Nancy Gibbs: [00:00:00] It's not to say that ambition is overrated, but there are lots of ways to be ambitious and there's nothing wrong with climbing a ladder, but you wanna be sure you're on the ladder, you wanna be on, and that it's taking you somewhere that you wanna go, as opposed to climbing for the sake of climbing.

Michael Oved: Someone's still in school or someone's working a full-time job. Now, what should they do if they want a successful career in journalism? 

Nancy Gibbs: Try to be really deliberate about your information diet, changing the lens through which you are watching events. Unfold because I think right now that ability is essential to understanding.

Michael Oved: Welcome back to 30 years in 30 minutes. I'm your host, Michael Oved, and we've got a great episode for you today. With that, it is my pleasure to introduce you today's guest. Nancy Gibbs is an award-winning writer, speaker, presidential historian, and the former editor-in-Chief of Time Magazine directing news and feature coverage across all platforms for more than 65 million readers worldwide.

Nancy's one of the most published writers in the history [00:01:00] of time having covered four presidential campaigns and 175 cover stories. More than any other writer. In March, 2018, she joined the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School in April of 2019. She was named the faculty director of the Sorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy, and in May was named the Edward R.

Morrow, professor of the Practice. She's the co-author along with Michael Duffy of two bestselling presidential histories, the President's Club inside the world's most exclusive fraternity, which spent 30 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list, and the preacher and the president's Billy Graham in the White House.

Professor, thank you again for joining us today. Nice to be with you. Professor, what experiences in your childhood and what about your upbringing piqued your interest in journalism? 

Nancy Gibbs: I wasn't actually interested in journalism particularly growing up. I enjoyed writing enormously, but my first job in journalism was almost an accident and it had to do with, you know, what summer job I could [00:02:00] get.

And I thought I would be a terrible camp counselor. Um. Or you know, diner waitress or, I mean, I looked at the jobs available to a 16-year-old and getting an internship in a small newspaper felt like that would be more fun than the alternatives. So I was very interested and enjoyed writing a lot.

Journalism was not something I thought about, partly because I assumed journalism involved. Going out and getting people to tell you things, and that terrified me. So I actually was sort of actively, actively hostile to what I thought a journalistic career involved. So then what changed your mind? That took a long time.

I, it was the. The interest in writing and in storytelling and the maybe arrogant notion of writing the first draft of history, I was a history major in college and I was very interested in the kind of let's what is now called [00:03:00] nonfiction narrative, but of trying to make sense of events sort of in real time.

And so the job that I wanted was at one of the news magazines, which. Were still enormously powerful, um, at both time. And Newsweek had huge audiences and huge access to newsmakers. And importantly for someone who was shy and scared of people, they did not make the people they hired as writers. Ever leave their headquarters to actually go interact with humans.

They had a whole army of terrific correspondence. Sort of, you know, these great investigators who would gather the news, get people to tell them things, unearth documents, do the real, uh, important exploratory and work of journalism. We were the explanatory part. And so all of their reporting would come into New York and the job of the writers would be to turn those into sort of seamless narratives.

So it was perfect for people who liked to write and were terrified of stepping foot [00:04:00] actually outside into the real world. That first summer job was with the Chatauqua Daily. And the Chatauqua Daily only exists for two months a year during the sort of July and August period when the Chiqua Institution in Western New York.

Puts on a summer season of lectures and concerts and classes and seminars. And so the Cha Daily was basically, um, to tell people at Chala what's going on today, who's coming to speak, um, review the previous night's concert. And so it was actually kind of amazing the people I got to interview. Just by virtue of being assigned to cover the morning lectures, um, because the world kind of came to Chatauqua, so as I say, accidental, but, um, but tremendously fun and interesting.

Michael Oved: The Chatauqua Institute really was a place filled with all these sorts of artists. Educators and thinkers of all different backgrounds and [00:05:00] opinions and perspectives, what lessons did you learn there that best prepared you for your time in journalism and, and at time? 

Nancy Gibbs: I think both my brother and I would say as many kids who spent summers in Chicago would say that it really was the formative, not nothing against our formal educations, but this idea of people coming together in the summer in sort of their free time and choosing to.

