John Archibald: Journalist first, columnist second

By Brian Pearlman

For John Archibald, writing a worthwhile column is not simply churning out a clickable “spin” or “hot take” on a pressing issue. It involves real journalism and real research.

“I believe that a good column is well-reported,” he says. “And then, honestly — particularly now — if it’s not, then it’s just another voice in a world full of voices.”

By good reporting, Archibald is referring to the classic shoe leather variety — trawling forms, data and records to see where governments spend their money; getting on-the-ground experience and speaking to original sources.

“I think when you offer new information, it adds a lot of value to opinion pieces,” he says.

Archibald spent 20 years as a reporter for The Birmingham News before becoming a columnist in 2004. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2018; his winning columns included a novella-like profile of the queer daughter of conservative Birmingham talk show host Rick Burgess; a piece about a 2015 incident when then-Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore cited God in court filings to lower taxes on his 43,000 square foot, seven-car garage home in Etowah county; and a full-blown investigative analysis piecing together the downfall of now-former Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley — step by scandalous step.

It’s his background in investigative work, coupled with a belief that journalism must never lose its sense of social responsibility that drives him. Sure, people can pull the indictments for themselves and read PDFs of court documents online. But it is Archibald’s job to make the happenings of the day relevant and engaging — to increase Alabamians’ civic awareness and political literacy.

In this sense Archibald is a curator, distilling what he thinks is important for people to know and presenting it in a way that readers will hopefully be interested in and, yes, even entertained by.

And Alabama, a state of over 4.5 million people in which Archibald notes “the head of every branch of government has been booted out of office in the last two years,” is a fitting canvas for a journalist’s brush. You might even call it a “target-rich environment” for reporters — Archibald does.

In fact, the question of who can lay claim to the “most corrupt” state of them all was the subject of a fascinating piece Archibald published in April, in which he asked reporters from Illinois, New Jersey and Louisiana to say why they had it the worst. The verdict? It depends on how you measure corruption, and in any case, everybody loses.

But Illinois and Alabama do share more than a few similarities in this respect: Both suffer under the weight of a Machine. In the case of Illinois, it’s the Democratic Machine, famous for clouted hires, shadowy backroom deals and an unwritten pay-to-play rulebook. In Alabama’s case, it’s a powerful fraternity at the University of Alabama that counts many political figures among its ranks and has been linked to influence schemes and even alleged voter fraud. Archibald delved into The Machine in a podcast last year called “Greek Gods.”

Another similarity between the two states: an eye-rolling cynicism among the citizenry about their respective governments’ predilection towards self enrichment and corrupt dealings.

“We are incredibly cynical and expect the worst from our politicians, and we aren’t always rewarded when we get it,” he says.

Archibald is currently on a month-long break from his column while he works on a podcast project, which he jokes is putting him “in the throes of withdrawal.” As such, you can’t currently find his thoughts on some of the biggest recent news in Alabama politics: former Attorney General Jeff Sessions running once again for the Senate seat he held for 20 years.

“I think he’s determined in this very bright-red state to maintain his loyalty to the president, and he would probably be the favorite at this point,” Archibald says.

It hasn’t always been easy for Archibald, especially in the current environment of shuttered newsrooms and major layoffs at newspapers across the country. In 2012, almost two-thirds of the staff across Alabama’s three largest newspapers were laid off, leaving Al.com, under the banner of Alabama Media Group, in their wake. A September 2018 piece in the Columbia Journalism Review quotes Archibald describing the need to hunker down and push onwards with good-old-fashioned reporting, regardless of where the winds of the industry blow.

“I am a columnist,” he is quoted as saying. “I’ve got my head down worrying about what tomorrow’s column is going to be about. I don’t have time to worry about the rest of it.”

Now, he adds an additional word of advice.

“The only time I’m ever happy is when I’m doing good work, and I know that was the case in 1986 as much as it is today,” he says.” While he doesn’t agree with every aspect of the “New Media” landscape, including the over-reliance on clicks as a measure of success, he also says that any way to get more people reading journalism is ultimately a good thing.

“I think,” he says, “we just have to hold onto those good things about journalism ethics and hard work and fairness and being accountable — and writing corrections when you need to, and those sorts of things — and social responsibility, which is what’s really sort of lost in this age — while at the same time looking forward in a realistic way about how to reach people in a changing news environment.”

At a DePaul event with former Sun-Times music critic and investigative reporter Jim DeRogatis in October, the “Sound Opinions” co-host also discussed journalistic ethics and the line between objectivity and fairness. In his view, there is no such thing as objectivity in a world of human emotion and personal, subjective experience, but journalism nonetheless requires scrupulous fairness at every corner, “bending over quintuple backwards to include the other side.”

Archibald largely agrees, though he says he isn’t bound to include the other side in a column. The news business, he believes, has sometimes used “both sides”-ism as a crutch.

“I need to be able to say unequivocally that something is right or something is wrong, something is good [or] something is bad, something is absurd or it’s not — or there’s no point in me writing a column,” he says.

“In not every case do we need to give both sides of the issue a voice. I don’t think I need to go ask a flat-earther if the world is round. There are certain times where everybody’s voice doesn’t need to be heard, and I think we have to be able to figure out when those times are.”

As for Alabama’s political corruption, the beat goes on.

In a series of award-winning columns last year, Archibald and colleague Kyle Whitmire wrote about a state lawmaker being bribed to look the other way on industrial pollution. The wide-reaching case resulted in the conviction of State Rep. Oliver Robinson, a coal company executive and a powerful lawyer; it also ensnared a county tax assessor and the president of the Birmingham NAACP.

Archibald now writes of a “shadow government” in Alabama stretching from the community level to the highest echelons of political power.

In a state where Donald Trump got 62 percent of the vote in the 2016 presidential election, Archibald is still trying to figure out why so many Alabamians are distrustful of their state politicians, yet they appear overwhelmingly supportive of the White House.

“I can’t figure out the connection,” he says.

A subject for a future column, perhaps.

Clarence Page is coming!!!! What is fake news?

2-time Pulitzer prize winning Tribune columnist Clarence Page is coming to the DePaul Center for Journalism Integrity & Excellence on February 7th to speak to students in the morning and address a larger DePaul gathering at the Union League Club at 5:30P.  He will take a long  look at the last election, the new administration and what it all means for journalism in our time! We can’t wait!