Post-election, one thing is clear: reporters from leading publications thought the race would be a lot closer than it actually was. Eliza Griswold ’95, Pulitzer-prize winner, Director of Princeton’s Journalism department, and contributing writer at the New Yorker, was one of them, anticipating a close Kamala Harris victory. Her inaccurate prediction wasn’t for a lack of trying, though. Looking to “cross lines of difference,” Griswold traveled to nearly every corner of Pennsylvania, speaking with voters from as many different constituencies as possible. She interviewed state officials defending against election interference; organizers canvassing in the white suburbs of Philadelphia; evangelicals turning out for Harris; and even rally goers who witnessed Trump get shot in the ear. Drawing from these conversations, she’s now processing what happened and what we might be able to expect over the next four years.

During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed her election reporting in Pennsylvania, the gains Trump made on Election Day that reporters did not foresee, and how journalism should adapt to prepare for Trump’s second presidency.

Covering Pennsylvania this election season, what did your reporting look like? What did you see? 

The first Pennsylvania piece that I wrote was to cover the assassination attempt of Trump in Butler County. I saw just no question that Trump was going to be elected in the sort of rush of outpouring after that assassination attempt. It seemed to all of us that it was done. 

Then, attention around the assassination attempt faded pretty fast.

I set out to do the next story. I was working on this assignment before Harris became the nominee, which was, “Will black men vote for Biden?” But then, two days before I started reporting, Harris became the candidate. I went out into Philadelphia with this awesome Working Families Party city councilman, Nick O’Rourke. We went to barbershops, and some of those conversations just blew my mind: they were deeply, deeply arresting. So many of the men we were talking to were going to vote for Trump, and many of them explained to me, in terms I hadn’t really understood, how Trump had been a popular icon for Black men long before he was president. He had this kind of cult status, he had made all this money, he’d gotten one over on the man for a really long time. He was seen as an ultimate gangster, I had not known that.

Then I did the “doomsday scenarios” [piece]. I thought the most interesting way to do that would be to hang out with Al Schmidt, the Secretary of State in Pennsylvania, and a Republican, so it got us beyond just party lines. I realized while doing that reporting that he and everybody else had been table topping, running these war games for six months about what could go wrong, and the most likely thing to go wrong would be the reelection of Trump. 

For Schmidt, this was especially profound because he testified in front of the January 6th commission. Trump had said, “Go find Al Schmidt.” And Al Schmidt had had to move with his family, he received death threats. There were very real stakes for Trump’s reelection because Al Schmidt would definitely be an enemy of Trump. I think that was really sobering because it was seeing the stakes for election workers, but it was also like, this could be really bad. All of these signs were ominous, but I think I am proximate enough to the sort of bubble of media that I continued to assume [Harris] would narrowly win, mostly because I couldn’t conceive of her loss. 

So what happened on Election Day?

I went out with a lightning [canvassing] team on election day in Germantown, which is a heavily African American neighborhood in Philadelphia, and nobody was turning out. That was midday, and that was concerning. By late that afternoon, I was in Chester County, which reliably goes blue now. I just thought I would do a random “asking women in the parking lot who they were voting for.” I pegged two voters as Harris voters, and I was wrong on both counts.

One was this woman in yoga pants, wearing a sweatshirt that said “Kindness.” And I just was like, “Can I talk to you?” She’s like, “Yeah.” I was like, “What do you care most about?” I assumed I was going to hear a code for reproductive rights, democracy. Instead she’s like, “I care about the economy.” I was like, “What do you mean?” She’s like, “Well, my grocery bills are very expensive and I’m the one who does the shopping.” I could tell where that was going and it was certainly eye opening.

The next voter I talked to was an 18 year old girl, a first-time voter, with her dad: a high school senior in Chester County. Her dad was so proud of her and proud that the New Yorker would be talking to her. We got into it and I was like, “Which candidate do you think speaks more effectively to young people?” And she’s like, “Donald Trump definitely speaks more effectively to young people.” I was like, Wow, like this is just a kind of normalization, that the dad is okay with her talking this way to the New Yorker.

The loss of Pennsylvania was surprising to me. Logically, I understood that it was the likely scenario, but I really hadn’t internalized it. And I’m not sure that I have now.

What responsibility do you feel as a reporter when covering an election like this? Do you have a sense of what we missed?

I see it more in my classroom, to be honest. I have been talking a lot about how reporting requires crossing lines of difference for a few reasons. I didn’t want to continue the trope of the white working class Trump voter; I didn’t want to bring Southwestern Pennsylvania folks in on Zoom who would just reinforce stereotypes. That’s just not doing any good.

I heard a comment by Sherrilyn Ifill on Rachel Maddow. She said that we have too much reporting as stenography. I don’t think we need tons of op-eds or that sort of annoying phase –  that has gone away –  where journalists felt they had to fact check in real time in an interview. That didn’t work very well. 

I think that scene-based narrative nonfiction is really helpful with learning about people and how they think. And I could have done that more effectively in unusual places. I’m thinking of the Black men piece. Those were unlikely Trump voters. I could have spent more time with them maybe, been like, this is very real. I don’t know. But definitely speaking to people who felt differently and having the confidence to do that, and bringing them into the classroom, which I’m doing now. 

You often mentioned the need to cross lines of difference. What do you think that looks like in the next four years? 

One of the reasons I repeat that so often is because it is the ethic of journalism. We’ve gotten into this other ethical sense. I heard this a lot in my classrooms with my graduate students at NYU, where they would almost shame one another for talking to people outside of their political affiliation: “Why would you talk to them?” or “Don’t platform that person.” 

I doubled down on the principle that our ethics are not about holding the right ideas. Insisting on that is insisting on what journalism does. Its ethics aren’t to believe the right things. Its ethics are to go talk to everybody, to gather information widely and accurately. That act reinforces the fabric of democracy, when done skillfully and authentically. When I show up and I give people extra time, and I’m really trying to understand what they’re saying, and the piece reflects that, I have walked away rebuilding somebody’s trust in the media. That is really important, and that is a teachable skill.

When I was a young reporter working in the Middle East and Africa, Ian Jack, this awesome Granta editor, asked me, “Why is it that Americans pretend that all the trouble in the world is elsewhere?” I was like, “Woah.” I came home to look at America through the same lens, focusing on what’s important. My role here [in the Journalism department] feels as important as doing journalism in terms of asking these questions: how are we using these resources, how are we using our talent here to both prepare our students for the world, but also use them as a good. 

We’re going to enter an era with a newly defined black box. The disinterest, the hostility in talking to the press is going to be at an all time high. Teaching against that and preparing students for that feels as much of a vocation as doing the work myself.

In your most recent article, you end with a quote by Al Schmidt that feels especially relevant: “If the will of the people is to dismantle their system of government, then in a democracy, they have that ability.” You wrote this before the results of the election were announced. What do you think about it now? 

I think about it every day. I think about Al Schmidt saying that every day, because I think that’s what’s happened. I believe deeply in continuing to do reporting with the highest ethic and with everybody available. But I look down-ballot at who won the row offices in Pennsylvania, and it’s three MAGA candidates – two were incumbents, so it’s not a huge change. What does that mean four years from now? We need to look far beyond just Trump and into the very way in which the infrastructure of democracy is being taken apart.