Sort of try to understand things better, to try to engage with people who disagree with them. This whole idea that we talk about a lot now about civil discourse, that was really the, the sort of founding principle Cha was founded 150 years ago with this idea that people should try to keep on learning all through their life.

The oldest continuous book club in America is the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle. So I think this idea. Of that you are never done learning and that your life will be enriched if you are. [00:06:00] Around other curious people and to feed your curiosity. Curiosity is the, is the, the fuel system of journalism.

And while I wouldn't have put them together at the time, I think that the, the sort of underlying fabric of Chatauqua and its mission very much influenced, um, how I came to think about the world and my curiosity about it and desire to try to make sense of it. 

Michael Oved: For the people who don't have access to places like the Chautauqua Institute who want to expand their worldview and surround themselves with people similar to those who spend time at the Chatauqua Institute, what advice would you give them about how they can attain or, or have those types of experiences?

Nancy Gibbs: Well, the nice thing is when Chatauqua was founded, you know, we joke that it was the original internet. Because it's, its principle was to, was to connect people and then expose them to, you know, ideas and information and that they couldn't have access to otherwise. And now while it is obviously not the [00:07:00] same as coming together, you know, wooden amphitheater with 6,000 other people, um, it's also less necessary in the sense that access to inter uh, to information has never been.

Greater. So, you know, the version of what I would say now to people, um, which is something I tell my students, is to try to be really deliberate about your information diet, which is to say if you find yourself. Getting most of your information from the same news sources, um, the same newsletters, uh, the same writers and thinkers and outlets to, to build into your habit, uh, some exploration, uh, and changing that up and watching the news or subscribing to newsletters or going to websites or listening to podcasts that are from either a different part of the ideological spectrum or from different countries.

Uh. And so that you are, you are changing the lens through which you are [00:08:00] watching events unfold. Because I think right now, that ability, um, to vary your information diet is essential to understanding where our country and a lot of other countries are politically and socially and culturally. The nature of the, of the divisions and the challenges we're facing, I think, I think the information environment.

Is the core underlying challenge that we are facing in trying to move our societies forward. And so I think what individuals should do wherever you fit into the picture, is to really try to be deliberate about seeking out, uh, sources of information and perspectives that are not ones that you normally would read or watch or hear.

Michael Oved: And the hope is that this would create some sort of curiosity, 

Nancy Gibbs: create curiosity in the sense, but also, you know, create understanding of, you know, you often hear people who don't only disagree with each other about some hot button issue, but they have trouble understanding [00:09:00] why anyone would think differently and like the sort of, how can you not understand that?

Partly that, you know, the, our difficulty in understanding the, the reasons people disagree is because we often encounter caricatures of. Other people's points of view, but it's also because we are just living in sort of different information environments and I think it's much easier to understand why people may disagree around what they think the most important challenges and opportunities are, or the best solutions to problems.

Um, it's easier to understand. If you have actually walked in their shoes in the sense of, uh, traveled through the information environments that, that they traveled through. 

Michael Oved: So you graduated from Oxford in 1984 with a Master's in Politics, philosophy, and Economics. In 1985, you started at Time Magazine.

What made you want to go to time and how did you get a job there? 

Nancy Gibbs: Yeah. I first, [00:10:00] um, started trying to get time and Newsweek both to. Consider me for a job while I was still finishing up at Oxford and they both had hiring freezes and it, it was like gonna be impossible to get in the door. And, and I was introduced to people, you know, this is where, you know, friends and friends are friends and mentors and college professors and, you know, um, anyone who can somehow get.

Your letter in those days long before emails, much less online job applications, you know, to the top of the pile. So I was actually able to get in the door in both places and talk to a human. But of course, I really didn't have any journalistic experience and both places. Were still, um, extremely traditional in their hiring, which is to say it took lawsuits before women could even be hired, uh, by and large as writers and editors.

So I finally got hired as a part-time fact checker. Which was, um, [00:11:00] sort of the, the only way in the door. Um, but there were fact checkers who had been fact checkers for 10 or 20 or 30 years. It, it was not a, well, you get hired in the mail room in order to work your way up, except for the fact that these institutions were both.

