Rebecca Tan Interviews, October 17 and November 7, 2021

This is an interview with Rebecca Tan. The interviewer is Elinor Aspegren. We are in Lincoln Park. It is about 5:45 p.m. On Sunday, October 17th. Do you mind if I record this interview, Rebecca?

That's fine.

Okay, awesome. So, I just kind of want to get a background about you and about what kind of -- What, like, what led you to journalism? What your path is in journalism? So we can start with where and when were you born?

Sure. I was born in 1996 in Singapore, which is an island and nation state in Southeast Asia very far from the U.S. Singapore doesn't have the most robust media system, or free press -- the rights of the Free Press are not really enshrined in law. So, I knew pretty much early on some time in high school around the time that I watched the TV show The Newsroom, which younger audiences will not know -- that I wanted to go to the U.S., hopefully to learn how to become a journalist or writer. I was moved by a lot of journalism that I read in Singapore by virtue of the internet. So I read a lot of magazines online, I read a lot of the New York Times and The Washington Post and I was sort of amazed by what these people did for a living, I guess. So I came to the U.S. with the goal of, you know, getting an education and, and sort of learning how to become a journalist. I went to the, you know, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, you know, like a lot of other working journalists today, spend all my time at the student newspaper there. Graduated. Wrangled my way into the job into a job at the Washington Post and have been there ever since.

Cool. You said you grew up in Singapore. Can you tell me about the town or city than you were born in?

So Singapore is a nation state. So it's about the geographical size of Manhattan. So not even New York City. And seven million people live in it. There's then no towns or anything like that -- It's just one island, one city and one nation. It's very -- it's a very modern, developed city. But yeah, I grew up -- was born and raised and never set foot into the U.S. until I came here for orientation in 2015.

Okay. Did you just so you always wanted to be a journalist or did - were there other career options thought about?

When I was really young girl, reportedly, I wanted it to be a politician according to my parents, but I think I always wanted to do something with writing of some sort, storytelling I think of some sort.. And reporting was the thing I learned — had to learn, I think very much when I was like, you know, between the ages of 17 and — and I'm still learning. But when I learned what reporting entailed, it was sort of addictive, you know, just you go up to people and it gives you an excuse to go up to anyone and ask them a bunch of questions really. And I happened to really like the writing aspect of it. So I think it just sort of reinforces itself, the more I did it. But I think I've known since I was about 15 or 16 that journalism was a very likely choice for me. The TV show The Newsroom, as I said, had a big impact on me -- Aaron Sorkin.

Yeah, me too. What about The Newsroom was so interesting or fascinating to you?

I think it had like, you know, re watching The Newsroom — like, if I were to re-watch it now, I'm sure that I would disagree with a lot of aspects of how journalism is portrayed, or even some journalistic -- journalistic practices that are — quote-unquote “are practiced.” But at the time, watching the Newsroom — there’s are moralistic bent, right? There is a moralist event to Aaron Sorkin's storytelling, and it's very effective on a 15 year old, I think, who like, aspires to do something good for the world [who is] not really sure what that looks like, not really sure how to articulate that, and sort of is — has a bent toward not being anti-establishment necessarily, but being sort of inherently skeptical of establishment — Journalism felt like a very good fit. I think it was sort of that feeling of holding people to account that there were -- it was sort of a moral thing to do as an adult to spend, you know, your Mondays to Fridays doing and that it was always on the side of truth is, or people without power. I think that those were the themes of the time that vaguely spoke to me.

Did you get some of your anti-establishment -- or not anti-establishment, skeptical of establishments? Did you get some of that from growing up in Singapore? Or what did you -- let me put it another way. How did growing up in Singapore impact you and your career path? Did it influence you, prepare you?

