Announcer this week on q a, amy chozick. She talks about her career in journalism prior to joining the times. Brian amy chozick, how would you describe your beat at the New York Times . Amy i have the hillary beat. People ask, you cover one person . But it is the entire universe from the foundation to the donors to the super pacs. It is a giant world. I used be a Business Reporters are think of it as covering a sprawling corporation. Brian when did you first get this beat . Amy summer of 2013. I am glad i started so early because i had time before the chaos of the president ial campaign to really think about my subject, to get to know the world outside the crush of breaking news. Brian back in 2013, richard burke, who used to be at the times, and carolyn moran, were talking about this beat. [video clip] Hillary Clinton left the state department saying she wants a normal life. There she was in chicago giving a policy speech, how normal is that . It is not a normal life for a westchester grandmother to be. Now, three relationships were on display. First of all, bill loves to fawn over her publicly and tell the world what a wonderful president she would make. She is acting coy the whole time. Brian how does that work . Amy caroline is great. If you ever watch friday night lights, i think of caroline as coach taylor. She knows how to get the best out of her reporters. I think im exhausted, can deliver another story, and she just knows exactly what to say to get it out of you. Brian who decides what you cover and when . Amy most of it is reporter driven. I think the editors at the times know we are the ones out in the field and that most of the ideas know that they come proposing stories. Of course, my editors are always asking us, what is happening with biden, what is happening with hillarys economic policies, but i would say most of the story ideas are reporter generated, something great about the times. Brian what is the best training you have so far to have this beat . Amy i was at the wall street journal in the white house to cover hillarys campaign in 2008. I think i knew very little about american politics and saw her go from the front runner to losing. I think that was the best into this,r coming as far as anything can happen. Politics can turn on a dime, the country can change its mind, and that was eyeopening to me. Brian ive seen you quoted saying that you write for your mother instead of gawker. Amy well, i love gawker as much as the next person, but i really do think my mom in texas as sort of my focus group. She was a first grade teacher. We had a very middleclass, comfortable life in texas. She doesnt look at politico. She is not consuming politics in i wont let her be on twitter. She is not consuming politics in the way that we are and the way people in washington and new york do. She sees hillary on the ellen show. I travel with the campaign often and i like to talk to people at her rallies, the housewife in ohio. You know i think it is important , that we keep in mind who is going to be influencing the election. I want my stories to resonate with people who arent just the ones behind the campaign, i just want to be like a good story that people relate to. Brian you mentioned the ellen show and we have a clip from that. I want to describe what this means to someone like you in print reporting. [video clip] [rap music] brian what would your mom react to there . Amy i think that looks like a grandma trying to dance and i think a lot of people relate. Interestingly, that didnt play so well among africanamericans on twitter. They sort of took offense at her attempting to do that. You know i think it is a mixed , bag. On one hand, people have a cynical take on Hillary Clinton. You know she is trying to dance , to relate, she never did that before. To others, it came across as kind of clumsy or to use another word, authentic. Brian how many followers do you have on twitter . Amy 20,300 or Something Like that . Brian when you worked at the wall street journal, was there twitter . Amy i had just started there, i hadk maybe i had twitter just started then, i think maybe i had 700 and followers. Brian what is the difference for somebody who is not on twitter like your mom and the Younger Generation who is there all the time . Amy in terms of what kind of news they are consuming . Brian the difference between what they know. Amy it is interesting you play the ellen clip. On one hand, she has her audience of people at home during the day to watch television. Either they are stayathome moms or they have untraditional jobs. Then she has this whole viral audience. That clip that you played went all over social media and reached people that dont watch the ellen show in the middle of the day. So, i do think there are these sorts of bifurcated audiences. Brian when you get information in the course of reporting, how much do you put on twitter before it goes in the paper . Amy i think twitter is a tool to drive people to the New York Times and our articles. And so as much as you can hold , off on tweeting to put it in a story and even if it is just a quote, it is necessary to have that link and ultimately drive people back to my employer. Brian over the last several years in your reporting politics, what do you remember where you are at your end of your rope, exhausted, and couldnt believe this was going to go on much longer . Amy there was a buildup. There was a buildup period where we were waiting for her announcement to come. We were not getting any guidance on when this was happening and it was sort of an exhausting few days. Do we have our story ready . Do we not . At the same time, it was very exciting because i had been covering her since 2013. It was like, oh god, it is going to be a long road ahead. Brian what is a normal political day like for you . Amy in this job, there is no normal day. I get Hillary Clintons schedule a couple days in advance so