You know, losing lawsuits. Um, and also more importantly, realizing that having a really narrow set of experiences and perspectives making decisions was not good for business. And so one thing that happened when I was first hired as a fact checker was that time hired its first male fact checkers. And it was like the minute that they were both men and women in this job, it became an entry level job.

And so after two years of fact checking, I was given a tryout as a writer, and from then on I was able to, to move into becoming a writer. But I will say it, if I [00:12:00] had it to do again, uh, if they had, for whatever reason been crazy enough to hire me right out of the gate as a writer, I likely would've failed.

And the fact that I got to spend time there. In this incredibly interesting, rich environment of writers and editors and reporters, from a position where I could sort of watch from the sidelines, cultivate relationships with, with mentors, and learn the ropes and get a sense of, of what was valued and what you needed to be good at, and what would it take to build those skills while still not having.

Any pressure to be able to do it myself was enormously val valuable. It was sort of like I got to go to graduate school in News magazine before, um, before I was on, on the spot to be able to produce a story. So I, it, I'm actually incredibly grateful for that. 

Michael Oved: And that goes back to what you were saying before about altering your worldview and, and your understanding of the world.

So, so for people who are just [00:13:00] coming out of college. If they're given a low level job that they don't wanna take, would you advise them to just stick with it and understand that perspectives and worldviews of those around them and, and just expand their own worldview while they're there? 

Nancy Gibbs: If you feel like you're purely marking time and paying dues in hopes that you'll be rewarded for having been a good soldier, then I think it's a different calculation.

But if the work itself is interesting and challenging and stimulating and you're learning, even if it's, if it's a low level unglamorous job, and especially if it's putting you in a position to meet and get to know people who also are invested in seeing you grow, which is. It's harder to do now when one, when so many jobs are, are remote or hybrid.

Two, the, the pressure certainly in journalism and the pace and the, the level of productivity is such, I mean, the pace of journalism, pre-internet. There was time to go to lunch for [00:14:00] two hours with a senior writer, a senior editor, and just talk about the world or talk about. About writing. It was unbelievably luxurious in that way when it comes to getting senior people to take an interest in and train younger people.

So I recognize that, that that takes much more work and enterprise and initiative now for students coming out of college. I don't underestimate that, but I also think that that sort of low level entry level jobs can be really valuable. Experience, not just to get a foot in the door, but because you learn what the different jobs that the organization are, what kinds of people are successful at doing them.

How the, the power and the influence and values of the organization manifests. There are just lots of valuable things to learn that I think is easier to learn when you, you are in a more junior lower stakes 

Michael Oved: position. So when you were in that lower stakes position at Time Magazine, did you have your eye on the prize?

Did you know when you came in that you wanted [00:15:00] to be editor-in-Chief of Time Magazine? 

Nancy Gibbs: I didn't know when they first talked to me about becoming editor-in-chief 20 years later whether I wanted to do it, so I certainly didn't know it. At the time, and that was a little weird for the, for the leaders of the company because they were used to, you know, ambitious people, jostling for the job and maneuvering and trying to climb the ladder.

And I really, really loved being a writer. I thought it was the best imaginable job. And over time it became more common for writers to also be going out and, and traveling and meeting people and reporting stories. This is how I got to interview so many presidents and it was like. Uh, you are being paid to be curious.

Now you're being paid to go find things out that are interesting and tell people about them. Why would I wanna do anything other than that? And especially, why would I wanna stop doing that in order to move into a role where my job was managing budgets and personnel and, uh, you know, business model challenges and going to [00:16:00] meetings and like when I just looked at the, the day-to-day life.

Of the actual journalists compared to the, the editors and the managers. It wasn't even a close call. And so, you know, when they first were trying to promote me to be an editor, I was like, no, thank you very much. I really like what I'm doing and the way they got me to do it, I mean, this sounds ridiculous, but they said, well, of course you can keep on writing.

You know, we, we don't wanna lose you as a writer, so we hope that you will continue writing even as you become an editor. I thought, oh, well that, okay, that sounds like a reasonable compromise. Except it just, the compromise is, oh, you're welcome to do two jobs if you would like to do, to do two jobs, that's fine with us.

