The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist opens up about how to fix the industry’s problems.
Nicholas Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who, throughout his career, shed light on human rights abuses happening across the world, from the Tiananmen Square massacre to the genocide in Darfur. He’s co-authored a number of books with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, including the best-selling Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide and Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope. His new memoir, Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life, is Kristof’s first solo book and is, as the journalist describes it, “a love letter to journalism.” It chronicles his family history, his upbringing, and his career, taking readers from a near plane crash in the Congo to Cairo during the Arab Spring, and much more.
Katie herself says, “Nick Kristof is a journalistic exemplar, practicing the art of storytelling in its purest form.” She adds, “This book should be required reading for anyone interested in journalism, or for those who need to be reminded that, in the right hands, it can be a truly noble profession.” We caught up with Kristof about some of the more memorable (and frightening!) moments in his career, the future of journalism, and more.
Katie Couric Media: Do you think journalism is still seen as a glamorous, heroic career, the way you viewed it when you were young?
Nicholas Kristof: Journalism is every bit as wonderful a career as when I was young. Don’t mention this to my bosses, but I can’t believe they pay us to meet interesting people, talk to them and write about it. And journalism definitely can still have impact. What isn’t clear is the business model to pay for all this. Local papers are going bust around the country, and many regional and national news organizations are struggling — and AI presents a competitive threat that may make it all worse.
How do you grapple with the public’s waning trust in journalism?
I wish I had a clear answer. All institutions have lost trust, not just news organizations, and I think the country as a whole has some healing to do before institutions regain that trust. I think it would help a bit if news organizations had more class diversity — working class people are underrepresented — but mostly, I think we just have to work hard at our journalism, digging up facts more than shouting, and try to win back trust with our work.
Do you find it hard to be an opinion columnist in today’s ever-polarized world?
The risk in the opinion world is that we retreat and preach to our base, reinforcing views rather than challenging them. I can pretty much do a “Trump Sucks” column by hitting F5 on my keyboard, but it won’t change anyone’s mind: Trump haters will agree with it, and Trump-lovers will find it puerile. In general, it’s hard to change minds on any topic already on the agenda, and I believe that where we actually have power is the ability to project new issues onto the agenda. That’s the real power of the media: Not the capacity to change minds, but rather, to shape the issues that are addressed.
How do you balance being an impartial journalist with the desire to speak out about issues and in some cases, influence policy?
That’s less of a concern for me now as a columnist, because my job today is to be opinionated. But when I was a reporter, correspondent and editor, there was a balance to be struck. I think I felt it most acutely when I was in China after the Tiananmen Square massacre and the government was lying about what had happened. I quoted the prime minister’s bombast, but I didn’t just platform his lies or quote from each side and leave it at that. I worked hard to provide context and fact-checks so that readers knew the truth of what had happened. It’s harder when it’s our own politicians who lie or threaten democracy, but I think there are still ways to find that balance of quoting them while conveying to our audiences a context and fact-check that honors the truth.
You bring up the tug-of-war between covering stories that are important vs. covering ones that will get views and clicks. How do you think newsrooms today are doing at pulling off this balance?
Oh, I’m as guilty as anyone else. If I’ve written something earnest and ponderous, then I howl, “Damn it, this is important!” And if I’ve written something vaguely sensationalist, I say, “But everybody will read this!”
Frankly, I think it has been harder to get attention to important stories that won’t generate clicks, for two reasons. First, the business model has eroded for news organizations, so everyone is desperate for clicks. Second, we have much better digital metrics now, so we actually know what kind of stories no one will read. Historically, news organizations were kind of noble in running stories that were important but wouldn’t be widely read, but the struggle for audience has curbed that impulse. I think we all need to figure out how to improve our storytelling so that we can still highlight important issues without losing readers. That’s why I have my annual win-a-trip contest, why I do videos, and why I periodically experiment with new approaches.
There’s been criticism of “parachute journalism” and “white saviorism” in the type of work you did abroad. What’s your response to that?
There are definitely risks with sending people into an area when they don’t know the language, culture, and history, but that tends to be better than not covering a place at all. And sometimes outsiders can provide an important perspective — that’s why one of the greatest analysts of America was Tocqueville. As for white saviors, I think it’s sometimes true that Americans get excited about moral campaigns abroad when they neglect problems at home. But on the whole, the problem is not excessive interest among white people in the global problems of people of color. We intervened in Ukraine, but few even noticed that perhaps hundreds of thousands were being killed at the same time in Tigray, Ethiopia. Likewise, we stopped a genocide in Kosovo, but not in Rwanda or Darfur. So I think it’s hard to argue that the big problem today is a surplus of white people showing concern for people of color around the world.
In your memoir, you talk about how, during the Darfur genocide, people didn’t acknowledge how difficult it was for policymakers to successfully intervene to stop the violence. Do you see any parallels to the situation in Gaza?
I think it’s always true that those of us in the spectator seats fail to acknowledge the difficult tradeoffs faced by those in the arena. That’s certainly true in Gaza: I was critical of President Biden for not using his leverage to pressure Israel, and then the moment he began doing so, he was hammered by Republicans for betraying Israel. Generally, there are more problems in international relations than there are solutions.
Your book tells us about a number of “close calls” — how did you find the courage to keep reporting while knowing you could be risking your life?
Oh, I spent much of my time in war zones petrified. But I did feel a strong sense of mission to get the story and report on it, in hopes that it would make a difference. Sometimes that was true, but it was particularly frustrating to report on a crisis and then find it had no impact.
How do you stay positive given everything you’ve witnessed?
A couple of ways. First, I’ve seen too many massacres, but I’ve also seen a backdrop of progress that we don’t always acknowledge. Just since 2016, a million fewer children are dying each year before the age of 5. This year will, once again, set a new record for the smallest share of children dying worldwide. And when I was a kid, a majority of humans had always been illiterate, while now the global adult literacy rate is pushing 90 percent. So there are lots of threats and challenges, but we also have a tremendous capacity to overcome challenges — if we can just harness a measure of that hope and apply it productively.
Second, side by side with the worst of humanity, you find the very best. So in Darfur, Myanmar, Cambodia and elsewhere, I saw the human capacity for evil in warlords and dictators, but I also saw how, when we are tested, some people step forward and display a courage, strength, resilience, and devotion that awes me. We’re not tested here to the same degree, so we may not see it, but I sometimes come back from war zones like Eastern Congo feeling better about humanity.
The first sentence of your memoir says, “Journalism is an act of hope.” How do you keep the hope going right now? What makes you hopeful about the future of the industry?
The big challenge for the news industry is that our business model is collapsing. Local papers are already going out of business around the country, and cord-cutters are threatening cable TV. And AI threatens everybody.
But what I see that makes me hopeful is that good journalism has never been better. It is astoundingly good, with geolocated videos and other new tools that I couldn’t have imagined. Bad journalism has rarely been worse, but good journalism today is magical. It’s also true that the young people going into journalism have never been better. They have the right values, they have great dedication and they are marching forward even though it’s not clear what business model will allow them to be paid. Those young journalists leave me hopeful.
