by Erik Uebelacker
Neil Steinberg has been at this for a while – 35 years to be exact. He was shocked to learn that college kids are still reading his work.
“As a rule, I just imagine that all my readers are 80 years old,” Steinberg told me. “I would never have imagined that you existed.”
The longtime Chicago Sun-Times columnist has, what he describes as, a dream job. Getting paid to share personal opinions and experiences with readers is almost an unattainable dream for recreational column writers like me.
In fact, I’ve often been taught to sway away from this kind of sharing. The idea that “true reporting” requires us to completely remove ourselves and our experiences from a story has been drilled into my head after nearly five years of journalism school.
But sometimes, following this golden rule can leave out the most interesting parts of a story.
“The idea that journalism is only some sort of factual list of something – I mean, that’s stenography or something,” Steinberg said.
Steinberg’s ideas come from his own observations and curiosities. At times, his pursuit of knowledge the topics he selects leads him down some interesting paths that he chooses to share with readers in first-person. In these cases, he doesn’t remove himself from the story. His journalistic process becomes the story.
I remember reading a column of his last year titled, “Why does peanut butter taste so good?” It was one of his zanier concepts for an article, and one that led him down a rabbit hole as he sought answers from “big peanut butter.”
“I didn’t set out to be part of that story,” Steinberg said. “I like peanut butter, and it was my perception that it tasted better than it used to. That was when I went to Smucker’s to ask about it. This was something which they could have just responded to, but they didn’t. And it was maddening.”
Steinberg’s received a lackluster response from the Smucker’s organization and was ghosted by other big players in the peanut industry. His relentless pursuit of knowledge eventually led him to Jordan Powers, food scientist at the University of Georgia, who gave Steinberg the answers he’d been looking for.
There was no crunchy revelation; the simple answer is adding more fatty acid that preserves flavor for longer. But for peanut butter-enjoyers of a certain age, that makes a big difference in taste.
This story had a big impact on me at the time, not because it was groundbreaking investigative journalism, but because Steinberg engrossed me in a topic that I never thought I cared about and brought me along on his reporting mission through his first-person writing.
Steinberg has even proven this writing strategy’s effectiveness with more serious topics. One of his most frequented issues is gun control. He once went to a gun store to rent and shoot a gun for one of his stories.
“When I first went, they said, ‘We can’t rent the gun to you,’” Steinberg said. “’Why?’ I asked. He said, ‘Because people who rent the gun commit suicide, so you need a second person.’ So, I brought my 11-year-old son in.”
That’s a hell of an anecdote, and one that would have likely been left aside if Steinberg was too worried about removing himself from the story. I, for one, am glad he wasn’t. When the reporting process is as engaging as Steinberg’s was, no one should be.
After all, opinion writing is still journalism, despite what detractors may say. Steinberg went to the edge of the earth to find data on peanut butter. If Smucker’s was a public institution, I bet he would’ve filed a few FOIAs, too.
Presenting found information in a first-person column doesn’t detract from the journalistic value a story holds, so long as that information is vetted and correct.
“I think, to have trusted sources and to have people to mediate that information is essential,” he said.
Mediator of information – that’s a liberal definition of “journalist” that I can get behind.
-30-