But it was, the point of this, I guess I would say is that it's not to say that ambition is overrated, but there are lots of ways to be ambitious, and there's nothing wrong with climbing a ladder. You wanna be sure you're on the ladder you wanna be on, and that it's taking you somewhere that you wanna [00:17:00] go as opposed to climbing for the sake of climbing or being promoted for the sake of being promoted.

I. I loved what I was doing. It was meaningful, it was stimulating. It allowed me to spend time with people who inspired me. So what would motivate me to wanna change that? Well, you could say, okay, I, you know, need to pay private school tuition for my kids, so I need more money. So that's a perfectly reasonable motivation.

Or, I need to take care of my sick parents, or any number of financial issues. Or maybe, you know, if you think that you can. Do more good or have a greater impact, or in some way pursue a higher purpose by moving into a different role. Even if you think you might enjoy it less, that's a perfectly worthy trade off, but it's just worth interrogating your motives because I.

If all of us are just taking in the assumption that we're all supposed to be ambitious and we're all supposed to, you know, wanna be promoted at the expense of either your [00:18:00] quality of life or your day-to-day happiness, or, um, the impact that you're having. Those are important conversations to have, both with yourself and with the people.

You know. I think all of us need our private board of directors, have that conversation with your board of director directors and have them really push you about, you know, why are you taking this promotion or why are you going after this promotion? And are there, do the reasons really make sense in the, you know, holistically?

Michael Oved: Going back to something you said earlier about how you weren't as cutthroat as they expected you to be, especially as you were rising to the top of this very large publication. What did you do that set yourself apart? How did you really rise to the top of Time Magazine? 

Nancy Gibbs: I think there are a lot of different styles of leadership, and I think one thing that.

Is helped by the fact that leadership roles are increasingly filled by different kinds of people with different kinds of backgrounds, and by backgrounds I don't just mean the [00:19:00] traditional things that get, you know, reported on, you know, race and gender and ethnicity, but different kinds of ambition, different leadership styles.

My conviction as I moved into leadership was. If my goal is for the organization to succeed, then you want as many really talented people. To be playing at the top of their game as possible. And you know, the classic, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. So if my definition of leadership was that I was the one who had to be the best at everything that the organization did, we were gonna fail.

Whereas saying. I feel like the people who are in charge of photography and art direction have the greatest visual sense, and that by and large I should defer to their visual sense and not feel like I need to have a better visual sense than they do if my investigative reporters are better at finding things out.

If the, if everyone in every role, um, is not only hired because they're really good at what they do, but then empowered and [00:20:00] enabled to do it well. Then I am succeeding as a leader, as a leader, is to create the conditions for other people to perform at the top of their game and not be threatened by their being better at things than I am, in fact, hope and need for them to be better at things than I am.

And so, you know, to, that was the way I defined my success, which you could say is, is a, it depends on a kind of collaboration and trust and, um. People's willingness to challenge one another and push one another, um, without worrying that they're gonna end up with a knife in their back. And so. I think that that, you know, time certainly, I think journalism generally and the way time operated particularly was a very collaborative place.

And you know, I was struck, you know, this fall when Times Washington Bureau held a reunion of people who had worked there through the years and people who hadn't worked at time for 20 or 30 years flew in [00:21:00] from all over the country to come to this reunion. And you know. I don't know that every organization works that way, but like the connection that people felt and the investment that they felt in one another and in the organization, that was the culture that I was, I was trying to create.

And I, and I think that the people whose decision it was to put me in leadership had come to the belief that, that that leadership style, which by that time I had been, you know, that's how I had been operating, that they thought that that was what. Would optimize the odds of the institution succeeding.

Michael Oved: How do you develop the trait of fostering an environment like that? 

Nancy Gibbs: Well, for one thing, uh, and I'm not, will not be the only person I'm sure on this podcast that says this, A huge amount of your success depends on who you hire. And I've had people say, yeah, 95% of your success is who you hire. And if you get that right.

The challenges and the hairballs that come your way afterwards, you will [00:22:00] be in a better position to be able to manage. And so, you know, what does it mean to hire, well, it isn't just about intelligence, it isn't just about the resume I hired for disposition. I wanted to hire people who I, I had reason to think would be happy operating in this kind of environment.