The skepticism, I think comes from — My dad happens to be a pretty skeptical person inherently, but also — It’s hard to explain without sort of a full rundown of Singapore's history and what it's like, as a country. But like it's a lot of the formal narrative that’s taught in schools. That is, well. How do I put this? ? A lot of what - generally exists as sort of the mainstream narrative is sort of government backed, government-sanctioned and so very sanitized and not the most organic and it's very easy in that kind of environment I think to become a skeptic. It's very easy to realize or see narratives is sort of having or sort of government-pushed narratives as having holes in them. I guess this sort of simple way to do that is — to say is that there's a lot — there's a lot of authority and establishment and seeing what it was skeptical of which is not to say that I don't love my country. This is like, like, like every community, right. And I suppose this is true for every community and every government system. There's a lot to be skeptical of and I feel like I responded to that, to that system and probably things I read growing up as well. Being Americanized and like reading about the free press and understanding what it could do I think had an impact on me as well.

Yeah, definitely. So you moved here or you moved your for college. Okay, why did -- why have you made that decision? And why did you go, you go? Why did you go to Penn?

I went to Penn because they have [a] strong English Department and I really wanted to study English. Really liked it — what I didn't expect, I think was the college newspaper having a pretty robust history and legacy which was very helpful, I think, in helping me learn how to become a reporter. I was probably the first international editor there — [I was the] first international executive editor and like it took like, there was certain things that to learn a lot of American sports and things like that. But I ended up really liking Penn.

I decided to stay mostly because of this opportunity to work for the Post, which I love. I mean, I was an intern there twice. I think from the moment that I stepled into the newsroom, just, was very influenced by the legacy and the strength and the vigor of the institution. And then I've decided to stay on and I think I will stay, you know, at the Post in some kind of capacity for quite a long time because it's just a great environment and — you know, when we get to January 6, I can go over this again, but like we were expertly — despite the the chaos of it all, right, we were very expertly captained that day. We had a very great captain and leader in the Metro desk editor Mike Semel. And it's been just tremendously helpful for young journalists, to be, to be on a team like that, I think, it’s nurturing and it helps to beat back some of what we've discussed about burnout and sort of young reporters in particular sort of being burned out. Yeah.

Yeah, can you -- so you start in the Washington Post in 2019?

Yeah.

Can you walk me through why you decided to apply for the internships. And then your path to becoming a reporter full-time?

So, if I applied the internship at the Post after I’d done, my first sort of Journalism — I worked at a newspaper in Singapore before I came to college, so that was sort of my first experience and that's where I sort of learned, like, the nuts and bolts of reporting, you know, like, interviewing someone, recording it, whatever transcribing bits of it [and] writing up the story based on that, you know, the, those are the spent like five months doing than it. And it was fun and engaging in a way. And then I went to work for Vox.com, which was really fun as well, and then I decided to apply for the internship at the Post because I had known a couple Penn alum who had done it and (pause) I just have always been a fan of the Post alongside, you know, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic. Just sort of the level of journalism that they produce has always been inspiring to me and since I guess since being in the newsroom, I realized that it's, you know, just level of resources and the level of talent is why they’re able to do that. And so I'm glad to be part of the crew.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. What was it like when you got the email that you had been or the call? I don't know how the Washington Post does they’re — lets their people know that they've gone in an internship. What was it like to find out that you got an internship? And then when you eventually were promoted to getting — to being a full-time reporter, how was it? What was kind of what were the emotions or like the feelings? Do you remember?

The very first time — my very first internship was on the foreign desk. So the foreign editor, Doug Jehl, called me while I was in the library at Penn. Yeah, I was at Van Pelt for anyone who's been to Penn. It was just tremendously shocking. You know, you — Anyone whose sort of been or tried to go into journalism, you know, it's like, you know, when the internship season comes around that you just sort of apply everywhere. It's sort of like crapshoot me and you just hope that someone will take you and the Post’s application cycle is pretty early. So I was lining up all these other applications. And was, yeah, was sort of shocked and honored that for some random reason that the applications that out because I think and I do say this to a lot of college students that it is a crapshoot like they are very arbitrary decisions, ultimately, that editors have to make, I think especially toward the end. Yeah. I was just delighted.

