Joe Rago is a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. In college, he was editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Review, and through his time there received an internship, and eventually a job, at WSJ in 2005. Rago won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Writing for his work on the Affordable Care Act. Winning the Pulitzer Prize at 28 made Rago one of the youngest writers ever to receive the honor.
How did you win your Pulitzer Prize at such a young age?
It’s kind of like getting into college: Everyone is qualified. Your editor picks out 10 pieces of writing you’ve done that year and submits that work to a jury of three people, who choose three writers in each of the 16 categories. The writing from those three writers then goes before the full Pulitzer Board. I won in 2011 for the editorial writing I did in 2010. It doesn’t sound very intrepid, but it’s sort of random.
At the time you were writing on Obamacare, did you see the importance of the topic?
If you’re a journalist, the Affordable Care Act was a kind of winning powerball ticket. The gravity of the writing came from the subject, not the editorials themselves. The economy has totally collapsed and Washington is going off on healthcare. So while healthcare was getting rammed through congress, I think we were just trying to reflect the character of the times. I don’t think you ever write for posterity, it just happens like that.
What set The Wall Street Journal’s coverage of Obamacare apart from the rest of the coverage of Obamacare?
I think we were just explaining what was in the bill. Your opinions are valuable when they reflect actual reporting. In opinion writing you can draw analysis, and your bias lets you see things the other guys miss a lot. Most journalists were looking at the politics, not the substance, of what was happening with the Affordable Care Act.
From the few articles I’ve read, you seem to have a very well-researched, yet colloquial and sarcastic writing style. What most informed that?
In most forms of journalism, you have to learn to take them on. There’s a certain format you have to master, and some people never do. Learn to innovate within that style. That other thing is doing more work than you need to do on a certain article. In the opinion world, the most powerful things are bringing information to the table. Because it’s opinion journalism, analysis is also important.
Is Obamacare the worst piece of legislation ever, and can it be fixed?
I don’t think it’s the worst thing ever, but The Wall Street Journal did call it the worst bill ever. All problems are ultimately fixable. We won the Cold War and did other difficult things — I think we can fix our healthcare system.
Describe your experience working at the Dartmouth Review. Why have you chosen to stay involved?
The Dartmouth Review is the conservative newspaper at Dartmouth. It was founded in 1980 and gained national recognition for fights those on staff got in with the campus administration. It was a very confrontational period. The paper stuck around, then it mellowed out and it wasn’t trying to offend people. When I was an editor, I never understood what former Dartmouth Review staff Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza were upset about. I didn’t find it to be like that when I was there. The Dartmouth Review is a newspaper about Dartmouth College, and it has nothing to do with national politics. Once at the Journal, I was given a different topic, and those skills gained working at the Dartmouth Review were used with less juvenility.
What does opinion journalism add to newspapers?
It subtracts from most newspapers. I think if it’s going to just be opinion journalism where ‘this is what I think’ is not going to add value to the newspaper. Your opinion isn’t very valuable, and the best opinion journalism brings an analytic approach. The best of it reveals something about the topic that someone else missed because you’re writing with a bias, so you’re able to understand an issue in another way. The best opinion pieces will have some opinion at the top and some opinion at the bottom with facts in the middle. Opinion pages sell newspapers when they’re well done.
What do you think about using Twitter in journalism?
It takes up so much time and it’s so personality-based. It encourages you to get in fights with people, and it encourages you to have more opinions than there are things worth having opinions about. Journalists have ruined their life on Twitter. That in mind, I use it constantly. I don’t think you can be a journalist now and not be on Twitter.
– Compiled by Evan Carter