Lecture: Errol Louis
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To some, "politics" may be a dirty word. To Errol Louis, a political columnist for The New York Daily News, sifting through the dirty business of politics is a way to make a living.
Louis is a political reporter, but he was almost a politician. In 1997, he ran for the Brooklyn City Council. He finished third, but the loss may have saved his life. In 2003, the man Louis ran against was shot to death in the council chambers by a political rival.
Not winning a city council seat helped Louis in another way. His personal experience as a would-be politician gave him an insider's-eye view of borough politics in New York.
"I tell people—I'm not a player, but I'm still in the game," Louis joked on September 22, speaking to members of the journalism department at New York University as part of the Brown Bag lunchtime lecture series. "I just have a different position."
A pretty prominent one, too.
Louis, who graduated from Harvard with a degree in government and later from Yale with a degree in political science, has forged a successful career in journalism without ever actually applying for a job as a journalist.
The New York native began his journalistic career in 1982, writing opinion essays for The Harvard Crimson. He also worked as an intern for the Boston bureau of The Wall Street Journal in 1983, filing to the Dow Jones wire and learning to cope with the pressures of covering breaking news.
But financial reporting didn't suit Louis. He wanted to write about politics, and so he did.
"It's a great job," he told the audience in the fifth-floor atrium of NYU's Department of Journalism. "I'm paid to just be myself. I read about politics; I always have an opinion about it anyhow. Instead of just boring my friends and neighbors I get to write it down."
"You're dealing with a lot of muck and dirty tricks," he said. "An extraordinary number of people are drawn into the political side of public service for the wrong reasons—like ego. There are a lot of people in this town—a lot of people in this town— where food, water, and ego are what they live on. And it's not clear that ego is the third thing."
Louis worked briefly in 1984 at The City Sun, a Brooklyn-based black weekly that folded in the mid-1990s. After leaving the publication because "they weren't paying us," Louis worked as a freelance writer until landing a job in 2002 as an associate editor at The New York Sun. He held that position until June of this year when The New York Daily News offered him a job.
Local politics is a relatively small niche, said Louis, who estimates that there are no more than 20 reporters covering local politics, exclusively, in New York City. Working a beat means "being able to explain a particular part of the world to people," said Louis, whose particular part of the world can get pretty nasty.
In local politics, scandals and corruption are not uncommon. Louis noted that, in the last three years, he has covered six politicians who are now serving jail time.
"You're dealing with a lot of muck and dirty tricks," he said. "An extraordinary number of people are drawn into the political side of public service for the wrong reasons—like ego. There are a lot of people in this town—a lot of people in this town— where food, water, and ego are what they live on. And it's not clear that ego is the third thing."
During the question and answer period that followed Louis' talk, NYU journalism students wanted to know: Just how does one go about covering a public figure—making him or her accountable without always being on the attack?
By being fair, Louis suggested, who said he tries to make sure that he's neither a public relations representative, showering compliments upon his subject, or a constant critic, tearing into the same politician week after week. A balance of praise and criticism is crucial to maintaining a good relationship with the people he covers, said Louis, who maintains a healthy distance from his subjects, to ensure journalistic neutrality. He tries not to socialize with politicians outside of political events, he noted, adding that his best sources are the people who work for the people he covers, not the politicians themselves.
Still, it's easy for the real issues to get lost in the "horse race" aspects of local politics, as politicians struggle to stay in office. Understanding this, Louis said, is the key to good political reporting.
"For a local politician, it is never about the issue," Louis said. "The first job of any politician is to get reelected—to stay in the game. That's the first commandment of political reporting. If you don't get that, then you'll miss every other thing that they do—every other thing that they say."
Louis' own experience in politics helps him to dig deeper into his stories. He understands how things work, which enables him to make issues understandable to readers who might otherwise be confused by all the political rhetoric.
And the issues, according to Louis, are what matters.
"I assume that something good is going to come out the other side," he said. "I see my job as trying to explain that to people. That's it in a nutshell. If you want to understand what the Democratic party is you can switch on Fox News or CNN and see a bunch of people blabbing about it, or you can go look into the second largest county unit [Brooklyn] of the oldest political party in the world."
The way Louis sees it, he has a front row seat to the action-packed drama, complete with both comic and tragic elements, that is New York City local politics. He knows how the game is played.
"If you want to understand [New York City politics]," he said, "you have to get to know some of the players."
Not that a reporter needs to become a player, as Louis almost did. He could have been a contender. Instead, he's a reporter—and loving every minute of it.