61. Transparency in Journalism with James LaPorta

Brock Briggs  0:00  

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt podcast, the place for current, former service members to learn from the world's most interesting and successful veterans. One of the things that I tell every guest that comes on is that this is not a reminiscing podcast. Any stories of past military times are told to give context and help lead us to interesting insights about thinking deeper, earning more money and making better decisions. 

Today, I'm speaking with James LaPorta. James is former Marine Corps infantry turned investigative reporter having gone on to be a contributor and work at many prestigious news organizations such as The Daily Beast, Newsweek, and the Associated Press. James talks about why journalism is such a difficult life, especially in the early days, how he approaches story selection and gives some advice on the most important skill in journalism and maybe even life, how to listen better. We also talk about his extensive backlog of information collected from the Freedom of Information Act request, why command climate surveys in the military might be bullshit and what's next for him after an unexpected departure from the AP. Please enjoy this conversation with James LaPorta.

Brock Briggs 

So I kind of like got a glimpse into like the journalism. I'm just curious, like how it may differ from like actual news to podcasting?

James LaPorta  1:34  

Oh, in terms of interviews? 

Brock Briggs 

Yeah, yeah. 

James LaPorta

I mean, it's not that different than how you're going about it. I try to have more conversations with people than trying to get away as much as I can from the Q&A aspect of things. You know, the mistake that I made early in my career is I found myself talking too much. You know, I would find myself talking more than I should have been listening in interviews. And so I didn't go to journalism school. So my journalism school basically came from YouTube. You know, I would watch old like 60 minute episodes. 

So I learned how to interview from people like Mike Wallace on 60 minutes, who, you know, he said that if you can get into a conversation with someone, they almost forget that the cameras are there, you know. Or he was saying that the questions, you know, even if they're hard questions that you're asking someone, you know, a lot of the time that you know, the person you're asking questions, they'll respect it because it's not just questions that are sort of invented out of whole cloth. The questions are informed by research. You know what I'm saying? So it's not just, I'm thinking of a question off the top of my head, it's I've done my research on you. And I've done a deep dive on you. And that's where the questions are coming from, so the questions are more informed. 

But in terms of listening, that was the one thing that I had an issue with early in my career, which was, I just was talking too much. And I needed to stop and listen. And it was Bob Woodward, who, you know, Woodward is famous for breaking the Watergate story at the Washington Post. He said, allow silence to draw out the truth, which I think is the quote, which basically means ask a question of someone. And then I'll do this in interviews, ask a question. And then when the person is finished giving their answer, don't say anything, just remain silent. And it will become so awkward that the other person might actually give you more than what you had actually intended. Because people tend to be not comfortable within silence. So that was the sort of the tip that I got from Woodward, which was to use silence to drop more of the truth. More of what the question that you're wanting to ask. I don't know if that answers your question. But that was the first thing that came to mind.

Brock Briggs  4:06  

I'm kind of thinking about just like stopping here and just letting you keep going like

James LaPorta  

Yeah

Brock Briggs  

I'm gonna use that right now. No, that is really good. I am really excited to talk about journalism and like investigative reporting with you because you're a great name in the space. And I'm sure that we could learn a lot from you. I want to start out with a little bit more of a personal question, though. What do you think is the thing that you're the most proud of but you don't get to tell anybody about?

James LaPorta  4:37  

Oh, I mean, this is really in the weeds and nobody cares. It's very, like it's not cool at all.

Brock Briggs  4:52  

You might be surprised about what I think is cool. So

James LaPorta  4:54  

I mean, it's very in the weeds in terms of military report, you know, and you'd have to do a lot of work to bring it up to the level of where a national audience will understand it. So probably for like five or six years, okay, so there's something called the Freedom of Information Act, right? This is not only something that journalists use, but your everyday citizen can use. It's basically the Freedom of Information Act is a request that you can send a government agency to get information out of a government, right? For instance, the comedian John Mulaney, right? He once said on Late Night with Seth Meyers that he was investigated by the Secret Service. I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to get his secret service file, which I thought was funny that they opened up a secret service file on a comedian. 

So that's what if you didn't know Freedom of Information Act request is. I file those all the time particularly for these documents that are called Command Climate Surveys. So Command Climate Survey is every military unit in any branch of service has to do a command climate survey. They have to be done annually or they have to be done like anytime there's a change of Commander. And the Command Climate Surveys run the gamut of what they talk about. They're basically HR human resource products. They talk about, you know, how much do you trust your leadership within a unit, they talk about organizational processes and whether or not those processes are good or not. They talked about sexual harassment, sexual assault, racial issues, they kind of run the gamut. And it's basically a snapshot. 

But what they're for is, so a commander can get a snapshot of their unit at a given time. Command Climate Surveys are destroyed after three years. And probably for the past six years, I've been filing as many FOIA as I can to different military branches to try to collect as many of these things as I can. So I think outside the military, I probably have like the largest database of Command Climate Surveys in an Excel spreadsheet. And it's completely nerdy, it's really in the weeds. I get these things all the time. Most of them I've never even reported on. I just find them to be fascinating, especially ones where they forget to redact the comment section. And then some of the comments from service members about their unit are just, they're hilarious and they're incredibly vulgar, which is also funny. And you know, they had no, they don't shy away from telling you who exactly is the asshole in the unit. You know, I don't know if you can cuss on this. But, that's what they do.

