“We need to reclaim public and higher education as a public good, as a democratic public sphere that is absolutely vital for educating students to be engaged and critical citizens. That should be as important as national defense.”
“The standard of evidence in academics is ten out of ten, and the time pressure is one out of ten. And in Washington, it’s kind of the reverse. The standard of evidence is much lower than in an academic setting, but you have to have it by Friday.”
When I was working at the U.S. mission, in the morning I could be doing Yemen, then Ukraine in the middle of the day, and Syria at the end.
In Norwegian politics, “It’s the argument or the passion which you decide to express yourself which counts, not money. “
“The thing about Buzzfeed that’s really cool is that we have a bunch of different identities – you can see that both in the types of people who work in the newsroom and the content we produce. We really try to reach people where they are. And that means that we have to maintain a lot of different identities at once.”
I believe that I am the best candidate because deep down I know that I can run this country well. It requires having a positive agenda that people can understand, and it requires making that agenda acceptable across party lines to enough Democrats so you can actually accomplish something.
I definitely wanted to write for a popular audience, I just didn’t know it would be from the nitty-gritty world of journalism rather than the “Ivory Tower high-horse” position, so to speak. We like to say data journalism is social science on deadline. So I think I’ve kind of melded these two worlds.
We talk about her path from grad school to the news room, the beauty of obscure interests, what artificial intelligence can tell us about the writing process, and more!