And then the the first day that I got to be in the newsroom.. This was way, way pre-pandemic 2018, just stepping into the newsroom with the rest of the other interns. It's very cliche and it's very cheesy, but you… it just sort of takes your breath away, you know, you just sort of see the whirring of the whirring of the, the newsroom, you know, like, people on calls and having meetings and then these like big screens that are laying out the paper. It was great. I think it was one of those like moments where your, your eyes just sort of take a mental picture because it was, it was, yeah, it was it was pretty cool, it was very dope. And then being converted was, oh, so delightful because I wouldn't be able to stay in the country if I didn't have a full-time job. Yeah, the Post is the sponsor of my Visa, so my life would be radically different if I wasn't, I wasn't working at the Post. I would be like in Singapore.

Do you think you'd still be working in journalism if you were in Singapore?

I think I would, I would have tried to. In Singapore and Southeast Asia. they have wires the wire services all have bureaus there.. So I probably would have tried to work for like, AP or Reuters is a thing. But in those roles, which are amazing journalistic opportunities I just wouldn’t had, I think the, the kind of guidance that I've had at the Post, where editors are really amazing and also, just sort of the kind of opportunity to pursue like features and investigative stuff, which I've been able to at Post again because editors are generous.

Can you tell me about some of that advice [and] how that's impacted you. Advice from journalism mentors?

Some of it is advice, but I actually think the more meaningful thing has been the editing. So like the actual editing has helped me grow a lot as a reporter. And then obviously — well, I think the two most important things that the actual editing and then the second one is the opportunities. So, having enough faith in me to send me to do various things and to pursue various stories, and to let me pursue stories, like, if I pitch something random, you know, to let me do it or help me craft it so that it's more ambitious than what it originally was — That has been the most helpful to me. But it in terms of advice. I think it's kind of old school, but I think I aspire at some point in my life to become a foreign correspondent and hopefully go back to Asia and report on my communities there — but the advice I got as a young journalist was to figure out first, how to become a local reporter here because all the skills that come with a Metro beat are the skills that make a really good journalist. And obviously, that path is less and less viable given the demise of local news, but having a beat and being able to cover like news, features, enterprise [long form journalism] and having to do so every week and every day and sort of developing that metabolism I think was like old-school, you know, newsroom advice that I got and that I like deeply cherish. Although it's by a lot of privilege I think that that path is open to me or has been opened to me.

Yeah, so I guess yeah, if you could go back and tell your younger self, your 16 year self, when she was just starting out in journalism, or just started to get interested in journalism and decided she want to be a reporter — If you could tell your younger self anything about journalism or your life today or anything like that, what would you tell them?

I mean lots of stuff, but like to do journalism expense specifically, I guess, just, you know, not to be too anxious about it, you know, that, you know, it will sort of work out. I liked aging, despite it all I found — I loved my teenage years, they were so formative, but they were pretty, you know, rife with anxiety. I think and weirdly, weirdly, over the past two years, my growing up has also overlapped with like a pandemic and riots, an insurrection, but they've helped me become more of an adult and a lot more grounded. I think and less anxious

Yeah, definitely. What were some of your anxieties. I mean you don't have to say but what were some of your anxieties as a kid? I mean, we all, I mean, we all have anxieties.

Yeah, yeah,, I think it's like pretty much the same sort of formulaic stuff, you know, like, “I'm not going to succeed or like whether I'm gonna succeed or whether I’m liked by my peers, you know, appreciated by my peers.” And I think, I don't think this specific to me, but I think I struggled for a long time with wondering, with what with whether I have anything original to say or to add. I think, when I was a teen, I was just sort of in conversation, you know, I didn't know, right, if I have anything original to had. But being a journalist has been great for that, actually because you don't, you don't have to add anything. You mostly ask people questions,.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you are you. It is your right that everything has worked out for you.