And this isn't necessarily, you know, a, a judgment of better or worse, so much as a matter of fit. And they're incredibly talented journalists who I would conclude wouldn't be a good fit in the way we're gonna do things and the way we're hoping to be successful. They wouldn't be happy. We wouldn't be happy.

It would end up, you know, with lots of people scratching each other and it would all go off the rails. And so I actually think that that. Who you hire and knowing what you're looking for in who you hire is a really critically important part. Another part may be confidence. You know, I think insecurity, it's fatal in leaders.

And insecurity can manifest itself [00:23:00] in a lot of ways, but one obvious way is being threatened by having talented people around you. I wanted the people around me to be better at things than I was that, you know, that as they say was my baseline. If you feel threatened by that, then you're not gonna hire or elevate those people.

And so if you're confident in your vision, and if you're confident in. Their willingness to work together, then you're fine that they're smarter or faster or better or more creative than 

Michael Oved: you are. You are the first female editor in Chief of Time Magazine's history. How could you navigate that? 

Nancy Gibbs: I sound so cliche about, you know, but if you're not being true to yourself in the way.

You are going about the work every day. I just don't see how it works. If you're trying to perform a role or embrace a set of, of standards and metrics and, and expectations that aren't authentic to you. [00:24:00] Because you think that's what the job, that's what's expected of you in the job, you know? That to me is dancing backwards in high heels.

That's making it harder. I only would have, I only became comfortable in accepting the role of editor in chief, which I was apprehensive about. I thought I was gonna, you know. Put a lot of stress on on my family, on other things I cared about. I was worried about whether I would be able to be good at it. I had lots of concerns about it, but it was also, are they gonna trust me to do it the way I think the job should be done?

So I would say to anyone, male or female, that going into a role, you can never have perfect visibility into what the role requires. It just can't, but. To the extent possible of knowing whether you're gonna be able to perform it, um, according to your values and your vision and what is important to you so that you can, you know, be authentic.

And that's an overused and trite word, but I do think it gets at some core of, um, [00:25:00] that goes to being, being able to be happy as well as successful in anything that we do in our lives. 

Michael Oved: You must have brought with you a lot of authenticity because under your leadership, and I don't wanna get this wrong, so I'm gonna read it off of my paper over here, time's Digital Audience grew from 25 to 55 million in video streams, passed $1 billion a year.

Time, also won a primetime Emmy award for its two-part a year in Space documentary, and it won the A SME award for cover of the year in 2016. How did you do it? How did you grow a company so much in such a critical time? Not only in journalism, but in times history? 

Nancy Gibbs: You know, we, we win co the cover of the year because I had an amazing art director and we, we grew our video streams and won the Emmy because like many places we needed to recruit a whole different kind of talent than the kinds of people who were working in newsrooms 10 years before.

The most important part of of that. This was a period where if you were not growing that way, you were dying. [00:26:00] This was very hard for legacy organizations where, you know, what was on the front page of the newspaper or what was on the cover of time or what led the evening newscast was like the whole focus of the organization and.

Moving your, your understanding and emphasis to all things, you know, digital and the importance that it was your digital growth and reaching new audiences on new platforms with new kinds of storytelling was a hard adjustment for people who had been living in the glory days of traditional publishing.

And so one of the most important things I did was. Not only hire a really talented deputy who was gonna be, you know, solely focused on growing our digital operation, but making sure that everyone in our newsroom saw me in his office or him in my office, you know, hour after hour. Because that how I used my time was the clearest signal of what I thought was important and the fact that I was spending a [00:27:00] huge amount of my time.

Our digital editor and our digital team signaled to the people who had come in through a print, um, doorway to say, oh, this digital part must actually be important. Because that's where Nancy is, is spending her time and time is the, you know, that is the most valuable thing the leader has and how you allocate it signals to your organization what is 

Michael Oved: important.

Did you have any failures? While you were editor in Chief of Time Magazine or on your way to that position, how did you overcome them? 

Nancy Gibbs: Oh, sure. I mean, fortunately, I mean, you go to bed every night terrified that you're gonna publish something that is wrong, which is already a problem. Harmful, which is even worse.

