SoloJourno

Author and New Yorker essayist Malcolm Gladwell was interviewed by Alex Altman for Time Magazine just prior to the publication of his new book, “What the Dog Saw“. Among the subjects discussed was experimenting with public education, the flaws in corporate hiring processes and the future of journalism.

Here’s Gladwell’s answer to Altman’s question: If you had a single piece of advice to offer young journalists, what would it be?

The issue is not writing. It’s what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he’s one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He’s unique. Most accountants don’t write articles, and most journalists don’t know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master’s in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective. I think that’s the way to survive. The role of the generalist is diminishing. Journalism has to get smarter.

Read the full Q&A. See also TIME’s 2008 profile: “Outliers: Malcolm Gladwell’s Success Story” (November 13, 2008).