15 Things You Didn’t Know About Jon Carroll, the San Francisco Chronicle Columnist

• He doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree
• During his two years at UC Berkeley from 1961-63 he was part of the crowd that surrounded the police car holding Free Speech activist Jack Weinberg. But he didn’t go to the follow up sit-in in Sproul Hall because he had a date with a hot chick.
• He has worked for Oui, the soft-porn magazine and for Rolling Stone. He served as west coast editor for the Village Voice and edited New West magazine.
• Part of his deal with New West made the magazine pay for his children to fly down from San Francisco to Los Angeles twice a month so they could visit their father.
• His first job at the Chronicle was as vacation relief; at the end of his time then-editor Bill German asked Carroll if he wanted to write a column. He has been writing it now for 29 years.
• His first column explored the idea of the universe as a guest on the Johnny Carson show.
• One of his most recent columns explored “Jewdar.”
• He is the last remaining five-day a week urban columnist in the United States.
• He writes from his home in Oakland and has to meet a daily 4 pm deadline.
• He loves cats. (But you knew that)
• He doesn’t like dogs, not even the dog owned by his beloved granddaughter, Alice.
• He is a recovering alcoholic (and says once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, even when sober.
• He suffers from diabetes, but he doesn’t have to inject himself with insulin. He takes pills instead.
• He lost 50 pounds in the last year by going on a gruel-based diet.
• His favorite books are Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy about WWI; Nicholson Baker’s books “The Mezzanine” and “You and I,” and anything by Richard Powers.
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All of this information came out March 23 when UC Berkeley Journalism Professor Cynthia Gorney interviewed Carroll in a benefit for Park Day School in Oakland. It was a terrific evening; Gorney was relaxed and funny and obviously has a lot of fun interviewing her old friend.

Submersion Journalism

Is it ethical to disguise yourself as a businessman and interview Washington D.C. lobbyists about how they can help promote a totalitarian government? Is it okay to tape those conversations?

Can a reporter sign up for a poetry conference, attend without identifying he is a reporter, and write about it for Harper’s Magazine?

Is it okay to spend a year as a prison guard and not tell your colleagues that you want to write about life inside Sing Sing?

These were some of the questions that came up Monday night at a panel discussion put on by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The event was tied to the release of a new book called Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person, a collection of pieces from Harper’s Magazine.

I went because I wanted to hear Ted Conover, the author or numerous first person books, including Newjack, about the year he spent as a corrections officer at Sing Sing prison in New York. Other panelists included Michael Pollan, Roger D. Hodge, the editor of Harpers, and Jake Silverstein, who has a piece in the collection and is currently editor of Texas Monthly. Cynthia Gorney, who is a professor at the grad school with Pollan, moderated the discussion.

I didn’t get to hear enough about Conover’s techniques or what he is working on now. I did learn, however, that when he was an undergraduate at Amherst he went to visit Neil Henry, then a reporter at the Washington Post. (Henry is a professor at the j-school and emceed the event) Henry had done two pieces of immersion reporting for the Post, one where he disguised himself as a homeless man for two months and one where he worked as a migrant worker. Conover wanted to ask Henry about his techniques. Who would have guessed in 1980 that Conover would one day become master of the form?

There were really two different discussions going on. One involved more general reporting where the journalist is a subject of sorts. Michael Pollan’s attempt to grow opium and his subsequent troubles with the law fall into that category. Pollan also bought a steer cow and followed its life cycle for a story.

The other category involves outright deception or acts of omission. Roger Hodge talked about a story Ken Silverstein did for Harpers where he pretended to want to hire a lobbyist to work for the corrupt government of Turkmenisten. Silverstein wanted to find out how lobbyists manipulate reporters and the government, so he pretended to be part of a fictitious group called the Maldon Group. He set up a website for the group, got a cell phone with a London phone number (where the Maldon Group supposedly was located) and then made appointments all over town. The result was a 2007 expose that showed how lobbyists have no compunction about working with governments that terrorize their own citizens.

Some of the best reporting comes from deception but most reporters and papers claim they only use it as a last resort. Cynthia Gorney tried to generate a discussion about the ethical issues around submersion reporting, but the panelists did not disagree. All said they were generally opposed to deception but thought it could be used in certain circumstances.

The panel discussion was only marginally interesting. However, I bought the book and read Silverstein’s article. While I am uncomfortable with the fact that he taped all his conversations with lobbyists (in Washington D.C. it is legal to tape a conversation if just one person knows it is happening) the piece is enlightening. Those lobbyists really are scumbags. (Big surprise) But to hear their words and strategies is downright frightening. It is clear that with the right amount of money, any reprehensible organization can put a positive spin on news and events.