Shannon Proudfoot

Why did you become a journalist?

I have a framed print on my desk right beside my keyboard that says "Don't forget to tell us how weird it is." It's a line from the foreword to "McCain's Promise," David Foster Wallace's book-length account of the 2000 Republican primary campaign, and that sentence is the advice American political writer Jacob Weisberg always gives to new journalists. It's become my mantra as a not-so-new journalist, too. One of the biggest thrills and privileges of journalism is getting to go where other people can't and act as a tour guide bringing back bits of what we get to see on their behalf. The weird stuff along the margins - the stage management, the emotional reactions, the messiness, the difference between what people say and what they mean - usually seems the most illuminating to me. It's those pieces that often get discarded on the cutting-room floor that I most love scooping up and stitching back together to tell the story. I figure that since our press passes get us behind so many rope lines, our job is to come back and share with readers exactly what it looked and felt like on the other side.