Defamatory or misleading, you know, it is. It's really scary as the volume of content that all of our newsrooms was producing started going way up when you moved from being [00:28:00] like a daily newspaper or a weekly magazine to being a 24 7 news operation. The opportunities for failure increased exponentially.

So I went to bed every night terrified that what some, you know, 9-year-old editor overseas who was in charge of, you know, the website overnight was gonna, you know, post. Um, you know, fortunately, I mean, I, you know, I thank my stars that we, I, I got through my. Editorial leadership without a huge scandal. But, but that, that fear of failure that you would be responsible for, even if you had nothing to effectively, nothing to to do with, it was terrifying.

And I. I think all leaders have to find a way to manage the reality that you are gonna be responsible and you're gonna have to take responsibility and your people are gonna have to trust that you will take responsibility, however much or little involvement you had in in the mistake in the first place.

Michael Oved: A lot of entrepreneurs speak [00:29:00] about the importance of overcoming failure, the importance of looking failure in the eye and telling it, I am not going to let you consume me. So how did you deal with failure? How did you overcome the failures that you had along your, uh, throughout your career? 

Nancy Gibbs: Now, I think you answered your own question, which is that if you really examine it and feel as though you give that fear enough power.

To prevent you from accomplishing what you accomplished, then just stand down. I mean, it's, and there, I mean, again, I think there are, there are reasons why people don't want to be leaders that are entirely reasonable and rational and that I respect, you know, I could, the leadership is overrated. There's some people who are really well suited to it.

There are other people who aren't and that is not a, any kind of a moral failure or judgment and how we manage our fears. And there are lots of different kinds of fear. Fear failure is, is only one of them. And whether we let them consume us, it's sort of the same as where we [00:30:00] live on the continuum of bitterness or gratitude.

And I think everyone is constantly facing that choice of, of leaning into gratitude or leaning into bitterness because most things that happen, you could see either way, and there are a lot of things that we can't control, but how much we let our fears control us, how much we let bitterness about things that go wrong, consume us, or disciplines and muscles.

I think that we can. Build, you know, not easily. But again, this is why having I go back to my private board of directors, one way to manage fears, uh, is to share 'em and to, to have people who you trust either say, yeah, you're wrong about this. You need to rethink this. And know that they, they will tell you the truth or say, yeah, this is a risk, but it's worth taking and here's why.

And reinforce your instincts about, you know, then you're, it doesn't mean you're not gonna fail, but you can move more confidently. I think if you [00:31:00] have people who you trust empowered to tell you when you're. Being an idiot and being really confident in their candor. And I think that really helps you manage, uh, the risks any managing, any of the risks that you're facing.

Michael Oved: So based on all of your experiences, all of your successes, all of your failures, you're speaking to someone who wants to be the next editor in Chief of Time Magazine, what advice would you tell them about how they can best succeed, what they can do right now? What can listeners do right now? To best prepare them to be the next editor-in-chief of Time Magazine?

That's a great question. 

Nancy Gibbs: Well, time specifically is one of a shrinking number of institutions that is speaking to a very broad audience. I mean, the cliche now is that the riches are in the niches, and so more and more new startups are, are. Tailoring their publication to very specific audiences that are gonna be, that's gonna be much easier to monetize and time.

She's now a hundred years old, has always looked to [00:32:00] speak to a broad audience, and the only way that you can do that is to be wherever possible during what I talked about earlier of broadening. Your lens and your exposure to people who, not just who live in cities, but who live in rural areas. Not just you know, who are on the left, but on the right, not just on the right, but on the left.

And then the vast in between who are much less likely to be tweeting and posting and sharing, and all the research shows that the, you know, the majority of people do not hold extreme views on either side. Do not tend to feel like it is their daily duty to, um, to post their views about the political issues of the day.

And so figuring out how to build a radar array that lets you understand what people are really concerned about, really want to know more about what are the stories, what's the information that is genuinely relevant and useful to people. To help them live successful lives [00:33:00] as citizens, as members of their community, as parents, as employees, you know, how do, how do you.

