The good thing is the editors at the Times are still wiling to give us the time we need to dig into these things, always with the sense that there’s only a few of us.

Even with as many people as we have on the campaign and digging into the candidates background, there’s always the sense that we’re moving as fast as we could. If you’re looking at something that’s possibly negative, the campaigns aren’t shy about jumping in and dealing with the issue before you even finished your story.

I’m worried about journalism in general, because so many papers around the country covering gubernatorial races and mayoral races, as the staffs get cut back, and the emphasis gets place on the quicker and shorter pieces, I’m not sure how much digging will done.

6. How did your most recent piece about the bundlers come about?

Obama had a published list on his Web site with 328 bundlers, and we set out to take a look at who they were and what their interests were and what they raised, and where they lived and what companies they worked for, and just put together a picture of his financing operation

When we were talking to his biggest fundraisers around the country and we were asking who in their areas raised a lot of money, they started giving us names of people who weren’t on the list of major fundraisers.

Then there was a list of his national financing committee, and several dozen names weren’t published on his Web site, and once we found that there were some who had raised enough money, and it seemed that they hadn’t updated the site in months.

Obama here wasn’t different than Clinton or McCain, but given the emphasis he’s put on transparency, for example, one of the bills that he passed to disclose bundlers who were lobbyists, it seemed important. And McCain too has a long history of working on campaign finance reform.

These two have some of the strongest track records and that they had fallen behind was pretty interesting.

7.What do you think is missing from the Obama story?

It is stunning think how quickly this guy got to where he is. Just eight years ago he lost by 30 percentage points in a senate race on the South Side of Chicago, and they never thought he’d past the state senate seat. Just to think in eight years, he’s dusted himself off from that and is the presidential nominee is pretty amazing.

People forget how lucky he is: In the 2004 senate race, he was still running third in the primary, when the leading candidate was forced to drop out because of a scandal, and then Obama won that primary. Then, his Republican opponent got knocked out in the general election because of a sex scandal. Who knows if it wasn’t for those two scandals coming up on his opponents that we wouldn’t even be talking about him right now.

8. Do you sometimes wish you were on the campaign bus?

I think it would be interesting to see what’s it like, but I couldn’t do the kind of stuff I could do there. When Jo Becker and I did the story about how he rose in Chicago, we both spent a week or more in Chicago and two or three on the phone, and we talked to dozens of people who knew him from when he first showed up and through every step of his life there, and that’s how you figure out what the guy is really like.

We talked to not only obvious people, but we found people who worked for him, and other people who hadn’t talked to the press before so the only real way to peel back the truth about somebody is to get on the street where they’re from.

9. How do you feel about campaign coverage with the way the play-by-play minutia sometimes becomes a big story?

Sometimes it can seem like noise, but this cycle has been so fascinating with the first black presidential nominee dueling with Hillary Clinton, and the possibility of the first female nominee. And all the turmoil on the McCain side, when his campaign almost collapsed last summer. Even the horse race has been interesting to watch.

10. Do you work with the on-the trail reporters?

As an investigative reporter, you might have time and the investigative skills, but you go into the situation with no contacts and having to start from scratch. We have people on the staff who know a lot of people, and I’ll call Adam [Nagourney] and get a list of people to call and find out what he’s thinking. And Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg, I’ve done stories with both of them: I might be doing some of the stuff calling people on the outside, and then they’re talking to the campaign people.

After Obama announced that he wasn’t going to take public financing, the editors wanted us to do a story about how he was going to spend this incredible amount of money that he’d been raising. So I was assigned, and Jim Rutenberg was assigned. And Jim started talking to some people, and Jeff Zeleny was traveling with Obama and he was able to get the main campaign to go over everything with him. And the three of us could put together a better story much more quickly than one of us could.

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