Brock Briggs  8:02  

I think that that's extremely cool. Just having something that a lot of other people don't have and your familiarity with the FOIA requests is obviously going to allow you to build this database. That's super interesting, actually. 

James LaPorta  8:16  

If you collect enough of them, you can get good results out of them. For instance, last year, we did an investigation about racial issues in the military. I had, I think I have every Command Climate Survey for every single naval aircraft carrier over a four year period, I think. And basically, from those documents and through doing data journalism, we were able to determine that like it was something like 104-105 sailors assigned to a naval aircraft carrier will experience some sort of racial discrimination. And we would only have learned that by having these documents and looking at the data within them, you know, before they're destroyed. Again, because they're only around for three years or they're supposed to be only around for three years. 

So, but again, that's a lot of work to bring, you know, to bring the data from, you know, this in the weeds kind of place to sort of a national audience, that takes a lot of work. You know, one of the issues was from one year to the next, they would change the standardized questions or they would change the formats and that made it hard for like, scraping. You know, scraping the data and then, you know, kind of but we noticed that like, by changing the questions, they got different results, like they were getting bad results on their Command Climate Surveys. And so they just changed the question.

Brock Briggs

Right

James LaPorta  

And then well, then the bad results went away. 

Brock Briggs

Kinda mask the problem

James LaPorta 

Mask the problem, that's exactly what happened. Or, you know, the other issue there was Command Climate Surveys, they’re supposed to be anonymous, right? Well, the issue there is, so I have all the Command Climate Surveys from every single Navy SEAL team, right? So you'll have a situation where it's like 149 guys and one woman, you know. And so if she complains at all within a Command Climate Survey, everybody in the unit is gonna know it’s her because there's only one woman at the entire command. So you really kind of don't have anonymity in that situation. And when I asked the Navy like, how do you deal with this? They didn't have an answer.

Brock Briggs  10:41  

Talking about command climate and like gauging people's interest in and like how they feel about the military. How did you or how do you now feel about your time in the Marine Corps overall, if you had to rate it on a scale of one to five stars?

James LaPorta  11:01  

What would be my Yelp review?  

Brock Briggs  

Right

James LaPorta 

So I've never been bitter towards the Marine Corps, am surely proud of my service in the Marine Corps. You know, I've always kind of said, I love the people, I sometimes hate the institution. You know, like which I'm sure is the case for almost a lot of service members. you know? No, I really enjoyed my time in the Marine Corps. In fact, journalism was, I've always described journalism as a happy accident. Because I had never planned to be a journalist. I didn't grow up wanting to, you know, be in newspapers or anything like that. You know, really, since high school and learning about what a marine was, that's kind of what I wanted to do. 

So my plan was to stay in the Marine Corps for 20 years. And it just didn't work out that way. And journalism I fell into because I just didn't know what else to do. But I actually really enjoyed my time in the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is one of those places where it's like, the characters are so rich, you know. You meet people from all different walks of life. And there's a smorgasbord of just different personalities that you just don't get to interact with in everyday life. But I think it's just like any other job, there's aspects that are really great about them. There's aspects that are, you know, you'd rather not remember.

Brock Briggs  12:35  

Some of the experiences just with people, like people kind of specific experiences I've had over my time in the Navy, it's like you couldn't even make it up. Like the brand will do some of the most and say some of the most ludicrous things. And I don't know if that's a byproduct of the melting pot that it just brings together peoples from all walks of life.

James LaPorta  12:58  

When I was in Afghanistan, there was this guy who he carried like, he found it like a hedgehog on patrol. And he just carried it everywhere with him. Like, it was just really odd. Like, it's, you know, it was one of those like, what are you doing? It was like, oh, it's fine. You know and then, like we got into a firefight once and he took it out of the thing was like shaking, you know, because it was so probably scared out of its mind, just like the rest of us were. You know, but he found it fascinating. Like, he always carried this hedgehog thing around. So, you know, it's just things like that like, just weird things, you know.

Brock Briggs  13:39  

You did a bunch of different things in the Marine Corps. I had written down that you're a marksmanship instructor. You had a few tours to Afghanistan, if I had that right. You're also a black belt. If I don't know if I've got that right.

James LaPorta  13:52  

I’m a black belt on paper

Brock Briggs  13:54  

On paper? Maybe not in your life.

James LaPorta  13:57  

Yeah. Yeah. If you asked me what the black belt moves were, yeah. Okay, well, et me address the black belt first because it's easiest. So I'm a black belt first degree in the Marine Corps martial arts program. I don't care at all about martial arts. My idea was, I'm gonna get the black belt as quickly as possible so I can stop doing martial arts. And that idea backfired because they're like, oh, you're a black belt, you can get out there and teach other Marines. So my whole idea of like, well, if I get the black belt, then I don't have to do it anymore. It backfired. I ended up having to do it more. Yeah, so but yeah, the only reason I'm a black belt is I tried to get that thing as quickly as possible just so I can stop. 

But yeah, I had a lot of jobs. I'm an infantry man by trade, so I went in as a O311, which is a rifleman. When I re-enlisted, you know, they were asking me if I wanted to go to Quantico, Virginia were officers get trained or if I wanted to go to Parris Island in South Carolina to train recruits and I picked Parris Island. So at first I became a, I think it's an O933, which is a combat marksmanship coach. And then I did the school up above that, which is a combat marksmanship instructor. And so I became a combat marksmanship instructor at Parris Island teaching recruits how to shoot. And then I would also requalified Marines on both rifle and pistol. And then I was later infantry squad leader. And then I was also an intelligence cell chief. So like, the last year, I was in the Marine Corps, I was doing intelligence.

