“Journalists can’t pay more attention to retaining access and being insiders than they pay to telling their public what they know and what they’ve seen.” - James Fallows
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Thirty years ago, James Fallows warned that journalism would destroy itself if it treated politics as sport and tried to compete with entertainment. Today, he thinks much of that warning has come true.
James, or Jim, is one of his generation’s most distinguished journalists. He is the author of 12 books, many of which have won big national awards. He was a longtime national correspondent for The Atlantic, the editor of US News and World Report, and a frequent contributor to NPR’s Morning Edition.
Jim is also a Harvard College graduate and a Rhodes Scholar. He became the chief White House speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter in 1977, and was the youngest person to ever hold that position, later publishing a critical account of the administration.
I wanted to have Jim on the podcast to hear his reflections on the news business that he’s been a part of for so many years. In 1997, he wrote Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, a prescient book that is now the name of his widely-read Substack. We talk about what’s changed since 1997 and how the media could keep the public better informed than they actually do.
Jim was also the president of The Harvard Crimson student newspaper in 1969 when activists occupied University Hall to protest the Vietnam War and were forcibly removed by the police at the request of Harvard President Nathan Pusey. Jim later wrote a famous essay called “What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?” He recounts starving himself to get down to 120 pounds - he’s six foot one - so that he would be declared ineligible to be drafted to serve in Vietnam. His essay is a searing and brutally honest portrayal of class guilt. I was interested in what the turbulent time on campus was like for him and for Harvard, and how it compares to the campus unrest we’ve seen here in recent years.
After the interview ended, Jim wrote back to say that he forgot to tell me the most interesting story of all, which was about how The Crimson was almost taken over by alumni who disliked its increasingly radical anti-war content. We recorded a follow-up to discuss that incident and his role in it, which I think you’ll really enjoy.
As always, please email me your feedback at david@thecontextwindow.com.
[0:00:00] Cold open
[0:00:24] Introduction
[0:01:45] Arriving at Harvard in 1966
[0:04:41] From ad sales to The Crimson
[0:05:16] The Economics Department fire
[0:06:24] President of The Crimson
[0:07:09] University Hall occupied
[0:09:32] Negotiations
[0:10:22] The predawn raid
[0:12:56] 13 months of chaos
[0:14:20] Harvard, Columbia, and national attention
[0:15:13] 1969 and the 2024 encampment
[0:17:12] Did they want to be arrested?
[0:18:11] Time, place, and manner
[0:19:27] Every decision is an impossible decision
[0:21:09] Pusey, Brewster, and the first 24 hours
[0:22:20] The draft lottery
[0:25:36] Draft number 45
[0:27:21] The Boston Navy Yard
[0:27:54] “My excuse: I was too skinny”
[0:31:05] “What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?”
[0:33:13] Why he wrote it
[0:35:48] Karl Marlantes and the cost of every path
[0:38:29] Chickenhawk nation
[0:40:49] National service
[0:43:07] Becoming Jimmy Carter’s speechwriter at 27
[0:46:08] “The Passionless Presidency”
[0:50:18] Access, insiders, and journalistic duty
[0:51:44] Breaking the News, 30 years on
[0:53:50] A golden age for college papers
[0:54:59] Why local news collapsed
[0:56:51] News is not a bar
[1:00:15] Fixing the U.S. News rankings
[1:02:11] Our Towns after the pandemic
[1:02:55] Advice for student journalists
[1:05:06] Is Harvard a force for good?
[1:05:50] Follow-up conversation: the fight for control of The Crimson
[1:07:57] Halberstam, Lukas, and Iselin defending independence
[1:12:21] Keeping it quiet
[1:13:53] The editorial that triggered it
[1:16:22] Where Fallows would have drawn the line
[1:18:14] The students’ right to be wrong
People
David Halberstam - Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam correspondent and Crimson alumnus, who led the graduate-board defense of student control in 1969.
J. Anthony Lukas - two-time Pulitzer winner and Crimson alumnus who joined the defense.
John Jay Iselin - head of New York public television and the third on the graduate-board.
Nathan Pusey - Harvard president from 1953-1971, who ordered the police clearance of University Hall.
Kingman Brewster - Yale president whose engagement with students Fallows contrasts with Pusey’s distance.
Subramanian Swamy - then at Harvard’s economics department, encountered by Fallows at the 1967 fire, later a prominent Indian politician.
Chuck Schumer - Harvard class of 1971, described by Fallows as a mediating presence during the student occupation.
Charles Peters - founder of The Washington Monthly and Fallows’ mentor.
Karl Marlantes - Rhodes Scholar and decorated Marine, whom Fallows befriended at Oxford, author of Matterhorn.
Jim Webb - Marine veteran and former senator, with whom Fallows became friendly through veterans’ groups.
Harrison Salisbury - New York Times correspondent who visited the Crimson, giving Fallows advice on pursuing a career in journalism.
Deborah Fallows - writer and linguist, co-author of Our Towns.
Harvard, The Crimson, and Vietnam
Jason M. Goins, “Fallows Remembers Trying to Preserve Objectivity During Takeover” (The Harvard Crimson, 1999) - Fallows on reporting the 1969 crisis.
Declan Knieriem, “‘Haunted by the War’: Remembering the University Hall Takeover of 1969” (The Harvard Crimson, 2019) - retrospective on the occupation and police raid.
The 1969 draft lottery - the televised drawing on December 1, 1969, that assigned call-up order by birthday. Fallows’ draft number was 45.
Conscientious objection - the status requiring opposition to war in all forms, the route taken by Fallows’ younger brother.
Ben Cosgrove, “Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll, June 1969” (Life, 1969) - Life magazine cover story Fallows remembers from his student years.
By James Fallows
“What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?” (The Washington Monthly, 1975) - the essay on draft evasion and class.
“The Passionless Presidency” (The Atlantic, 1979) - Fallows’ account of the Carter White House, written after he had left it.
National Defense (Random House, 1981) - winner of the 1983 National Book Award.
“Why Americans Hate the Media” (The Atlantic, 1996) - excerpt from Breaking the News, discussed in the episode.
Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (Pantheon, 1996)
“The Tragedy of the American Military” (The Atlantic, 2015) - Fallows’ case against a “chickenhawk nation.”
Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America (Pantheon, 2018), co-authored with Deborah Fallows, provided the basis for the 2021 HBO documentary of the same name.
Breaking the News: Dispatches from a Veteran Reporter - Fallows’ Substack, named after his 1996 book.
Also mentioned
Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (Grove Atlantic, 2010) - the Vietnam novel Marlantes spent roughly 30 years writing.
Roger Rosenblatt, Coming Apart: A Memoir of the Harvard Wars of 1969 (Little Brown, 1997) - the book in which David found Jim’s line on “four miserable years”
Jacob Weisberg, Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era (Penguin Random House, 2026) - cited by Fallows on the choice between resistance and a comfortable way out.
James Fallows is a journalist and author. Raised in Redlands, California, he graduated from Harvard College in 1970, where he was the president of The Harvard Crimson, and studied economics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. At age 27, he became the chief White House speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter, the youngest person to hold the job. He spent four decades at The Atlantic as Washington editor and national correspondent, was the editor of US News & World Report from 1996 to 1998, and worked on the design of Microsoft Word. He is the author of twelve books, including National Defense (1981), winner of a National Book Award, Breaking the News (1996), and Our Towns (2018), written with his wife, Deborah Fallows. He received the National Magazine Award in 2003. Fallows writes the Substack, Breaking the News.
Host: David Deming, Danoff Dean of Harvard College
Executive Producer: Denise Koller Consulting Producers: Tim Smith and Jonathan Palumbo Produced by: Hauser Studio, Harvard University - Anthony Di Bartolo, Adam Dusenberry, Producers; Cabin 3 Media - Justin Callahan, Editor
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