Street roots., December 07, 2012, Image 1

© 2 0 0 6 N P R , B Y J A C Q U E S C O U G H L IN
Full-time journalist and part-time crooner, Shapiro talks about his year on the road with Romney
BY JO A N N E ZU H L
for in ju red v e te ra n s.
S T A F F W R IT E R
And of course, there’s the applause that comes
o one would accuse public broadcasting of
with performing with Pink Martini around the
being sexy, but fans of Ari Shapiro could
globe. And in the space between his alter-egos is
make a pretty good case. The Beaverton
home with his husband in D.C.
High School grad (and Yale magna cum laude)
It’s an otherwise normal life, with a fantastic
manages to make the airwaves a little more tuned
view to history.
in, taking the title of NPR White House
correspondent to its sassiest heights when he
Jo a n n e Zuhl: You’ve seen how the sausage is
croons the classics — center stage — with Portland
made in this election cycle. Do you leave feeling better
band Pink Martini.
or worse about the democratic process?
But for nearly all of 2012, Shapiro was
embedded with GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s
Ari Shapiro: I think I appreciate its
campaign for president, broadcasting from across
imperfections. There’s a reason that at the end of
the country on both the candidate and the lives he
the day it’s worked for as many years as it has.
touched. He didn’t just have a front row seat to the
There are lots of problems with the system. But
spectacle of American politics; he was there, in the focusing only on the problems ignores the fact that
wings, watching the most expensive presidential
on the whole, this is a really great system of
campaign in the country’s history as it tripped,
government that has endured for a really long time
stumbled, and ultimately fell on its face.
— for a reason. And so I hope I have a realistic
Shapiro grew up in Portland, and he is now
perspective. I don’t come away from the election
based in Washington D.C. Before joining the White
thinking what a mess, what a waste. But I also
House press corps, he was NPR’s justice
don’t come away from the election thinking gosh
correspondent for five years, covering among other everything is perfect.
issues the battles over Guantanamo detainees, the
crimes at Abu Ghraib prison and American
J.Z.: Did you come away with any unexpected
soldiers accused of abuse.
lessons from the experience?
He has been awarded the American Bar
Association’s Silver Gavel for his coverage of lost
A.S.: I would say that what I learned the most
prisoners after Hurricane Katrina, The Daniel
about was not politics but America; the differences
Schorr Journalism Prize for his investigation of
between different parts of the country and the
methamphetamine use and HIV transmission, and
issues that are important to Americans right now. I
was recognized by the Columbia Journalism
hope this doesn’t sound tone deaf, but I think I
Review for his investigation into disability benefits
was lucky to be covering an election during a
N
difficult time in the country, because no matter
where the campaign event was, I would talk to
people in the audience and hear really compelling
stories about what people are going through right
now.
J.Z.: How much did this campaign, the most
expensive in U S. history, come face to face with that
America that yo u ’re talking about?
A.S.: A lot of it. (Romney) would do campaign
events with tens of thousands of people, and many
of them, if not most of them, working class, blue
collar. I mean, you can’t have 10,000 people
without having a huge slice across the
demographic spectrum. One theme that I really
took away was that when people feel able to work
but don’t have the opportunity to work, it lessens
their self-worth. It makes them feel like they are
not able to contribute in a way that they know they
are able to contribute, and that’s demoralizing.
" I remember
one woman la
Colamfeas^
Ohlor who was
5 6 years old,
She was la id
off from her
job at age 50,
She told me
she had
applied for
4 0 0 jobs/"
J.Z.: Did you talk to a lot o f people in that
situation?
A.S.: Oh yeah. I remember one woman in
Columbus, Ohio, who was 56 years old. She was
laid off from her job at age 50. She told me she
had applied for 400 jobs. She’d had three
interviews. She knows that the longer she’s
unemployed, the lower her chances of getting a job
offer are, and she says she sees people who are
graduating from college who might have a good 40
See SHAPIRO, page 4
Inside
Diaper demand
indicative of
families in need
Americans
among us
Vendors reflect on
customers
How some groups
are working to fill
the gap
Photographer
documents Native
Americans, coast
to coast
How you have made
a difference in so
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a year of great
many lives