Brock Briggs  15:55  

Across all of those experiences, is there one or two that were the most meaningful to you or something that sticks out about like, when you think of the Marine Corps, this is what you think of?

James LaPorta  16:08  

I really enjoyed being a combat marksmanship instructor. The one thing I've always been kind of attracted to in terms of the Marine Corps is Marine Corps history or just military history in general. What would always kind of amazed me around Parris Island is there’s these black and white photographs of Marines, you know, during World War II or Marines during the Korean War and they're training on the rifle, the exact same way we're training on the rifle, you know, in the 2000s. I always found that nothing had changed from World War ll to the present like, all the shooting positions were the same. You know, the fundamentals or marksmanship were the same, you know and I just liked that there is that continuity. You know, that nothing much has changed except for the uniforms and the weapons, but the fundamentals were all basically the same. 

So that felt really like traditional, you know, so I really enjoyed. And I also found that I really enjoyed teaching, just teaching in general. I mean, it could have been a rifle, but it could have been anything, you know. I really just enjoyed, especially teaching brand new entry level recruits, you know, because I was kind of one of the first Marines that they ever interacted with. And my job wasn't to be a drill instructor, my job wasn't to yell at them. But it was to, you know, teach them really about self defense, right? I mean, what I was teaching them, they might carry on into combat and they might be, they might find themselves in a situation where they have to defend themselves. So it's kind of really an important job that I was teaching. So I really enjoyed that. When I went from being an infantry squad leader to working in intelligence, I really thought I wasn't looking forward to it. 

And it actually I enjoyed working in intelligence a lot more than I thought I would. And which kind of leads into journalism. My experience is that working in the intelligence community is not that different than working in journalism. To me, the audience is the only thing that's different. Working in intelligence, your audiences, the commanders that you serve and you're trying to best inform your commanders based on the information that you're getting. In journalism, the audiences are the American people and in a similar fashion, you're trying to keep them informed. So I saw a lot of overlap between my intelligence job and journalism.

Brock Briggs  18:43  

I'm curious, we can kind of take that transition and dive into your kind of foundational career there or the foundation of your career there. I'm curious what you've learned about people from the Marine Corps, because a lot of your stories that you've gone on to cover are very, like personal. They're about individuals and you know, there are faces behind those things. And I'm curious if there was any experience or time that really gave you some insight into how people operate or what's important to human beings based on your time in.

James LaPorta  19:27  

Maybe I can best answer that through the reason of like, I guess why I went into journalism. So it's 2014, I'm trying to re enlist in the Marine Corps. The problem is President Obama was trying to end the Afghan war at the time and anytime you try to end a war, you become over budgeted in terms of the personnel that you have. So in a lot of ways I got laid off. They were like, you know, you didn't do anything wrong, but thank you for your service, but it's time for you to get out. And so I was getting out and I had these memories, my own experiences from war that a lot of them were bad. Because war is not fun. And I definitely was not in a position to deal with them. I was psychologically not in a position to deal with my own war trauma. And so the idea I had was maybe I could write about the war experiences of other people. 

And perhaps through that, it will be therapeutic in some way for me. Spoiler alert, it wasn't. I tended to like because I started, when I first started in journalism, I looked at like what was not being covered a lot or to me in my opinion, wasn't being covered well. And so I started a tackled veteran suicide like right out of the gate, one of the hardest things to just cover in general. That ended up not being good for me cuz I ended up taking on a lot of that. I had my own war trauma that I was dealing with but then I was taking on the trauma of the people that I was covering. It was just, it was one of those things of like, I saw suicide impacting my community, impacting my friends. Like to date, I'm sitting at nine different people that I know that have killed themselves. And so that, I think, was a direct result of 20 years of war.

Brock Briggs  21:34  

What were your takeaways from that initial coverage of studying suicide, but in kind of like a different lens?

James LaPorta  21:43  

I mean, to me, it was, you know, it's one of those things of like, you know, war is especially if you look at like Hollywood and TV shows, war is kind of sold as this idea of like, almost like a football game, right? Like there's a winner and there's a loser. You know, it's very black and white, it's very, you know, this side won, this side lost. And the thing I discovered from my own experiences of war and then covering veteran suicide is, it's nothing like that. That wars don't end just because you're not in a war anymore. You know, wars don't end because there's a peace treaty or you know, a withdrawal from Afghanistan, which happened last year, right? I sort of realized that wars continue on, except the battlefield is psychological. 

And the other thing I noticed was that, you know, the devastation that veteran suicide was causing any families, there was a permanent shattering. But what was, you know, one of the narratives I noticed is like, you know, soldiers that die in war, that follows a natural story arc, right? Like psychologically, you can track that, right? Like, the story arc is, you know, soldier, transfer war, they go to war, they die in war, right? That's a clear beginning, middle and end. With veterans suicide, it was harder. It was more convoluted than that. It was soldier transfers, goes to war, doesn't die in war, but survives then comes home and they take their life by their own hand. And that was a lot more complex. 

And that wasn't a clear cut, you know what I’m saying? That was something that I found interesting between covering, you know, being in war and covering war and covering veteran suicide is it wasn't this clean package, you know, of a story because it left people with way more questions and like, why would they do that? You know, especially when the family members like a buddy of mine Sergeant, Chris Gross, was a guy who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a special operator over Marine Special Operations Command. And then he came to us and we deployed to Afghanistan together and me and him both got out of the service at the same time. And couple years later, he ends up killing himself. 