i often dont know what my day will look like, whether i will go to iowa to hear a speech or run over to the Clinton Global Initiative happening in new york right now. You sort of do not know what the day will bring. Or, did some bomb drop in the morning where you have to change what you are working on. We tend to be a little bit late, so i would say on a normal day, i get in around 10 00, probably check email and go through things before then, and then stay until 7 00 or 8 00. But a lot of times, i am not in the office, working remotely or from whatever hillary is. Wherever hillary is. Brian how do you go about gathering the information . You write notes, shorthand, on your computer . How do you do an interview, gather information on a story . Amy i think it depends on the person. If i am talking to voters at a rally, it could make them uncomfortable if i hold my voice recorder in their face. I try to take notes in those cases or maybe just quietly hold a recorder so it is not shoved in their face. At the same time, when you are taking notes, if youre scribbling intently, they might get nervous. Like, what did i say . It depends on the person. If i am interviewing a washington insider or someone who is very wellversed in the press, i would record that. At the same time, sometimes you dont have time to transcribe. If i am doing interviews on the phone, i have my headset and i am incredibly fast typist. My husband says that if journalism doesnt work out i could be like a court stenographer. So, i basically type while the person is talking. But you dont want them to hear you typing because that is also distracting. Brian what does it do to an interview . Amy i have been in interviews where i can hear the person typing it makes me uncomfortable. So i keep my keyboard away and try to be quiet. Brian there was a big interview about you and with you in cosmopolitan. What impact that have on your professional life . Amy it was fun. I wasnt really sure, that was an interesting experience. I thought, that sounds good. I thought, interviews make me nervous but no one i know reads cosmo. It was one of those days where twitter can be a very mean place but i heard a lot from young women, young journalists thanking me for sharing how i got there. It was just really positive feedback, so you know. Brian where did you go to school . Amy university of texas at austin. Brian what did you study . Amy english and latin american studies. Brian how did you get to new york city . Amy i always wanted to move to new york since i was 12 and came to new york on my middle school trip. Texas had great instate tuition. It was right down the street from where i went to school in san antonio. Texas was the best option to go to college but i always had an eye to move to new york. I moved to new york with no job, just some clips from a newspaper. I came here three months before 9 11. Brian what were those early months like and what kind of a job did you have . Amy it was really hard. I dont know what was harder, trying to find aapartment or find a job. It was really difficult because no one wanted a roommate if you didnt have a job. I eventually got a job at conde nast. The magazine publisher. They called me a rover, you move around from different magazines doing temporary work. Then i got a job as an Editorial Assistant at house and garden magazine. I have to say i was pretty outofplace in that building. They publish vogue and all these fancy fashion magazines. I felt out of place. I had never paid more than 30 for a pair of jeans. I just thought, this new york i dont fit in here. And then i got a job at the wall street journal. Brian how . Amy a friend of mine at conde nast had been at the wall street journal and was moving to hong kong and put me up for the job. Demonstrate toou somebody like the wall street journal or the New York Times that you are a reporter and you can write. Amy when i was at the journal, i was technically an assistant. I was so bad at my assistant duties because i wanted to get bylines. Ultimately, it sort of paid off. Makewere like, ok, we will her a reporter or a reporting assistant. I think it is all about clips. I had a day job, i worked six days a week, so i can write on my day off and get stories in the paper. I think it is one of those really Great Industries where it doesnt matter where you went to school or your fancy internship. Like if you have the clips, people will be impressed. ,they will take notice. Brian what is the difference and working at the wall street journal and the New York Times . And i am talking also perception of the world out there that reads it. Amy it is pretty different. I worked at the journal before and after Rupert Murdoch bought it. After, there was a perception that there was a conservative plant. I mean certainly, the editorial is more conservative but i think the News Coverage is as unbiased as any. I think the times is more of a reporters paper, a writers paper. There is just more. When Jill Abramson was talking to me about the times and she said, think of it as a buffet. You can write a book review, a travel piece, an investigative piece. It is a bigger paper and there is more, sort of, to do. Brian what was your reaction when Jill Abramson had to leave the times . Amy i think a lot of women my age were surprised by it. Brian but what impact did it have once it all changed, to you . Amy well i still reported to , carol and ryan, so my daily job was pretty much the same and i had tried to stay focused on what i had done before which was right good stories. Write good stories. Brian how about the publics reaction . Which paper has more power in the political discussion . Amy i think it depends on the topic. I remember covering Hillary Clinton and obama about financial topics. That was a period where the wall street journal was incredibly important. Global financial crisis, you want to talk to the wall street journal. I