To be a good reporter, you have to know your topic. Data mining is one of those topics that is relatively easy to think about at a high level of generality, but increasingly complex the more detailed and nuanced the reporting. It’s the type of beat that repays study and rewards expertise. Here, two of the most well-known data mining reporters share their thoughts on the subject.
Shane Harris is an award-winning author and magazine journalist. His critically acclaimed book The Watchers tells the story of five men who played central roles in some of the most important and controversial national security programs of the past quarter century (Penguin Press, 2010). Shane is the winner of the 2010 Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense. He has four times been named a finalist for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists, which honor the best journalists in America under the age of 35. He is currently senior writer at Washingtonian magazine. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The Daily Beast, TheAtlantic.com, National Journal, The Washington Post, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings.
Many of Shane’s stories are about the inner workings of the U.S. intelligence community, and particularly those individuals who’ve spent their careers on the front lines of national security. He has broken several important stories, including the transfer of the controversial Total Information Awareness program into a secret intelligence agency; foreign penetration of computer networks that control parts of the U.S. electrical grid; cyber espionage directed at American business executives and government officials; classified ties between private security companies and U.S. law enforcement; and key elements of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.
In this interview, Shane talks about his work and how he reports on data mining.
Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at The George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. His most recent book is The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America. He also is the author of The Most Democratic Branch, The Naked Crowd, and The Unwanted Gaze. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School.
Professor Rosen’s essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, on National Public Radio, and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the 10 best magazine journalists in America and the L.A. Times called him, “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.”
In this interview he reflects on his work in the field.