And it was two weeks before his second child was born. And that is not a clear package because it's like, you know, the old way of thinking was, well, he survived war. He survived the hardest part. And in covering veteran suicide, what I learned was the hardest part is what comes after war, you know. Like in a lot of ways, war is very simple. All you have to do is go from point A to point B and not die, right? But what came after war seemed to be the hardest for people. And that was something I didn't know at the time until I started covering it.

Brock Briggs  25:10  

From your research and study, have you gained any like insight or clarity as to why or like what we need as a population to address that? Because I think you're absolutely right. It's a very difficult subject. Not a lot of people it's talked about. But to be frank, like doing 22 push ups a day or whatever, you know, people want to talk about like, those are not things that are fixing it. It's not an awareness issue in my opinion. There needs to be something larger. But I'm not sure what that was and what that is. And I'm curious if you had any thoughts or insights into that?

James LaPorta  25:54  

I mean, at the macro level, I don't know the answer. I wish I did. At the micro level, I could say, community, keeping people away from alienation. Another guy I know who killed himself, I think it was just last year, it shocked us all. His name was Rory Hamill. He was a guy who is Purple Heart recipient, you know. He would go out on tours and talk to veterans about, you know, staying in the community and not going down that path. And but COVID hit. And he became very isolated and alienated during, you know, when we were all kind of locked up during the pandemic. And it took a toll on him. And unfortunately, he killed himself, you know. So at the micro level, I found that community and it's a constant thing of like, just continuing to check in on people. And that was kind of thing that I kicked myself over Sergeant Gross, right? Because when I got to the Marine Corps, you know, me and him were friends in the Marine Corps. 

But when we both got out at the same time, he went his way and I went mine. And I never checked it. And I had an incredible I guess you would call it survivor's guilt when he killed himself because, you know. I would scroll through my phone, I saw his name in there. I just never bothered to call. And you know, I thought to myself, well, what if I had? That's something I have to live with. Sebastian Junger who is a very accomplished war correspondent has written several books about war. One of them being called Tribe. He talks about why it's hard for veterans to come home from war nowadays and what leads them down that road. And he argues that, you know, having a community of like minded, you know, for veterans to come home to, would save a lot of lives. And I tend to agree with that, you know, so at the macro level, I'm not sure what the the issue is, how to solve suicide or if you can solve it. But at the micro level, it seems to be the community tends to be the best way to address it. You know, do not let people get isolated or alienate themselves from others.

Brock Briggs  28:25  

It's really extremely difficult to prepare for your like exit from service because you don't anticipate like how much that will impact you. You go from spending every single day with the same people and you just have this bond that you feel like could not be broken under any circumstance. And one day, you're like handed your DD214. And you never see those people again. And it's almost like it just, it never happened. Like there's like no remnants really there other than just like your memories and you know what you bring along the road with you, but that tie is cut very quickly. And I think that you highlight a great point there, it puts people in a bad position.

James LaPorta  29:15  

Yeah, I mean, the initial thought is, this is awesome. I don't have to get up at like, you know, five o'clock in the morning to be at formation at 5:30. And I don't have to go run three miles down the road. But that feeling is a temporary one. And then after that, you realize, yeah, you're kind of left to your own devices and there is no safety net anymore. You know and you have to really figure things out on your own. Whereas, I mean, everything in the military is figured out for you. Like even down to how you get ahead in life, right? Like there's literally like roadmaps of like to get from this rank to this rank, you need to do this, this and this and this, right? Everything is laid out for you, down to your hair cuts, down to your uniforms that you don't have to really think too much just about everyday things and then all of a sudden you're dropped off into the world. And they're like, you know, good luck, you know? Yeah, the separation process for military is not great. 

And I would argue it's still not great today. I mean, I was given, me personally, I think it was given like a month. So basically you know, my reenlistment package was denied. And then they're like, okay, you have a month to completely check out and become a civilian, which is crazy. Because this is all I've known for eight years. And now all of a sudden, I have a month to completely check out, turn in all my gear, and figure out what the hell I'm gonna do in life. You know, so when the stated goal at the time was particularly the Marine Corps, they were like, you know, we want to give Marines or getting out of the Marine Corps about a year. That didn't happen for me, at about a month. And then all of a sudden, I was on my own, left to figure out, you know, even how to do like basic stuff, like how to apply for college.

Brock Briggs  31:17  

That is a difficult, very, very swift transition. And I think that that echoes a lot of people that I talked to story. What's unfortunate is that I even talked to some people that are preparing for transition, like a year out. And that almost still isn't even enough. Like there's a some amount that you won't be able to prepare for. And time may not be all the answer. I don't know if it's resources. I think about this a lot and talk to a lot of people with, like I said, in similar circumstances, not really quite sure what the answer is.

James LaPorta  32:00  

Yeah, well, I mean, if you look at our training cycles, right? Like a typical infantry battalion trains 12 months to go on a six month deployment. You know, a typical Navy SEAL unit trains for 18 months to go on a six month deployment, you know. We don't dedicate that amount of time for the transition back into civilian life. We're just out.

Brock Briggs  32:25  

What was your very first reporting job outside the service? And how did you end up landing that? Where did that kind of where did those dots connect on? Yeah, you know, I'm gonna give journalism a try.

