Teaching a new dog old tricks

By: Rachel Morgan

In a world of constantly changing, technology-infused news media, Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow is ferociously holding onto the rapidly disappearing tradition of print media.

Saslow, 27, has been a staff reporter at the Post for five years. At only 27, he is young by Post standards. He’s also had the unlikely success and editorial freedom most reporters can only dream of.

“We’re sort of the antithesis of new media people,” Saslow said of he and editor and mentor David Finkle’s partnership.

Saslow, with a mop of ruffled brown hair, easily reddening cheeks and a gold wedding ring he seems too young to wear, works on a unique beat. Working closely with Finkle, he tackles larger, investigative and in depth pieces that run roughly every ten days – a lifetime by journalistic standards.

“My situation is unique – I’ve got an editor who spends a lot of time on my stories,” he said. “That’s rare.”

Most of Saslow’s stories run front page, Finkle said – only because Saslow won’t say so himself.

Saslow’s newest project is a year-long series focusing on the “enigma” of President Barack Obama. This has not been an easy task, he admits.

“[President Obama’s] access is so unbelievably limited,” Saslow said, as he leans back in his rolling chair. “The challenge of this job is to get close and write about his life without actually getting that close. Half of the job is actually doing the stories and the other half is getting people to let you write the story.”

Covering a president’s every move is an entirely different game than it was 40 years ago, Saslow said.

“Writing about people gets harder the more prominent they are,” he said. “In this case, that’s metasticized ten times.”

Saslow graduated from Syracuse University in 2004 and got his foot in the door at the Post by interning in the summer of 2003. He covered high school volleyball.

“[Interning] has been a major vehicle into jobs at this place for a long time,” he said of the Post. But he’s hesitant to say his internship at the Post was his big break.

“You need breaks, but you have to make your own breaks, as well,” he said. “You have to have your vision be bigger than the vision of the people you work for. People are desperate for good ideas and good content.”

And Saslow’s vision has proven to stretch further than high school athletics. Just two years later, he’s writing about the most influential man in the world with one of the most influential newspapers in the country as his byline.

And that byline can be a powerful thing, he said.

“It definitely makes a big difference,” he said. “There’s no way I could get some people on the phone if I didn’t work at the Washington Post. It still has some great gravitas that comes with it, there’s some sense of immediate respect.”

But the Post enjoys less respect and dominance of the industry than it did pre-internet, he said.

“The media landscape has changed so dramatically,” he said. “[Back then,] I don’t think it was as hard to get access as it is now. I would be talking directly to the President, if not his chief of staff.”