Open up your aperture to have exposure to, to those needs, those interests, those appetites. I think for, for a broad publication like time, that's the most important thing and that becomes harder and harder to do as our information landscape is more and more and more atomized and 

Michael Oved: polarized. So taking a step back and looking at it more broadly, someone's still in school or someone's working a full-time job, now you're speaking to them.

What should they do if they want a successful career in journalism? 

Nancy Gibbs: One thing that has become very important and has actually rewired the curricula of a lot of journalism schools. Is that, you know, there was a time where if you wanted to go into journalism or if you went to journalism school, you picked your track, you wanna learn broadcast, or you wanna learn newspaper journalism, or you wanna go into magazine feature writing.

[00:34:00] Now, because we are in this golden age of storytelling, of audience building and reaching that, I think it is important to go in with a very open mind about what is the best way to tell a story. How do you learn to use and understand the value and power of as many different storytelling tools as possible?

So, we're recording a podcast that you will also post on YouTube. So you are, but you also had to write out questions and imagine, you know, there's a, there was a text piece, there's an audio piece, there's a video piece. You can chop this up in a million tiktoks. It's, you know, the drill. And so what you're doing is thinking, you know, what are the different ways that I can reach different audiences with different forms and formats of a story?

And it's easy to go into any story with the default that this is a story that is gonna be written in paragraphs, that's gonna be words and sentences and paragraphs. We shouldn't, we should never default to text. Some stories are better told [00:35:00] as a picture worth a thousand words. Some are better stor told, uh, as video.

Some are better told as a chart or a map that if your goal is to get ideas and information into people's heads, then the starting point should be to think about what is the best way to do that. And so the more versatile and fluent you are. Multiple tools of storytelling, the more agnostic you can be in picking which of those forms of storytelling are you going to choose.

I think therefore, the more valuable you will be to organizations whose job it is to get information into people's heads. 

Michael Oved: And our last question before the rapid fire questions. What is an actionable item that someone can do right now in order to be a better writer? 

Nancy Gibbs: To write. There's, I, you know, I wish, I wish there were another way.

It's the oldest writing advice in the world, but you get better at writing by writing 

Michael Oved: because it's an art. It truly is a lost art. 

Nancy Gibbs: Well, I'm struck by how having just heard this week from a parent who's, uh, you know, seventh grader in a private [00:36:00] school, that parents have just been notified that there will be no more, uh, writing aside, no more take home, no more English essays, no more history papers.

Um. Because it's too hard to know if the robots did the writing. This, you know, I think it is going to be harder for people to learn how to write and to improve their writing. And, you know, you can get better, but it won't get easier. I still have trouble writing. I have trouble getting myself to write. Uh, the writing itself is hard.

I love having written. But the writing itself is, you know, who is it? You open a vein and bleed. I mean, it's so, uh, which is why it's, it's obvious, but difficult advice to say that you get better at writing by writing and just as important by finding good editors who again, um, this is where maybe the robots help us, where if you write a draft of something and then you ask the robot to say, okay, um, make this [00:37:00] sharper, make this tighter, um.

Create the, invite it to apply editing tools, which you can agree or disagree with. But if you find that there are certain really, really leggy turns of phrase that you use all the time or, or you know, kind of hairball constructions that slow the reader down that that, uh. That the robots will pick up on.

I, I don't in any way discount the idea that the robots can help make you a better writer, but you can't let them do the writing for you. 

Michael Oved: Makes sense. And now onto the rapid fire questions. Who has been your favorite person to interview? 

Nancy Gibbs: Oh, I would love to give a surprising, uh, answer to that. The one that got me the most cred with my kids, which of course is very important when you have, uh, young kids, which was a long time ago, was JK Rowling because everyone in the world was obsessed with Harry Potter.

Um, and it was, it's interesting to ever interview anyone [00:38:00] to whom fame has come suddenly and powerfully. Like that's just an interesting human experience to try to capture. Um, but. You know, occupational hazard. I will always find, um, interviewing presidents and the presidents that I got to interview, which runs the gamut from sort of, you know, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton to, you know, George Bush and Donald Trump.

Um, it is fascinating to me to see what that job does to people, the qualities that it takes to be good at it. Uh, the qualities that. Turned out not to be very helpful in people succeeding at it. Um, and just the pressures, the pressures of that role and how people, what it takes to carry them. And that's the reason Michael and I have written books on that subject, um, to try to get at the.