James LaPorta  32:39  

So I first started dabbling in journalism while I was still in Afghanistan. While I was still in a tent in Afghanistan, I had found a website called Policy Mike, which turned into mike.com. I wrote a couple of articles for them. I didn't make any money. And then I linked up with this guy named Nolan Peterson. Nolan Peterson today is a very accomplished journalist. He was an Air Force Special Operations pilot, served in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he's been covering the Russia-Ukraine wars since 2014. So he's in a great position nowadays because he was covering the Russia-Ukraine conflict back when it wasn't popular and the world was not paying attention. But he used to have a website called Blue Force Tracker, which was kind of like the idea behind it was kind of like a task and purpose. 

You know, it was like, you know, military veterans, you know, people from the diplomatic service, you know, camera spies and stuff like that writing the news. That’s the idea. And so I wrote for him for 10 months, no pay. And then I became a part time reporter at the Jacksonville Daily News outside of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. And I think it was like $10 an hour. And I could only like, work for like, I don't know like five hours out of the day or six hours out of the day. You know, it was a part time gig. But yeah, I mean, initially journalism was not making a lot of money, you know. And for the first year and a half that I was in journalism, I wasn't getting paid. You know, I was going to college at the time. And I was also an Uber driver, which was hard because at the time, I had a mortgage and I had a wife. I was married at the time. And so you know, that was rough in terms of not making a lot of money. 

And then I forget, there's an editor at the Military Times who's now at the Washington Post, who said you need to stop working for free. He's like, your writing and your reporting is good enough now. You need to start charging and stop working for free. And so I remember the first time I made $250 on an article, I thought you know, I was like look how rich I am, which is ridiculous, you know, because it's not a lot of money. But at the time, I thought it was a lot of money. So that was kind of the, you know, how I first got into journalism. But I was a freelance journalist for probably four or five years until 2018, when I was hired by Newsweek Magazine. To kind of tell you how bad I got, I mean, I think one year I made a total of $12,000 as a freelancer. Yeah, it's pretty rough, you know. 

Brock Briggs  35:53  

I've heard that they don't tell people to go into writing really of any sort for the money.

James LaPorta  36:00  

No, yeah, you really gotta, like, kind of love what you're doing, you know. Which again, journalism, it was one of those kind of like, one, it was like, on one hand, it was like, I didn't know what else to do. And then the second one was, like I still wasn't ready to deal with my war experiences. You know, those are really the only two reasons I was doing it. But yeah, so you know, when Newsweek came, you know, it was kind of a godsend because, you know, they're like, hey, we'll start with $50,000. And I was like, yeah, that's amazing. You know, as a sergeant with eight years in, you know, I don't even know if I was making $50,000.

Brock Briggs  36:39  

If you had to or had the opportunity to go back and talk to your younger journalism self, knowing what you know today, what do you think you would tell him?

James LaPorta  36:50  

That’s a really good question. I don't I mean, I think I would try to tell him to not be so anxious. You know, there's a lot of anxiety, you know, with, you know, financial issues, you know, things are bad. Because, you know, my early game of journalism, I'm not making a lot of money. And you know, I have a family to support. You know, I got bills, I gotta pay, you know. And from month to month, it was always this like, especially as a freelance journalist from month to month, I was always worried, like, am I gonna make enough money to cover my bills. And that came with just a tremendous amount of financial anxiety, you know and you know, through that anxiety and it always worked out. But you know, when you're in it at the time, you don't know if it's gonna work out. 

I wish I was as cool and calm and collected in that experiences as I was in like, combat. So I found like when I got shot at or if I was walking around IEDs, I became very calm. I was not anxious. I was not worried. I became very just really cool, calm and collected in war. And I did not have that. And from month to month working as a freelance journalist, I was constantly worried that the bottom was going to fall out and the other shoe was going to drop, you know. And I kind of wish I had that kind of same cool, calm and connectedness from war as a civilian. And if I could talk to my younger self, I wish I could just impart that sense of like everything was gonna work out and everything was gonna be okay. Because my younger self did not know that, that kind of filtered over into when I got hired at Newsweek. Like for the first year or so at Newsweek, I constantly thought that I was gonna be fired. 

Not because they were unhappy with my work or they were threatening to be fired. It was just my own anxiety. I had gotten into this idea that if I don't work as hard as possible, if I don't outwork everybody around me, I'm gonna lose my job. That had a negative impact on my personal life. I alienated myself from friends, I alienated myself from family, all out of this notion of that I could lose my job at any point. So I worked my ass off, you know? And so I think that's what I would try to tell myself to empower myself to try to tell my younger self it's going to work out, it's going to be okay. You don't have to be as anxious everyday as you are. Now, would my younger self accept that advice? I have no idea, probably not.

Brock Briggs  39:49  

Well, what's ironic, you said that you were kind of like waiting for the shoe to drop and that the shoe dropping when you're being shot at and walking around IEDs is much different than missing your monthly mortgage payment. The outcome is very, very different. And so that's interesting that you felt that kind of anxiety about that contrasted with like a much more on the surface, like much more serious situation, just objectively speaking. Have you learned anything interesting about what it is like working for yourself as opposed to working/reporting for a larger organization?

James LaPorta  40:38  

Well, the benefits are better. You're working for an organization. 

Brock Briggs  40:42  

It’s like health insurance 

James LaPorta  40:47  

Health insurance, yeah, well because when I was a freelancer, I didn't have health insurance. You know, I had, you know, I had a health care in terms of like, you know, service connectability. You know because everybody's got like, you know, 10% disability for their hearing, you know, through the VA. So I have that you know, and then I had health care when I was in college. But outside of college for the most of the time, I did not have health care. And you have a little bit of credential backing, right? Like as a freelancer, you know, I didn't have to go, you know, I'm James LaPorta. I'm writing about a story. 

