The Media’s Turn – Interview with Joshua Davis

I feel very fortunate as I look back on my career and recall some of the amazing adventures and experiences I’ve had.  There is so much to appreciate in being able to travel the country, orchestrate press events, mingle at trade shows, and manage photo shoots.  For me, those once-in-a-life time events are well worth the longs hours (and weekends), red eye flights, swollen ankles and buffet breakfasts (actually, I won’t complain about all-you-can-eat bacon).  While I could fill a book with my bounty of memories, the several days I spent with Joshua Davis go into my mental archives as one of the reasons that I love PR and journalism.

Joshua Davis has one of the most diverse backgrounds of any journalist I’ve met, and personifies the true essence of classic investigative journalism.  We spent several days in a hospital as he chronicled the treatment of a patient dependent on heroin for a multi-page story in Wired magazine.

My job was three-fold – ensure my client, the developer and practitioner of the exclusive treatment, was appropriately portrayed, help Joshua and his photographers get a compelling story and ensure that the patient, in such a vulnerable time, was treated with dignity and respect.

I’ll never forget watching Joshua sitting on the hospital room floor.  It was very easy to see he was becoming engrossed in the scene, taking copious notes, and mentally constructing a story which fairly portrayed the challenges, stereotypes and emotion behind drug dependency.

That was years ago, and I’m thrilled that he agreed to be interviewed here. To give you some background, Joshua is a contributing editor for Wired, and has also written for GQ, Maxim, Men’s Health, Outside and others.  One of his most memorable pieces was sneaking into Iraq to cover the war for Wired.  Josh also completed a documentary called “The Beast Within,” which documented his attempt to become the lightweight armwrestling champion of the world.

You can learn much more about his prolific journalism career, which spans television, film and print, at his Web site.

RK: You’ve covered a diverse and eclectic mix of stories during the course of your career.  How do you decide on your subject matter? Is it important to you that you actually take something away from each story you immerse yourself in?
JD: I follow my curiosity. Sometimes I look at a globe and put my finger on a place I want to go. Then I’ll think of subjects that are associated with the place and begin to do some research to see if there is a story there. Sometime I will just sit in my office and type random thoughts into Google to see where they lead.

My aim with my articles is to tell a gripping story that draws the reader in. My goal is to have the reader remember the experience.

RK: Which projects that you’ve worked on do you consider to have been most exciting?
JD: I’ve done a number of stories that have gotten my heart racing. I covered the war in Iraq, spent time in Southern Colombia during a rebel uprising, and followed a group of maritime salvage experts into the Dominican Republic in the wake of a hurricane. I’ve also written about advances in cream cheese technology and found that pretty exciting too. If the story is good, it doesn’t really matter what the setting is – the subject matter can get my adrenaline going.

RK: In addition to magazine writing, you work with a number of other types of media as an author and television and film producer, and stories of yours are even being adapted to film. Did you set out to be a jack-of-all-trades or did your career evolve over time? What interests you about journalism in all its forms?
JD: My career evolved. I never intended to be a journalist; I just kind of stumbled onto it. I was making documentaries at the time about unusual contests. At first, I just filmed them but then I started to compete. I entered the U.S. National Armwrestling Championship and surprisingly ended up 4th in U.S. in the lightweight division. That made me an alternate for the U.S. National team and when the 2nd and 3rd guys couldn’t make it; I was invited to compete at the World Championship in Poland. I ended up 17th in the world and made a doc about that experience. That film got me signed by an agency in LA and led me into the TV realm.

At the same time, I wrote an article for Maxim about my journey to Poland and that was my first long-form magazine article. I also ended up writing a book about the contests for Random House (the book is titled “The Underdog“). So it’s all been a bit of evolution starting with armwrestling!

RK: Have you incorporated any social media elements into your reporting? Do you use social networking professionally or personally?  How do you feel that tools like blogs and Twitter impact the way news is consumed as opposed to traditional vehicles?
JD: I have Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter accounts but I don’t use them that much. I feel like I spend most of my time working and don’t want to get too distracted. There’s only one occasion that I can recall where I came across some interesting info on a social networking site. It was actually a Russian site dedicated to introducing Western men to Russian women. I was writing a piece about a man who had built a pirated DVD empire in Shanghai and he was using the site to meet women. He listed a bunch of personal info on it and I quoted that in the story. The moral, I guess, is be careful what you post.

RK: What qualities/traits do you value when working with a publicist? What attributes have deterred you from working with a PR practitioner?
JD:  For me, I appreciated a publicist who will point me towards good interview subjects. Plus, I like PR people who understand what I need to make a story work. That means understanding the nature of the publication and understanding what makes a great story.

RK: What can a PR person do to help you to obtain the information you need for a good story?
JD: Arrange uncoached interviews. There’s nothing worse than a canned presentation.

RK: Do you receive PR pitches?  Do you ever use pitches for story fodder? If so, what kind of pitch catches your eye?

JD: I receive PR pitches every day. I have only written one story based on a pitch in 8 years and it was a short 200 word piece about an Italian sewage agency that was testing their sewage to determine the amount of drugs the population was doing. What appealed to me was how unusual and strange it was.

RK: What’s next on the horizon for you?

JD:  Finding a wild, wonderful and surprising story!

Rachel Kay