The personal side of the presidency because we, you know, naturally we process them as [00:39:00] public figures, um, but they're still human beings who, you know, may famously hate broccoli and need to be told that to pull their socks up. And so, you know, for anyone in any position of responsibility or authority or leadership, you know, these roles are hard.

And so the presidents are sort of the ultimate example of that. So those will always be my favorite. People to interview. 

Michael Oved: And based on all the people you've interviewed, what have you found is the single most common thread between all successful individuals? 

Nancy Gibbs: I think leave aside the authoritarians. I, I think it is hard to be successful in a great many roles if you are not a good storyteller and if you don't understand the power of storytelling.

So even if. You are incredibly smart and have incredibly great processing power, um, or deep knowledge if you're a complete policy wonk. If you have incredible depth of expertise, but you are not able to take that knowledge, take the [00:40:00] facts, take the information, and present it in a way that people can understand.

And the way people tend to understand things is through stories. And this is as old as times since we were gathered around the campfire. And so. I think storytelling is a superpower. I think that the, the ability to understand how to do that, which is basically making information compelling and memorable.

You know, that's what good storytelling does, and I think that that is an incredibly valuable leadership skill if you are trying to get people. To buy in and to follow where you're trying to go. You have to be able to tell a story about where you're trying to go and why it's worth them coming there with you.

How do you develop that art? I don't, I don't know how much that is innate. Um, you know, that's a chicken and egg. I don't know how much that is in, uh. Something that we are born with. One obvious is, is by reading and studying the work of good storytellers and, and, you know, doing the autopsies of [00:41:00] what makes something a good story.

But, but I'm inclined to think some part of that is, um, I don't know, nature or nurture, but I think some part of that may be. Instinctive doesn't mean you can't develop the skill and get better at it, but I suspect that's, you know, a version of being good at math where you can get better at math, you can learn the rules of math, but we all have encountered people since we were in third grade who were just, math came more easily to them than others.

I suspect storytelling may in a very different way, like being a musical prodigy that some people, you can practice all you want, but some people just have gifts and I think good storytellers that may be. True for them. What book do you recommend? Well, the one I wanna read most right now is, uh, not out yet, it's Kara Swisher's book.

Um, and it, and it's partly because she's a great tech journalist, um, and a great storyteller, but she also really, um, had a front row seat on. [00:42:00] What I think is this most critical challenge right now of the, you know, not the death of journalism and media, but the, the apocalyptic challenges that our information environment is facing.

So, um, my, my daughters teases me that I don't read books because, um, there's a lot of stuff I have to read, but that's what I'm really looking forward to. What is a quote that you live by? Practice gratitude. That's a muscle we can, I think all of us can build and yes, if you're healthy and you know, not in financially secure, it's, you can say it's really easy to be grateful for your life.

On the other hand, I think most of us know rich, successful people who are really unhappy. And so I think gratitude is something that we have a choice about to some extent. And I. A muscle worth building. 

Michael Oved: And the last question is, what has been the key to your success? 

Nancy Gibbs: I would start [00:43:00] with the unconditional love of my parents.

They were wind beneath my wings and being told from when you're a little kid that you can achieve anything that you set out to achieve. Used to drive me crazy when it was a, well, of course you're gonna get into Yale. And I'm like, it's really hard to get into Yale. It's like, yeah, but. Of course you're gonna get into Yale.

And then I got into Yale and it was just like, it annoyed me that they had been right. But there, as I think back on it now, my mother is now a hundred years old, so I'm not talking about her. In the past tense, this is still the case and has lived an incredible life. But, um, having people who believe in you.

In my case, it started with my parents. It can be friends, it can be teachers, it can be coaches, but having people tell you. That you can, you can do it is really, really, really powerful. And doing that for other people is a gift that we can give to other people. 

Michael Oved: Well, professor Gibbs, it's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you.

An [00:44:00] absolute pleasure to have you on. Thank you again for joining us today. Really nice to be with you, Michael. Good luck to you. Thank you for listening to 30 years and 30 minutes. Don't forget to like and subscribe and let us know in the comments if there's anyone else you want to hear from.