BY JOEY MICHALAKES

New York Times Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for a series of pieces on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. She has written for the Times since 1983 and is also the author of two books. During a recent visit to Harvard Ms. Dowd sat down with the HPR and several other campus publications to discuss the changing world of print and broadcast media.

Harvard Political Review: How do you react to the idea that a greater proportion of young people watch the Daily Show or the Colbert Report than the Nightly News? Is this a bad thing? How does the recent surge in popular fake news outlets affect the way real news operates?

Maureen Dowd: Well, I watch the Colbert Report and the Daily Show more than I watch the nightly news. And I really think the alarm about that is silly, because I think if you watch Colbert and Stewart, you learn a lot. One time I was watching Stewart and I had done my column and it was past the first deadline. He’ll show clips of what you might have missed, and in this case I think it was Senator Cornyn saying something incredibly wacky that really fit into my column so I ran over to the phone and I thought, “I’m going to get that message in!” I remember once when a publisher asked him, “How do you get all those clips where you hold Bush accountable for what he said six months ago or three years ago and what he’s saying now?” And very deadpan Steward responded that “All you need is an intern and a video machine.” There is a lot of news on their shows, a lot of information as well as the humor. So, I think it’s fantastic. I think it’s analogous to kids reading Harry Potter, inspiring kids to read. I went on the Colbert show for my first book, and it spoiled me because you’re talking about all this kind of politics stuff and either the audience is really savvy from watching him every night, or they just love him and laugh a lot. Then I went on Letterman and made a joke about Paul Krugman and Letterman and the audience were just dead silent. And at the break, I said to Letterman I promise if you ever invite me back I’ll never make another Paul Krugman joke. When I first started my columns, Michael Kinsley and Bill Safire said to me, “You have to stop doing humor columns because you’ll be seen as too girly.” And I said I would never take humor out of politics. I think it’s a fantastic way to tell the truth, but to take a fresh angle that can lure people in and tell them something true. And I grew up loving Johnathan Swift and Evelyn Waugh, and I think we can use humor and satire to get at the truth and a larger and different audience.

Q: With the rise of blogs, what do you think of the future of journalism?

MD: I’m not very technological. Someone gave me an iPod a year ago but I’ve only just learned how to turn it on. And I don’t blog or anything but I think journalism is about the story or the narrative. And if you look at what I cover, and then you look at Arthur Schlesinger memoirs and read about the communities, and then you look back at Shakespeare, it’s all the same. It’s all about absolute power corrupting absolutely, and the absence of power corrupting absolutely, and the abuse of power and ego, and presidents and aides talking policy and data. It doesn’t matter to me what the delivery system is. The more, the better, the more populist, the better, the more people engaged, the better, but in the end, it’s about the story and about human nature. ]]>http://hprsite.squarespace.com/the-more-things-change-042008/rss-comments-entry-1814205.xml