good one to end on. I have most certainly left hugely important people out, including friends who will see this list and wonder why they're not on it and it's probably just because I haven't had enough sleep. I am pre-emptively sorry and promise to publish, somewhere, an addendum.
7. While we're at it, how DID you become so into politics? When did you become a political junkie - were you into it as a kid or was it later?
There is a photo extant somewhere of me in fourth grade, dressed in a tiny tan corduroy suit, carrying a hand-made Jimmy Carter sign. It was in green marker, as I recall. I represented him in our school's mock election and I lost by a bigger landslide than the real guy did, in part because I used my one campaign appearance to talk about the SALT II talks. In 1988, I was an intern for the Nebraska Democratic Party and worked at the national convention, which actually took me about halfway down the slide from wanting to be IN politics to wanting to OBSERVE (and talk about) politics. I mean, I obviously still have opinions and journalists influence politics no matter if they want to or not, but I guess over time I became more comfortable with the hypocrisies demanded of journalists over the ones demanded of actual pols.
I'm not sure where the initial impulse to even pay attention to politics came from. I've also been drawn to puzzles and problem solving, from crosswords to murder mysteries (the very first coherent thing I remember writing, also in 4th grade, was called "The Case of the Midnight Honker") to, obviously, nuclear proliferation. And what are those things besides examinations of process, which, at its heart, is all politics is. The end result is policy, which I try hard to be as interested in, but how you get there is politics.
8. Of what are you most proud?
My marriage.
9. Fill in the blank: I can't make it through the day without _______________.
...laughing.
10. What's the best advice you've ever gotten? The worst?
BEST:
When I was a high school senior, I met a Constitutional lawyer -- someone's relative, I think, but I really can't remember. But I was really fascinated by a REAL LIVE Constitutional lawyer. (My process-minded brain also pulled me to being interested in the law.) They existed outside of books and the news! I came home and told my dad and he said something like, "Well, why don't you write him a letter? Ask him if there's an internship you could have or if you could ask him more questions sometime." I remember being flabbergasted at the idea of approaching someone out of the blue and asking them questions. And my dad was like, "What's the worst that could happen? He doesn't respond?" Of course, my teenaged self thought the WORST thing that could happen would be to somehow be embarrassed. And my dad sort of scoffed: "Who would know? And why would you care?"
So I wrote the letter and, in fact, the worst thing happened: no response. But his dismissal of my fear has turned out to be a more powerful influence than any response I would have gotten. Even today, the thing I find hardest about my job/life is to talk to someone out of the blue and ask them questions. I still delay and fidget and invent reasons not to do it, but when I do screw up the courage to approach a local at a political rally or call a communications director, it's because I remember what's really the worst that could happen.
WORST:
When looking for my first post-college job, in 1995 or so, I looked through the filter of advice we've all gotten: "Look at it as an EXPERIENCE; you have earn your stripes; it's all about making connections," you know, everything you've ever heard from an aunt or a guidance counselor. I wound up taking a job as an editorial assistant at Knopf, because, I thought, "I love books! What could be better than being a book editor and this, of course, will make me an assistant to a book editor so I can learn how to do it." As anyone who's ever been an industry where there are such creatures as "editorial assistants" knows, it has nothing to do with BEING an editor -- especially at first. Indeed, that early on it barely has anything to do with words. I probably could have figured this out BEFORE I took the job -- the level of turn over did seem strange -- but I was excited to be in New York and a part of the industry that I knew about mostly through Woody Allen films and The New Yorker.
I didn't get along with the woman who hired me (who found me via a friend of a friend -- I was working CONNECTIONS! What could go wrong!) and I was once chastised for reading on the job -- which seemed to consist almost entirely of running packages of things (manuscripts, proposed covers, party invitations) between people who would usually ignore me. It became a running joke with my friends, the Important Literary People I saw the back of: Knopf publisher Sonny Mehta, Tom Wolfe, designer Chip Kidd, Ann Rice... Basically, I was miserable, so between errands, I turned to this thing called "the Internet" and "the World Wide Web," which had JUST been made available on the publishing house's computers. The woman I worked for didn't even use a computer -- I took care of anything that needed one, which at least gave me an excuse to be at it all the time. (It occurs to me that nowadays both aspects of that job are irrelevant to modern publishing so they must have invented new repetitive tasks for editorial assistants...)
I had been email conversant since college but my correspondents were mostly my family and friends. The level of boredom I was experiencing at the publishing industry, however, helped me overcome the hesitations I had with making contact with strangers. So I started participating in the comment threads on places, and responding to arguments among people on a music discuss list. Shortening this already too-long story: A couple of months later, I was offered a job, sight unseen, at a new web magazine called Suck, based primarily on the writing I done -- unpaid, off the clock -- online.
End lesson: The most important thing about a job is not whether it puts you on a track to something else, it is being able to find a way to have fun every day.
(AA)