Times Insider

How The Times Covers the United States Ahead of a Pivotal Election

With one of the largest teams of national correspondents in the business, we help the country to understand itself. Watch with us on Tuesday as we co-sponsor the Democratic debate.

By Marc Lacey and Jia Lynn Yang Oct. 14, 2019

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

The New York Times, which co-sponsors Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate with CNN, has one of the largest teams of national correspondents in the business. They work out of office towers in big cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago, and out of home offices in neighborhoods around Albuquerque, Boston and Miami.

But more often than not, their offices are their cars — company-issued Chevrolet Malibus generally — which collectively rack up hundreds of thousands of miles a year.

“Randomly call up your smart source on the pork council to discuss the meaning of life. Put the notebook away over beers. Read amended complaints, restroom graffiti and Bible tracts. Take kids seriously.”

— Richard Fausset, the bureau chief in Atlanta, on his techniques for capturing the country.

Richard showed his skill at lingering and listening recently when he documented the sad final days of a weekly newspaper in Warroad, Minn. He transported us to the newsroom of The Warroad Pioneer as part of our series on the collapse of local news outlets.

One of our most important missions, which prompted us to get involved in this debate, is to help the country understand itself. When there’s a historic presidential race like the one unfolding now, that imperative becomes even more essential. Our goal is to reveal to our readers the state of the country, and how the state of the country is shaping its politics.

“I hope to surprise — to surprise my readers with the multifaceted experiences of people of faith, and to surprise the people I write about with the quality and fairness of The New York Times’s reporting.”

— Elizabeth Dias, who travels far from her home base in Washington, D.C., on covering religion.

Elizabeth drew praise from readers across the political spectrum when she wrote about a Tennessee woman who used to attend anti-abortion protests but now runs a center that tries to address some of the reasons women get abortions in the first place.

If traditional political coverage is about getting inside campaigns to understand their strategy, or assessing how various candidates would run the country based on their records, Times coverage is also about seeing the nation from the ground up — from the points of view of all kinds of Americans — and asking them questions that go well beyond whom they plan to vote for on Election Day.

We’re not in search of quick sound-bites, but rather insights into what is on the minds of people far from our headquarters near Times Square, where our team of editors is based.

Working together with our excellent Politics team, our national correspondents, frequent fliers all, roam far and wide across the country to get to the next story. The datelines atop their stories, which indicate where they filed them from, may be LOS ANGELES, HOUSTON or MIAMI. But they could just as well be COMPTON, Calif.; ANAHUAC, Tex.; or HOMESTEAD, Fla.

“I think of that old story about the reporter who came into the Deep South after Homer Bigart, the great Times correspondent, and approached someone Bigart had just spent time with. ‘He was so stupid,’ the person said. ‘I had to tell him everything.’”

— Campbell Robertson, a correspondent based in Pittsburgh, on the importance of listening rather than talking.

Campbell recently spent time in Appalachia, documenting subtle trends such as how Letcher County in Kentucky managed to have one of the greatest shifts in the gender balance of the work force in the country.

In a small town called Fleming-Neon, Ky., he met Amanda Lucas, whose husband had had a mining job before that industry went bust. “We had a good life,” she told Campbell, whom one can imagine nodding knowingly and not saying a word.

America is a place where emotions vary widely, from elation to despair, so we’re careful not to over-generalize the circumstances of the people we bump into on the road.

We’re not conducting polls, although polling and data inform what correspondents do. Our job is not to predict the outcome of an election but to make sure that, regardless of which candidates come out on top, we show readers the forces behind Americans’ political choices. Whether people are feeling anger, fear or hope, we try to catalog it. If there are big trends or changes occurring in the country, we seek to reveal them.

“It is a privilege to travel the country and see so many things, to be inside so many people’s homes, to hear so many stories. I believe it’s my responsibility to ask the questions our readers would want to ask their neighbors or their political leaders if they could be by my side.”

— Julie Turkewitz, a national correspondent based in Denver, on the pride she takes in getting off the beaten path out West.

Julie relishes those “long freewheeling conversations” with strangers, neighbors, friends, and friends of friends that provide a window into “their lives, jobs, opportunities, current place in the world.”

“My job is not just to say what the person thinks, but to get under the skin and try to explain why they think that. What is it about this person’s life that has brought them to their politics? What were the emotional pivots that caused them to end up here?”

— Sabrina Tavernise on how she views her mission as a national correspondent.

Sabrina captured the effects of the decision by General Motors to stop producing cars at a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, not far from where Tuesday’s presidential debate will be held. A man named Rick Marsh was losing the only real job he’d had in the past 25 years, and didn’t put much faith in the parade of politicians who were lamenting the closing. “They are so out of touch with reality and real people,” he told Sabrina. “All of them.”

“Few topics in American life are as polarizing and misunderstood as race. I try to get people to reflect sincerely, bluntly, and often in ways they never have before, on how race influences their experiences and perceptions. I know I’ve hit gold when the stories upend the easy assumptions and stereotypes that we all have about race.”

— John Eligon, a national correspondent based in Kansas City, on the challenges of writing subtle pieces about hot-button issues like race.

John described the soul searching that took place at a racially mixed high school in Owatonna, Minn., after a white student posted a racial slur on Snapchat.

Times national correspondents got together recently to discuss what questions they would most like to ask the 12 Democratic presidential candidates who will be on the stage in Westerville, Ohio, on Tuesday night. Their list was long. Their topics were varied. One night would not be enough time to tackle them.

To see what questions the candidates end up having to answer, follow along with Times coverage of the debate, which starts at 8 p.m. Eastern.

Follow the @ReaderCenter on Twitter for more coverage highlighting your perspectives and experiences and for insight into how we work.