And you're like, well, you know, who do you work for? It's like well, I'm not quite sure. Like, I don't know. I might publish this with the Washington Post. And I publish this with The Daily Beast, which most people outside of DC or New York have never even heard of, you know. You know, so there was always that kind of tap dance of like, who do you work for, you know? Whereas, you know, I'm James LaPorta. I'm an investigative reporter with The Associated Press, that says everything you need to know, you know. So there's not much of explaining to do. The freelance life is, it's good in some aspects, but it's bad in others. You know, the good part of freelancing is you get to pick your own assignments. You know, there's no editor telling you cover this, don't cover that, you know and you can spend as much time on a story as you want. What you have to get good at is selling yourself. 

And you know, which in the beginning, I was not good at, in marketing yourself. The other thing you have to get good at as a freelance journalist is the business side, right? Because you're essentially an independent contractor. And so, most journalists are not good at the business side of journalism. We're good at, you know, gathering facts and writing stories and interviewing people, things like that. The business side of journalism, most journalists tend to not be good at. 

Brock Briggs  42:58  

How has everything that you just express there formed your opinion about who your identity is as a reporter, maybe outside of an organization. Because you're in a unique position now like, we might get to that later, where you're looking for work and you kind of need to either like rely on past work and or be able to say, hey, I have this track record that's outside of and not associated with an identity. And press is kind of, it's unique in that you may fall under a publication or something, but it still will be public and your name is still on it. Not exactly the case with a lot of jobs. Most of the time, when you work for a company, you're a faceless cog under a large umbrella. But what I see and people like you and reporters in general and I think some people kind of internet culture do this really well as they come to their own, like personal brand and kind of identity built that is unique. And people associate like, oh, it's when they hear investigative reporting in the military space, they think of James not your company name.

James LaPorta  44:13  

Yeah, I mean, you're right. The currency in journalism, especially for an individual journalist, is our past reporting. You know, that is our currency. That's kind of what we sell ourselves on. You know, when I'm selling myself, you know, now it's like, you know, I'm the reporter who reported before anybody that US special forces have killed you know, Al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. So no other reporter can claim that. I can, so that's a selling point. I was also the reporter that first reported that we had killed our Zircaloy this past year. So that is currency, that's selling points, you know? 

So yeah, it's really our track record, you know, but journalism is also replaced because it's also the only place. You know, if a journalist gets fired, everybody hears about it. That's the other double edged sword is just like everybody can kind of look up your work and look up your track record. Usually, when you mess up, they know that track record, too. So it's a very public facing, you know, which I don't disagree. I think it should be that way. You know, I'm always been a big proponent of more transparency in journalism, especially in the age of so much misinformation nowadays, right? I think it's incumbent on journalists and publications to be more transparent in news articles about where information comes from that informs that news article. I mean, the more you can just lay it out for people, the better. 

But yeah, our currency is your track record. And then also, if you have particular skills, right? So one of my selling points is, is using the Freedom of Information Act, right? So even if I don't have sources, I can teach you how to use the Freedom of Information Act, which will better inform your reporting. And that was one of the jobs that I had at the Associated Press was I used to teach younger journalists at the AP, like interns and then I would also teach other AP journalists how to better use the Freedom of Information Act so we can pull more information out of the government. So that's also a selling point is that skill set, you know?

Brock Briggs  46:44  

One of the things that I have noticed reading a lot of your work in preparation for this interview is, you've covered a lot of contentious stories like extremely contentious. I am not sure if that was intentional. Or if that's something that's driven by, hey, this is like what people will click on. And this is like, what kind of drives news is it's gonna be kind of interesting and like inflammatory to some degree. Do you have any commentary or thoughts on like what drives your process with stories? And then maybe how that that feeds into like what you bring to the table when it comes to, like future prospects on jobs?

James LaPorta  47:35  

Yeah. So I don't go looking for conflict. I don't. And I've told, you know, public affairs officers this before in my past, you know, I don't go looking for a “good news story” or a “bad news story”, just looking for a story, period. Now, if that's a good story or interpreted as a good news story, great. That's interpreted as a bad news story, great. I don't care. I'm interested in a story, informing the public about something they didn't know. And you know, even you know, despite all the contentious things that I've covered, my favorite reporter has nothing to do with what I cover. My favorite reporter in the world is a guy named Steve Hartman, who works at CBS News. He does one story a week. And it comes out on Friday. And it's called On the Road with Steve Harmon. 

And basically, it's a two to three minute segment about, you know, stranger gives kidney to random person who needed it, those kinds of stories. Or you know, a seven year old boy donates $20 to a soldier, you know, heartwarming stories that have nothing to do with what I cover at all. But the reason he's my favorite reporter is it's just a story. It's not, you know, it's just a yeah, there's a twist to it and it's heartwarming and stuff like that but he's just a naturally good storyteller. You know, for me, I've never gone at stories based on whether or not they're good or bad. It's always been like, I get a tip or I learned something through FOIA. Or I learned something from reading some sort of report. And I deem that to be important for the American people to know. You know, that's kind of how I've always traditionally kind of gone at it. Not so much whether or not there's conflict in it or not.