So far, yeah, with a lot of luck. Yeah.

Yeah. And you said that your first choice after you cover met — you've covered Metro, is working in foreign policy journalism, right?

As a foreign correspondent. I’d love to be a foreign correspondent..

Why? What kind of stories do you like to cover only with that?

So I actually, I actually think of myself currently on a type of foreign assignment. Since I wasn't born here and I've had to do a lot of learning in three years and I live here. So that's been really fun. But like I think what draws me about being a foreign correspondent is I like having sort of like a vertical beat, like health or politics. When you're a foreign correspondent, you have to write about it all. You have to write about -- say you in charge of India, or South Asia. If there's something going on with politics, you have to write about it. If there's a famine you have to write about it. If there's a viral, new pop star, you get to write about it. It's the breed that draws me. I think, because I'm pretty scattered I suppose in my interests, you know, I could be drawn in into an article on [unintelligible] and cryptocurrency, like, as much as I could be drawn into an article about an incredibly important new bill, you know, so I feel pretty scattered in my interests and that fits well with a foreign correspondent on top of, you know, being oftentimes a foreign correspondent because the US has such a massive media system, everywhere you go in the US even if it's pretty rural, not rural, but like that a lot of places in the US but many journalists actually competing for the same story or writing different versions of the same story. Whereas I think when you're a foreign correspondent, there's so much material. And so few journalists, like, every time you write something it's possible that if you did not write it, it would not exist -- the story. And I think that that's important. I think that there are a lot, a lot of untold, undiscovered and unsaid stories in many other parts of the world, especially from where I'm from in Southeast Asia.

And speaking of the Metro desk, speaking more specifically about the Metro desk. Have you had pre -- I mean, pre-pandemic, I know it's hard to remember the the olden days. Is there, are there any stories that were super memorable to cover? Either your favorite stories and most challenging ones?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'll, I was, I had a ball pre-pandemic frankly just writing about, like, random things. My beat technically is to cover Montgomery, County, Maryland, in the suburbs and I help with Annapolis as well. Obviously this got shifted during the pandemic because all of us became pandemic reporters. And then shifted again during the protests, but there were a bunch. I wrote a story about piano in a basement in Mount Pleasant that had drawn, sort of a community of strangers around it. And there was some real sort of musical geniuses that arrived, and they all just played for each other for free. It was just like, beautiful, sort of, like, slice of life that I stumbled upon and convinced my editor to let me write about it and I wrote like this, like 50 incher — it was pretty long. I was interning at the time. And my editor just pulls me aside and he's like, "Oh wow. Yeah, we're going to run it on the front page," and has like that's incredibly random but like, so delightful. I'm so happy that this group is strangers like landed on the front page of the Post alongside, I'm sure like other big name people in Washington, but like their -- their story was very compelling to me. So I loved writing about that. And I've written about, like, farmers -- I have like particular interest in like immigrant and diasporic groups and so I've written a lot about them and those are really fun. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. That's that's awesome. Congratulations on front page. I'm sure you've had many front pages.

But that was my first for sure. Yeah.

Nice. Well, I mean one of the things you said was that you all became pandemic reporter. So I kind of -- [am interested in] talking about the pandemic and your experiences during. as a reporter and as just a human being, So I guess pre-pandemic. I guess we can kind of start a little like pre-pandemic, post-pandemic kind of things. Like what was your typical work day? Work week? Like pre-pandemic if you can remember?

I would go into the office probably every day though I would leave the office to go on assignments. So I would go out to go to a downtown office at K street -- oh, although sometimes I would go to the bureau in Rockville. Okay, so maybe like two days a week. I would go downtown to office at K Street -- work from there, take calls. And then two days, I would be either at our bureau down in Rockville covering something going on in the Montgomery County Council, or I would be traveling somewhere on assignment, going to people's houses, going to people's going to churches and stuff like that, to talk to people. Yeah, that was my work week.

