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go to the great courses plus dot com slash off message hey everybody it's glenn thrush with politico's

off message podcast my pre-vacation episode.

It's interesting interviewing newsmakers on the podcast.

It was something I never did before, and it was really before the last year, year and a half.

In fact, my entire reporting philosophy was predicated

on not talking to news, to newsmakers. And by newsmakers, I mean, in Washington, we also

call them principals. So the president is a principal or a senator or the target of the story

that you're writing. And, you know, I kind of was raised in an environment

of investigative reporting, but also very much steeped in the philosophy. And this is really

kind of a function of me being raised in New York City and raised in kind of the New York City

tabloid environment of working from the outside end. So you talked with people who were kind of

peripheral to the story, and then gradually

you worked your way in towards the subject, and really the only way that you get a somebody

who is at the center of the story is by forcing them to talk to you, off and off the record,

by the way, by presenting them with information they have to

respond to. So my goal as a reporter for really the first 15 years of my career was to dig up

enough information that the person at the center of my story, whether it be, you know, one of the

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