Brock Briggs  49:45  

No doubt, there's gonna be a lot of things that you cover in the future and like obviously up until now that bring criticism to you. I would love to hear about maybe a time that or maybe if it has been, you have received criticism for something that you're just it's like, hey, I'm just reporting the facts. Or are you really held to the fire by leaders, listeners, etc. over things that you see and deemed to be factual information? And maybe how does that play out with how you think about your work?

James LaPorta  50:22  

I mean, that comes with the job, like criticism comes with the job. You know, good journalism is supposed to, you know, ruffle feathers. You know, it's supposed to, you know, to me the best journalism is when you know, if there's two sides of the story and I've pissed both people off. To me, that's a good story. You know, I've had stories like that, you know, where, you know, I'm an equal opportunist you know. People are not gonna like stories. That just comes with the nature of the job, you know, have I gotten criticized for things that are not my fault, sure, right? Usually, it's like headlines. Reporters don't write headlines, usually, that's an editor's job. And but it's our name on the byline. 

So usually reporters get criticized for like, you know. I remember hearing the story, it was something like I was writing about, I think it was like migrants coming up from the border. And migrants were being moved to a certain military base here in the country. I can’t remember which base it was. But at that base, it was one of these bases where we train service members to become intelligence specialists, right? That was just where normal training happened. And the headline was something like migrants move to spy base or something to that effect. In the term spy base, implies that it's a base in the United States that's actively spying, which on American citizens, which is not true, you know, what I'm saying? And so I remember getting criticized by that. 

Now, I didn't write that headline. But I understand the criticism, you know, because it wasn't a spy base. You know, it was just a base where people get trained on how to do intelligence, you know, but no, I mean, having tough skin is part of being in journalism. You're gonna get criticized. You're gonna get criticized by readers, you're gonna get criticized by governments, you're gonna get criticized by individuals you write about, but those criticisms are also important. So I wouldn't want those criticisms to go away either, you know.

Brock Briggs  53:11  

I would imagine it's an incredibly short feedback loop for your writing. And if you can manage the feedback in a way that you're not gonna take it personal, but find a way to say, how could I have been better? Because I would imagine that there's maybe not all probably not even a majority, maybe 10% of comments or whatnot are maybe actually constructive and they're getting that something that's good or a way that you could improve as a writer or reporter. A lot of them I'm sure are just thrashing needlessly, but.

James LaPorta  53:49  

Yeah, I mean, you can tell very quickly constructive criticism from like, say, death threats. So I get death threats, like all the time. Like actually, women in journalism actually get it worse than me. But that's an unfortunate thing. Journalists in general should not be receiving death threats, you know. I don't care who you are or you know what publication you work for either.

Brock Briggs  54:21  

Most recently, you were at the Associated Press. And I want to just briefly talk about your time there and kind of what happened for what you can share anyway. 

James LaPorta

Sure

Brock Briggs

How would you sum up your time at the AP?

James LaPorta  54:38  

I love being with the Associated Press. The atmosphere there is especially so I was on the investigations team at the Associated Press. I worked there for almost three years, you know, everybody on, you know the rank and file reporters, you know, people just like me. The lovely people at the AP would want to work with them again in the future if I could. We did some great work. You know last year, I spent about a year and a half looking into how many weapons and explosives go missing from military installations in the country. And it turns out, it's a lot. And some of those weapons actually end up being used in the commissioning of a crime. For example, we tracked a nine millimeter Beretta from Fort Bragg all the way to Albany, New York. And that was used in a shootout between gang members, you know, things like that. And that won several awards this year, that reporting. Also did look at racial issues in the military. 

I particularly looked at the Uniform Code of Military Justice and issues within the Uniform Code of Military Justice found that there's no hate crime. In the military, there's no hate crime categories. That's problematic. That won a national investigative award. Yeah. And also, while I was there, I got to, you know, the AP style book, right? So the AP style book is basically the Bible for journalism. Every single publication uses the AP style book in terms of like informing their journalism or how they should write journalism. It was kind of cool. I got to be an author, contributing author in the series AP Stylebook. So I was like, I got to improve military terms within the AP Stylebook, you know, so that was kind of cool. And then I taught FOIA at APA. So that was kind of what I did for the almost three years that I was there, until recently.

Brock Briggs  56:57  

That's got to be a good feeling knowing that you're like giving back and helping improve the processes of something. And there, you mentioned this at the very beginning, but that love for teaching like being able to make the writing better not just like your own writing, but you're improving the writing and reporting of others as well.

James LaPorta  57:18  

I've always historically thought that I was a better reporter than writer. And so I've had to really concentrate on writing to become a better writer. I envy people and I'm jealous of people who can just write and write beautifully, you know. I don't have that talent naturally. So I have to really, really focus on writing. I mean, reporting, I can always find a good story. I know exactly where to go to find good stories. I know how to interview people very well, you know, like, that's the reporting side of me is, it's always been very easy for me. But writing has always been the one where like, I'm not as strong as I'd like to be, you know. And so I've always kind of focused more on how to become a better writer, you know, versus a better reporter.

Brock Briggs  58:07  

Recently, you were let go from the AP. Would you mind sharing your perspective of what happened and exactly what the incident was?

James LaPorta  58:17  

The incident? I would say there's enough information that's publicly out there for people to look up and decide for themselves whether or not I should have been fired or not from the AP. And people can come to their own conclusions. But yeah, there's enough information that's out there already publicly. That lays out exactly what happened. That information is out there. But generally speaking really quick. There were reports that Russian missiles had entered into Poland and killed two individuals in Poland. This is a big deal because Poland is a member of NATO. And there is this thing called the Article 5 Treaty, and which could have drawn the United States into a war with Russia. 

