Episode 57: Eli Saslow

Eli Saslow is a staff writer at the Washington Post and a contributor at ESPN the Magazine. It's not really my place to complain about it being hard for me to write. I wrote the story ("After Newtown Shooting, Mourning Parents Enter Into the Lonely Quiet") and I got to leave it. And even when I was writing the story, I was only experiencing what they were experiencing in a super fractional way. The hard part is that it was a story where there are no breaks, there's no—it is this relentless, sort of bottomless pain and I struggled with that. … A story can only have so many crushing moments, otherwise they just all wash out. But the other truth is: it is what it is. It's an impossibly heartbreaking situation. And making the story anything other than relentlessly heartbreaking would've been doing an injustice to what they're dealing with. Thanks to TinyLetter and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @elisaslow Saslow on Longform Saslow's Washington Post archive [14:45] "Life of a Salesman" (Washington Post • Oct 2012) [23:30] "In Florida, a Food-stamp Recruiter Deals With Wrenching Choices" (Washington Post • Apr 2013) [30:30] "After Newtown Shooting, Mourning Parents Enter Into the Lonely Quiet" (Washington Post • Jun 2013) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices