Behind the byline: Four questions for our Editor-in-chief
Dee J. Hall: “Journalism is fun and hard and frustrating — sometimes all at the same time.”
You’ve been in journalism for a long time. How have you seen the news industry change?
In my first newsroom job, I had a boss who ground his cigarettes out on the linoleum floor and a co-worker who hid his gin bottle in the water tank of the toilet — activities that (I hope!) would be verboten today. Seriously, everything about journalism has changed. I started before newsrooms had the Internet, voicemail and email. I had a ring around my index finger from repeatedly dialing a rotary phone. Computers were just word processors. The information we can get today is light years easier, faster and better. Unfortunately disinformation also now spreads much more quickly.
Looking back on your time at Floodlight so far, what’s something you’re especially proud of?
I’m proud to be part of the evolution of a news outlet with such a crisp and urgent mission: To investigate the forces stalling climate action. Floodlight was just under 3 years old when I arrived in November 2023. Since then, we have implemented processes to become more efficient and organized and to raise our profile so more people see the great work we’re producing. We launched our website, we broadened the number of outlets that republish our stories and now, we are branching out into video. Exciting times!
You’ve lived and reported around the country — what’s been a favorite stop along the way?
I went to college at Indiana University in Bloomington. I had internships in Crown Point and Gary, Indiana; Louisville, Ky., and St. Petersburg, Fla. My first job was reporting for The Arizona Republic in Phoenix for eight years. In 1990, when our first daughter was born, we moved back to my hometown of Madison, Wis. I worked at the Wisconsin State Journal for 24 years, leaving in 2015 to start a nonprofit investigative news outlet, Wisconsin Watch, with my husband Andy, a fellow journalist and IU grad. My favorite stop? Right where I am.
What’s something you wish more people knew about running a newsroom?
Journalism is not rocket science. There are often no objectively right or wrong answers to a problem. Journalism is fun and hard and frustrating — sometimes all at the same time. You learn new things literally every day. Your work can be publicly and widely critiqued, even if that critique is unfair. People in power often try to keep you from doing your job, which is to get factual information about the workings of our world out to the public. But when you dig out the truth — the thing that’s being hidden — there’s no greater joy.