So, we talked about kind of, we talked about the typical day. But I want you to try to remember a specific day, like, I mean, like, cast your mind back to like, February 2020 or like, even like before that. Do you remember when you first learned about COVID?

Yeah, because I had been in Singapore in February to see my family for Chinese New Year and at that point in time, everyone in Singapore was wearing masks already because COVID, it wasn't far away. It was in all surrounding like, like countries. It hadn't arrived in Singapore, quite yet, but people were positive that it was going to come. But we thought that it was going to be like, SARS basically back in 2003, but -- so everyone was wearing masks so I was aware of it then. And then came back to DC and talked about it with my colleagues. And with my editor is about like, you know, how it was sort of changing life in Singapore and we hadn't imagined at the time that there is going to come here.

Do you remember when you first became aware of it? Like, in, in just in your general -- Like the first time you heard about COVID, or the first couple times you heard about COVID?

I think it must have been a message from my mom or me messaging my mom a New York Times story about the, about the cases in China.

Interesting. What went through your mind?

I didn't think much about it the first time because we had — as a kid, I lived through SARS and Singapore, which was pretty intense. We had to take our temperatures every day, and there was a lot of mask-wearing, and as I remember it, you know, my parents are pretty worried about people dying and stuff like that from SARS. So, but like it wasn't — it didn't sort of fundamentally upend life, you know, and there had been H1N1 and bird flu, like, I thought it was one of those stories, you know, I thought it was one of those, like, Public Health stories that like was important, but didn't dramatically just overturn all aspects of life. I didn't think it was gonna do that.

I mean, looking back now can certainly give us some hindsight bias.

Yeah.

So the first article you remember reading about it was the article about the cases in China?

They had started writing about it, they had written several. I don't think I read the very first one but they’d written several about it. And I think I must have read about a lockdown in China or like the virus spreading in China — it was one of those update pieces and I must have sent it to my mom or my mom sent it to me, either/or. And that was maybe when I like registered it in my mind.

And the first article, you remember writing about it was the one in Montgomery County?

Yeah, It went on the front page because it was the first three cases in the DC region and Montgomery County, Maryland. I wrote it with Ovetta Wiggins, who writes about Maryland and Annapolis. and Jenna Portnoy who's our regional health writer. Yeah, the three of us were scrambling to get as much information as we could about the three cases — we continued writing and following it through the rest of the week. And then eventually, it's like, two cases in Prince George's, one case in DC, three cases in Fairfax, and it goes from there.

When was the moment you realize that the pandemic was kind of like, this was — like, “Oh my gosh, this is real.” [When it felt] kind of a serious thing. Was it one of those cases kind of started just popping up everywhere?

Not even. Because when we all had to go home and work from home, when we were given that instruction, I was positive it was only going to be two months. I was like “This is crazy.” But I was positive it was only going to be too much two months — Sorry, two weeks. So it must have been — I think it must have been when I went on a reporting assignment after that and saw how empty the city was. How like — oh no. [pause] Okay, that might have been a point when I saw how empty downtown DC was and all the office buildings were emptied out and no one was taking the bus or anything like that. That might it at one point. The second point was when DC, Maryland and Virginia on the same day declared states of emergency in order to respond to the coronavirus. I was tasked with that day with writing an explainer on what the state of emergency was and I think that must have kicked in. That must have kicked in for me then how sweeping it was.

When did your newsroom shut down?

When they sent us home, I can't remember what it must have been late, March - mid-March. Yeah.

Can you tell me any specific moments that you remember? I mean, although you only thought they were going to be gone for two weeks from the last — your last day in the office?