So that's kind of why it was a big deal. The initial reports turned out to be wrong. What actually happened was, Russia had fired missiles. Ukraine defended itself by shooting those missiles out of the sky. And debris from that fell into Poland and unfortunately killed two people. The initial confusion seems to stem from that both Ukraine and Russia use the same type of missile. So both Russia and Ukraine missiles, they're all Russian made, in a sense, you know, that's generally what happened.

Brock Briggs  59:48  

I appreciate you sharing that. I know that that's kind of a disrupting time in your life and kind of obviously unexpected. And so I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you.

James LaPorta  1:00:00  

Yeah, no problem. 

Brock Briggs  1:00:03  

I want to kind of close out and talk about what we can learn about journalism from you. You've spent the last nine years like you said, writing and reporting, which there are some skills in there that I think are extremely valuable. Asking good questions, you mentioned that you know how to interview really well. How do we be as maybe even not people going into journalism, but just people in general, asking better questions and like getting to the root cause of issues is an important skill that everybody should have. How do we do that better from your learnings as a reporter?

James LaPorta  1:00:48  

I would say, one is to listen more. I mean, that's kind of the key takeaway in journalism for me, is to listen more. You know, secondly, is you know, there's that, I think it's Walt Whitman, you know, be curious, not judgmental. And I tried to apply that, you know. I try not to, you know, when I'm interviewing somebody new or I'm going into a new story to dig into, I try to approach it from a place of curiosity versus a place of judgment. Because if you're approaching from a place of judgment, you've already made up your, your kind of pre determining conclusions, right? And you know, there's something, especially and this is something I learned in the intelligence community, which is, you know, you want to try to avoid confirmation bias. You know, don't get ahead of the facts. 

But also follow the facts wherever they may lead. You know, that's the other thing is I keep checking in with myself on my own gaps in my reporting, right? So I try not to get ahead of the facts, I tried to stay, you know, I tried to just kind of follow the trail but also continuously checking in with myself about what are my gaps? What do I not know, you know? Am I starting to, you know, go down the path of, say a confirmation bias or something like that. And, you know, one of the best defenses is to continuously just be curious, you know. So I mean, those are the two things that I would say is one, to listen more and two, to be more curious than judgmental, you know. 

Brock Briggs  1:02:42  

How do we prevent from going down that path quicker than we should? Because I have to imagine, when you get a tip for a story or you find something interesting, think about what this would look like on the cover of this. How do you prevent from getting to that point? Is it just by not making any assumptions from the beginning? Or how do you temper that? 

James LaPorta  1:03:06  

Yeah, so assumption is not a source. And the first time I ever heard that was actually from reading about Watergate from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. I can't remember the story that they were reporting. But you know, they had a couple of sources on it. So this is actually one of the Watergate stories that turned out to be wrong. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were wrong about it but I remember them saying something effective, like, look, we had a couple of stories. And then we had, you know, some logic and some assumptions. Well, logic and an assumption are not sources, you know. So that I mean, that would be my argument is not to assume. You know, how do you know what you know? 

And that kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier about being again, I'm all for as much transparency and journalism, you know, as we can provide, you know, how do you know that you know? Where does this piece of information come from? You know, one of the things that I typically do, you know, especially on an investigation is, which is not that different from when I was in the Intelligence Committee, which is I read-sell my articles. And what I mean by read-sell is I look at it as I'm looking for holes. In each line in an article, I want to know where that information comes from. So I almost write for an investigation of mine, I write it like a book report. So I cite my sources. This line comes from this, this line comes from this, this line comes from this and it's incredibly tedious. But it is incredibly just important in terms of fact checking before it goes out the door.

Brock Briggs  1:05:01  

I like that line of thinking. And I am sure that that leads you to kind of giving yourself more accountability in the information that you're providing. And then when other people read it, you can say, any questions about it, you can refer to this, this is where I got this.

James LaPorta  1:05:19  

You know, the other thing too, is you know, the world moves very fast now or at least, that's the optics of it, right? Especially on like social media, where a lot of people get their news on social media, that things are happening so fast. And I think it would benefit everyone, if we just slowed down more, took a pause and really thought through, you know, the phrase in the military is a second and third order effects. You know, that's not a bad idea.

Brock Briggs  1:05:54  

We certainly don't need to be in as big of a hurry as we think we ought to be. And I know you're in the business of sometimes reporting breaking news, but most other things in life can usually wait. And it's better to have a more informed opinion. That's well thought through and yeah, I agree. James, this has been a really fun conversation. I appreciate you coming on and sharing with me. How can me and anybody listening be useful to you? Is there a social media you want to put out there? Where can people reach out to you? You are looking for work? Anybody that's looking to chat with you about that? Where do you want to send them?

James LaPorta  1:06:36  

I mean, I'm pretty easy to find. I'm on Twitter @JimLaPorta. My DMS are open. I tried to apply. I try to reply to everyone. On Facebook, I'm at Real James LaPorta. I think I'm verified on Facebook and then I have an Instagram. I post a picture every once in a while, you know, but usually, usually Twitter or Facebook are the two that I checked most.

Brock Briggs  1:07:06  

I'll include links to those in the show notes. I really appreciate you, James. Thank you so much. 

James LaPorta

Thank you!