The Critical I: Six Questions for Steve Weinberg

OVER THE NEXT YEAR, the NBCC will be talking to book editors and critics around the country. We recently caught up with NBCC board member Steve Weinberg, freelance writer and critic, and the author of "Armand Hammer: The Untold Story," (1989) and "The Reporter's Handbook: An Investigtor's Guide to Documents, Databases and Techniques," (2001) among other books. In between assignments, Weinberg talked about his long road to the freelance life, and how he has become a critic of how journalists collect their scoops.

Q: How did you get your start in journalism? And how many hats have you worn since?

A: The "how" is easy to answer. But when students and novice professionals ask me "why," I can't recall--if I ever knew. By the time I entered sixth grade, I knew I wanted to become a journalist. My mother taught kindergarten and my father earned a living as a traveling salesman. They encouraged me to study, but they never mentioned journalism. In my suburban Chicago high school, besides playing baseball and running track, I served as a reporter and editor on the school newspaper. (My two co-editors did well after high school: Brian Ross is the chief investigative reporter at ABC News, and Graham Spanier is the president of Pennsylvania State University.) Our high school journalism teacher, John Munski, had studied at the fabled University of Missouri Journalism School. In 1966, I applied there and nowhere else. When I graduated in 1970, newspapers and magazines were desperate to hire, because journalism had not yet caught on as fashionable. I could have started at any number of big city newspapers. Tom Duffy, my reporting mentor at the University of Missouri, pushed me in a different direction--to work at the 50,000-circulation daily where he had spent much of his career. The locale: East St. Louis, Illinois, one of the most poverty-stricken, violent cities in the United States. That's where I went, with the intention of shedding my naivete. It worked.

I ascended quickly to the investigative reporter role. (Not everybody would consider that an ascent, but I did.) I loved newspaper reporting. Still, I knew that I wanted to write more in-depth than any newspaper would allow on a regular basis. So I moved to magazines, as a staff writer and increasingly as a freelancer. In 1978, I left newspaper staff writing forever, becoming a freelancer. That is also the year I saw my name on a book cover for the first time. Since then, I have published hundreds of magazine features, six books with numbers seven and eight under contract - and thousands of reviews.

Q: How do you think this background informs your reviewing style?

A: Penetrating question. Top-of-the-head honest answer: I'm not sure. Speculative answer: My investigative reporting over 40 years inclines me to read nonfiction books about corruption and immorality. Those books feed into my own book research and magazine features. Furthermore, many of the editors who assign reviews to me pigeonhole me, properly, as somebody who will distinguish between strong and questionable information gathering. I'm therefore able to help readers better distinguish between trustworthy and iffy exposes. Because a subset of my investigative reporting has carried me to biographical writing, I'm able to discuss the techniques of telling a life with perhaps greater insights than some other reviewers.

Perhaps none of this responds to your term "reviewing style." I'm not quite sure how you're defining that term, and I'm unsure if my opus reflects anything as grand as a reviewing style.

Q: A life-time of reading books about immorality and corruption sounds like a recipe for depression. In all seriousness, does it ever get you down a bit? What do you do to pretend the world is a fair place -- play tennis?

A: Well-reported, well-written books about corruption and immorality are affirming to me. Journalists and other authors are out there completing their missions, and publishers are risking capital to bring the books to market. Yes, I play tennis, baseball, bicycle everywhere I go locally, and delight in the company of my wife, two grown children (one of them is a journalist married to a journalist, the other is a restaurant manager), and remarkable friends.

Q: What are some of the standout books you've reviewed over the years?

A: I have reviewed most of the books by Bob Woodward. I use those reviews as teaching moments, because the institutions and issues Woodward chooses are so important, as are some of his revelations about those institutions and issues. On the other hand, Woodward's approach to sourcing is so shot through with peril that some of his revelations may need tempering. Reviewing books on controversial subjects by other prolific investigative reporters such as Seymour Hersh and James Bamford--who are more transparent in their sourcing than Woodward--provides a useful contrast to the "Wood" half of "Woodstein."

When not preaching about desirable and undesirable investigative techniques in the investigative journalism realm, I especially enjoy reviewing nonfiction books that advance the art of narrative storytelling. Some of the best narrative nonfiction storytellers in book form are Walt Harrington, Madeline Blais, Tracy Kidder, Jonathan Harr, Laurie Garrett, Nicholas Lemann, Susan Orlean and Samuel Friedman.

Q: You have reviewed pretty steadily while writing a very involved biography of Ida Tarbell. Some writers decide when they have a book contract to stop reviewing all together. Why continue?

A: My answer will probably sound crazy to those who know the generally low rates of payment for book reviews. But I've made a series of seemingly crazy decisions in my career, usually knowingly.

I decided about 30 years ago to make book reviewing a significant part of my freelance life, no matter what else I had going. I enjoy reading/reviewing/interacting with book page editors and readers immensely. If I review about one book per week, I can earn a significant portion of my admittedly paltry income from that endeavor.

The alternatives have never worked out any better, and are usually less enjoyable for me. Ever since I began freelancing full-time in 1978, I have rejected the obvious alternative that many saner people would grab: A full-time teaching salary at the oldest and perhaps best journalism school in the world. Instead, I teach part-time and sporadically. The students are great, the colleagues are great, and it's not that I hate teaching. But I get restless in the classroom, restless marking up students' story drafts day after day, night after night. I much prefer my own reporting, reading, thinking and writing.

Q: Have you read your way into specialties you did not possess before?

A: I haven't read my way into specialties. But I have written my way into semi-specialities. Because so much of what I write falls into the investigative reporting realm, I end up receiving assignments for more investigative-type books than the average reviewer. My reviews often remark upon the quality of the information-gathering, something not all reviewers know first-hand. Another semi-specialty is my reviewing of biographies. Because I'm a biographer, and because I've also written a book examining the craft, I've thought more about lifewriting techniques than the average reviewer. I receive some of my biography review assignments because of my direct experience in that realm.

**