Yeah, the Metro editor Mike Semel gathered the people in my pod which is local government, government and politics to talk and he was like, “If you guys have any questions…” People had a bunch of questions. And we all left our stuff there — like, like we didn't like — I left a cardigan there. People left, like, snacks in their drawers, you know, like we didn't think it was going to be for, for long. And I remember even then coming home and telling my partner like, “Maybe they’ll ask some people to stay home long term but like they wouldn't ask the metro desk. The Metro desk has to come in.” And again, obviously I was wrong. So yeah, that’s what I remember from the last day.

Yeah. How … moving to kind of the first initial months of quarantine, kind of after that two week period, when you realized like, “Oh we're going to be here for longer.” How were those initial — Kind of general question and then I have some more specific — How were those first initial months of quarantine for you?

Wacky, you know, like everyone else it was kind of wacky. I didn't have my work from home set up sort of well yet. [unintelligible] I live in — I live with two other journalists. So we were all sort of working from the dining table. It was kind of noisy. But mostly frankly, it was incredibly busy, I think. In that way, my experience was a little bit different from maybe the general person because I didn't have that time to process how wacky it was or feel that lonely or really take it all in because we were working nonstop to cover this crazy thing that just happened — this,this ridiculous, surreal thing that happened and kept happening to us when we woke up — Every day we woke up there would be a new restriction — “Everyone had to wear masks now.” My goodness. “Now, you know all indoor dining is closed now.” My goodness, you know, like “everyone's has to stay home for a month,” you know, like it just the news just didn't stop those first initial months. And we had to write a lot about like hospitalizations and deaths and so it wasn't — it didn't really let up. So my I feel like my personal life and my inner life sort of diminished until [laughs] like a thread, like a sliver because there was so much news to be covered.

How were those initial first months for your work productivity? Did not did was there any slowing?

No, no. There couldn't be [laughs]. We were so damn, it felt like we were sort of on like emergency breaking news all the time. It was like — it was like every day there were news conferences to watch and like information to gather. Like, I'm not saying that it was like 24/7 non-stop, but like my memory of that time is that it was intense every, every, every single day. And in a weird way because of how eventful this past year has been, it stayed that way. Like I like that has — I haven't really had the opportunity for my productivity weaken because the, the demands are so high. And I'm not saying the demands of my editors, I'm saying sort of the demands of the news cycle. Yeah, it's frankly slowed down quite a lot these couple of months since the vaccinations which has been good, which has been like, very life-saving.

And you talked about your inner life, becoming a sliver. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

That's probably a bit dramatic, a bit drastic. But it's just, you know, I think materially is just like — I wasn't, I wasn't like reading or watching any TV or staying that much in touch with — Well I was, I talked to my family every week, but um. I just like, in terms of a pie chart, you know, my work life and my personal life or my “inner life,” which is I guess I would categorize as like the time and energy and space in my mind that I designate for “useless things” like what I think about movies and books and art and philosophy and that kind of stuff. There just wasn't really time for that and I didn't have energy for that and I don't blame anything or anyone necessarily — I might have in the moment. But, but in retrospect, I really don't because it was necessary. This, this was like — and a lot of editors have told us this before like this is like continues to be the story of a lifetime. It's like a war almost.

So for your personal life, there wasn't much of a there, there wasn't much of a personal life. How about for your psychological life? I guess that's kind of a weird way of putting it.

I think the biggest loss to me, personally from the pandemic is creativity. Tiny compared to a lot of what other compared to, what a lot of other people have had to go through, though, you know, comparing suffering is not. I'm not in the business of doing that necessarily, but I guess the personal. Biggest impact on me, is that it is, is made a lot difficult, more difficult for me to go back to see my family. I used to fly back every so often twice a year, the money that too. It's been a couple weeks with them one or two weeks. And that was incredibly necessary to me, because I'm very close to my family and I'm very close to my home, very attached to Singapore, despite being here. A lot of immigrants will say that I think actually And that was that definitely weighed on me over time, along with sort of the Breakneck speed of the work along, with the experience of covering the riots in Lafayette Square, and then eventually covering the interaction. Like that would be these, like, watershed moments where I would be like, why am I, why am I solving? Why am I crying? Like, what could be the problem here? And obviously it was like a collection of things. It was yeah, it was very intense. It was certainly very intense.

