Over the past four decades, British journalist and writer Nick Davies has earned a reputation for challenging the authority of prevailing narratives and setting new standards in investigative journalism. From fighting for a black man wrongly convicted for rape-murder in the U.S., to playing a key role in WikiLeaks, to taking on Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in the U.K. with the story about phone hacking by journalists at News of the World, Davies has one of the most celebrated careers in contemporary journalism. He is also the author of bestselling books, including Flat Earth News and Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch, that help explain the challenges for the media today. Excerpts from an interview to Josy Joseph :
How do you write a book about the way you scooped a major investigative story? You must have done at least a hundred stories into the telephone hacking by the Murdoch newspapers in the U.K.? How did you then write a book?
It actually becomes difficult. When you are trying to do that, you end up with two different narratives. One is the story of how I got the story. My researcher and I interviewed about 30 people who worked for News of the World. If you just stick with the narrative of the story about how we got the story, those 30 interviews are split up over the whole book. That is not enough. So you then pull them together with what is going on in News of the World, the Scotland Yard, what is going on in the government, what is going on in Murdoch’s company, etc. I wrote a book about that [Hack Attack]. It has got a funny structure, because one chapter is us trying to uncover the story, the other chapter goes back in time into what was happening.
You know George Clooney is trying to direct a movie based on the book. And he has got a writer working on it, and I know the writer will immediately run into the same problem. Is this the story about Nick getting the story, or is it about the story — it is a conflict.
Is it the first time that you came across such a dilemma?
Actually people are more interested in what you found out than in how you found that out. But in the case of the hacking, it is bit like a Hobbit, the little guy going after the big dragon. The book publishers also want that little story, of the Hobbit going after the big guy. You have to write that as well, what is going on behind the scene.
Is that something you struggled with every time you wrote a book? How much of you should be in a book?
I think writing a book is difficult. I find it very hard work, it takes many months.
How much does it actually take you to write a book once you have all the material in place?
Two years. I don’t necessarily have all the material in place when I start writing. But to do the research and writing, for all of the books I must have taken about two years. I may have done some other work alongside. I find it very hard work.
Do you have a certain time when you write most? Many writers speak of early mornings as their favourite time. How do you plan your day, especially since you live in a farm away from London?
I work best in the mornings, when my mind is sharpest. I may also work during the afternoon, but it is never as productive. Then I try not to work in the evenings, because there is a danger that you just get tired and maybe even bored, so then the quality of the work will suffer. Writing a book can be hard work, involving a lot of intense thinking. It’s important to stay mentally sharp, so you have to sleep well, exercise well, eat well — and not work all the time.
When you start writing your book do you retrace your entire work, as in do you go back to interviewing the same people who had spoken to you for the original stories? Or do you do additional reporting to better stitch together the Hobbit part of the investigation, your story?
If I am writing a book on a subject which I have already written about in the paper, then I would gather together all of the material I have found while working for the newspaper and then decide what extra material I would need to produce the book. In some case, that might involve going back to people I had already spoken to. And then usually, as you make progress, you find there are even more things which you need, so the research keeps expanding until you reach a point where you call a halt.
Which amongst your own books is your favourite?
The very first book which I wrote, called White Lies, which is about a little town in Texas where a black man is sentenced to death for raping and murdering a white girl. He is innocent, and the crime was in fact committed by two white men. There are amazing characters in it — it has got a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is a powerful story.
And some of your favourite books?
There is something I read when I was starting out, which was a collection of articles that was published under the heading The New Journalism, edited by Tom Wolfe, who had been a journalist and became a novelist. There are some really, really interesting pieces in there. It is about a particular way of writing, using the techniques that a novelist uses to write a true story. So you are using dialogue, and you are establishing characters, sometimes you are writing facts through their eyes like a novelist does. Some of the pieces in The New Journalism inspired me in trying to get close to subjects and write powerfully.