think the times definitely does drive more of what cable news pundits news is talking about then at the journal. News pundits are talking the journal. T brian what are the difference in covering Hillary Clinton at the journal and at the New York Times . When was the last time you had an interview with her . Amy a sitdown interview, 2008. I think the difference is readers perceive me to be conservative when i worked at the journal and readers perceive me to be liberal when i work at the times. Brian what does that say about readers . Amy i think there is a simplistic breakdown in consuming news based on your own biases. Of course, it is more nuanced. Brian do you feel any politics in the two different newsrooms . Was there any influence to the conservative side at the journal to the liberal side at the times. Amy no, i think i am lucky in that both of the papers i have covered president ial campaigns the news sites have been completely independent from the editorials. The bias is still for a good story, i think. Brian what is your favorite story you have ever done . Amy ever or on the beat . Brian the beat. Amy planet hillary. I was very proud of how that came out. Brian i want to show you two different sides of how people view the New York Times. Explain the david brock thing after we run a clip of david brock on msnbc. Talking about the times. [video clip] david brock i am a Hillary Clinton advocate and supporter but that doesnt mean that my facts are wrong. I lay out to a very detailed veryin this book about a institutional bias against the clintons by the New York Times. You have to start with benghazi, a failed investigation. So, a republican operative colluded with the New York Times to create this email scandal. Let me tell you why. It is brilliant, because this is a liberal paper, the gold standard, the paper of record. So it is the perfect host body , for the anticlinton virus. Brian wasnt too long ago hed be saying this from the other side. About the media and times from the conservative side. So explain david brock. , amy i dont think i can explain david brock. I certainly think he is an effective communicator, defender and brander of all things Hillary Clinton. Im surprised he started with benghazi, i thought he would have started with whitewater. A lot of the clinton conspiracies about the new york and the New York Times to start with whitewater. There were decadelong grievances between the two camps that date back to whitewater. The clintons taking this was sort of an infected scandal. All kinds of drama. I think there is a lot of history there that david brock and Cindy Blumenthal certainly believed to be the case. Brian kyle raines used to be the executive editor, man from the south, hasnt been there since you have been there. Then there is the other side of this. Monica crowley talking on fox news about the New York Times. Lets watch this one. [video clip] the question is, how damaging could this be for her possible president ial run . And i do believe she is running. I think the reason you saw this on the New York Times is not because they want to hurt Hillary Clintons chances but they want to help her. In other words they want to get , the negative stuff out early so that they can claim it has all been covered and it is old news by the time she announces. Secondly, they can say, if there are dirty dealings going on at the Clinton Foundation, it was all going on before she joined. Remember, her name was just plastered on to the foundation. They can say, it was all going on before she was on board and she is there to help. Brian what is it like to listen to that . Amy i have forgotten about that theory. Thank you for that. Very interesting. So, like this is an extreme form of media bias. And we got it out before i think one of the gifts of covering the clintons is that everyone has an opinion and it is exciting as a reporter to write something that everyone has an opinion about. The flipside is that there are going to be all kinds of theories by all types of people. And i think that we know that , scrutiny comes with the territory. I mean, i used to cover business. I covered Rupert Murdoch phone hacking in the u. K. That this was a huge, interesting scandal and very few people cared about these tabloids in the u. K. To cover something with such extreme opinions on both sides is sort of a blessing and a curse. So, it comes with the territory. Brian you heard david brock there, completely flipped, now runs fundraising operations plus media matters. What impact does any of these things have on reporters at the times . And, why does anybody care what david brock says . Amy i think david brock is influential in the democratic party. He is a big fundraising power. He is also very close to the clinton apparatus. Rosen, john podesta Hillary Clintons campaign chairman, of course. Know, you doyou have to Pay Attention to him. You also Pay Attention to people on the other side. Everyone has an agenda but it doesnt necessarily mean we dont have things in our coverage we have to be careful about. Brian if you listen to the talk shows, they all talk about the times is a out to get her or out to get someone defeated on the other side. Is there any truth to any of this and what would you advise the public when they listen to this kind of stuff . Amy i would say the only bias both places have is towards a good story. Brian youve never heard a conversation inside the New York Times, when they say we have to set this up to get the bad stuff out now . Amy never. To i also think, if you talk Mike Bloomberg or andrew cuomo or any number of politicians, they would take issue with our tough coverage of them. Rubio, we wrote about his luxury speedboat and it became a big conspiracy about how the time his wifes speeding tickets, and it was that the times was trying to take down rubio. So i think it is the nature of our coverage. Brian what is the difference in the