And your question was, what happened to my psychological life. nothing, like, you know, went through the wringer a little bit, but I think it was oh so because things got so Heavy. And I don't mean that it was depressed at any point it. Well, it just because things got so intense. It really did. Push me to try to. Develop better habits, and so. I started seeing a therapist. Late last year and then stopped it. And then this pick it up again this year and have been doing it pretty regularly since February and not to sound like an ad for the post of the post Guild, which is all Union, but like the guild pushed really hard for us to get free Mental Health. Free counseling and therapy or you know subsidized if you want to see someone on a network out of network and it's been like amazing. Like I'm not sure I could have I would have sort of Bitten the bullet and done it. If I didn't know that I had this resource. Take advantage of it, but it's been great. It's been like phenomenal for my, my mental health to see a therapist who knew who could have known.

You talked a little bit about your family. Yeah, can you tell me a little bit more about about them?

Sure, without sort of revealing their identity’s too much — I have a mom, a dad and two siblings. I'm the youngest of three, so I have an older sister who is a year older than me, and an older brother, who is three years older than me. We're yeah, we're close. We're definitely close to the family, which is not to say that were identical. You know, we all have separate interests, but we all value family. And they’re all in Singapore and our family life is very rooted in Singapore. My extended family is in Singapore, most of my — well not most, but like a lot of my friends who I love dearly are in Singapore and so I'm very rooted there in some ways. And it's been hard during the pandemic just because of the complicated quarantine requirements and at one point it really wasn't safe for me to fly anywhere to see them. And since coming to the U.S. as a student, like it's been necessary for me to go back every couple of months, to sort of replenish my, my soul, to like replenish like my comfort, my level of comfort. And when it goes down, I get very crabby and I get very like illogically, irrationally upset and I realized like, “Oh, I'm homesick, I just need to be home.” Yeah, yeah, I’m close to my family, and I’m grateful that hopefully, with the pandemic abating, I'll be able to travel back and forth more easily and I will never complain about having to fly 24 hours if it means that I don't have to quarantine at the end of it.

Are there any — specifically with journalism — are there any articles that you've written that made majorly impacted you, in like COVId-19 pandemic or Racial Justice protests? I have specific questions later on the racial justice protests.

Oh, sure. Yeah, definitely all the time. All the time. And this is not a good answer, but virtually I think every feature outside of a sort of like a news thing, right. Every feature that that I do sort of emotionally hits me in some way which I'm not complaining about. It's yeah. I mean, I’m empathizing with this situation but not living through it. I covered — well, okay, well first of all, we did this a lot at that I want to say maybe the first year of COVID. We had to write a lot of obits — obituaries. Because we wanted to make sure that the people who are dying were remembered as human beings. And there were a lot of them and everyone had to do them. And it definitely gets to you writing obit after obit, especially when you know that they’re all dying because of the same thing. I wrote about one particular couple — it wasn't it was this super big story — but I wrote about one particular couple who died sort of several days apart. The husband, a man went to the hospital and was on a ventilator. And then, while he was on the ventilator, his wife died, his wife Minnie died. And when he woke up, he was like, ”Where's my wife?” And he was sort of on the bend and you know, like could — on the mend, sorry. Like he could have recovered but when he learned that his wife had died, he lost his strength, his family said, he died a couple days later. And they were young, they were in their 50s. Yes, it definitely stories like that.

And then when I said, I became a pandemic reporter. One of the things that happened is that me and another one of my colleagues, Rachel Chason, we picked up like a subbeat covering nursing homes. So we wrote a lot about nursing homes where there was a lot of death, a lot of grief, and a lot of isolation and yeah. You write about it because it impacts you emotionally, right? And you hope that it does for other people, too.

How did running those obits and covering all that grief affect your reporting in the future, or how well, how has it affected you?

Gosh, so many ways, I think. [pause] How will it affect my reporting in the future? It's always very awkward, I think, you don't really know — the first time I had to write about — the first time I had to cover sort of a national event I was an intern at the Post and I was covering the El Paso shootings. And my assignment was to call victim families and try to build up portraits of the victims. I was, yeah, I mean I'm so young, but I was younger then and more green and it was difficult to call these people and ask them, ”I'm sorry. Your son just died. Can you tell me a little bit more about him?” It was very awkward. I think I've gotten better at it, really, it sort of explaining that part of it and trying to encourage people to share something about about their loved ones.

How's it changed my reporting? I think every story that I write if it's satis— satisfying to me, or if it's a good story shows you something new about an experience, you know, that that helps to expand your mind and expand what you see is possible. Things like, you know, what, what people have covered in forever, right? Like how poverty is a trap, right? How senior citizens and the elderly want agency even as they are dying, like experiences like that. I’m not making much sense. I guess it's — the death and the grief have, I think, hopefully it made me a better journalist — covering it.

How I mean we kind of went over this, but how — how have the people that have — I mean the people that you've talked to for these obits, for these stories, how have the people of DC or DMV impacted you?

[long pause] I mean, I'm very grateful that they've, you know, shared their stories with us. It shows it to share their stories with me specifically. It always feels like a privilege. But I guess on a more personal friend when you cover the community that you live in it really weds you a lot closer to that community. It makes you a lot more affectionate toward it, I think. And as someone who is not native to the US, not native to DC, covering DC has been the best way to sort of tie myself to it and I certainly have you know, like when we covered the insurrection or we covered the riots like it's important I guess. Well who was it important toward? It's important to Mike Semel, the Metro Editor, to point out that the people covering those events for the Washington Post were Metro reporters who cover the city and cover its suburbs and the people who live here. Obviously, we had Congress reporters, you know, in Congress that they you know in the, in the capital that day of the insurrection, but outside Lafayette and, you know, outside with the with the rioters, you know, were local journalists, people who cover the city and its people year round. I think that's a point of pride for the team and for me.

And yeah, on a more positive note. Are — is there any, what was the most interesting and rewarding part about working in journalism this, during this year?

Sure. I’m just going to pause you there. [ELINOR ASPEGREN turns off tape.]

[turns on tape] What was the most rewarding or interesting part of working in journalism during this past year? And then a follow-up question because I know what this is our last — What was the most challenging part of it?

The most rewarding part was getting, was getting to see it all, you know. We had, because of our jobs, to— to go out when people were locked in to cover protests that we might have otherwise thought were too dangerous for us personally to be at, to witness an insurrection that was vital that we witness and to — to cover all of it. I think I can't go away from the past years feeling like I didn't know what happened. I was there. I think that's maybe one of the most rewarding things about being a journalist. You get to say, ”I was there.” And your whole job is to get people to tell you something really compelling about themselves, you know, whether that's like grief or loneliness or joy or desperation, right? Tell you something really compelling about yourself and you have to communicate that to other people. It's, It's very rewarding to me. I think that the aspect of it, and this year, this past year is more than others. There's been a lot to communicate — a lot to convey. And there's been a lot to hold accountable as well, like, with nursing homes, my colleague and I got to write sort of a series of stories that were investigative and that relied on documents and sort of anonymous — not anonymous sourcing but if it sort of background sourcing, to expose a couple of things and I think that was valuable as well. I'm not being incredibly concise. What was what was rewarding about it? Being involved in all of it — not involved. But just sort of, you know, being at the center — being around the century sort of seeing what's going on at the center if that makes sense. And that's also the most challenging. I think that's why journalists struggle with, have struggled with their mental health this past year because it's been both a privilege and a burden to sort of stare into the sun, right? Like, um, Icarus and whatever.

Ok. I am going to stop the recording.