Students filled Berkeley College’s Swensen House on Thursday to hear about journalist Jodi Kantor’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into Harvey Weinstein. 

Kantor’s Nov. 9 talk, “How Investigative Journalists Unearth Secrets and Confront the Powerful,” was held as a Berkeley College Tea. Yale professor Susan Dominus, who is a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, invited Kantor to visit and share her knowledge with students. Dominus was part of the team that won the Pulitzer in 2018 for their coverage of workplace sexual harassment and misconduct.

The event was co-sponsored by the Poynter Fellowship and the Yale Journalism Initiative. Berkeley Head of College David Evans introduced Kantor, who discussed her investigation of Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual abuse and journalistic ethics. She also emphasized the role of student publications — citing recent work by the Stanford Daily, The Michigan Daily and the Daily Northwestern — in shaping future journalists and shared advice for those interested in going into journalism.

Kantor and fellow New York Times reporter Megan Twohey won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for their reporting on Weinstein, which helped spur the #MeToo movement. Their bestselling book “She Said” was adapted into a film last year. 

“Investigative journalism is about taking secrets in society and delicately and responsibly putting them on the table so we can have a discussion about them,” Kantor said.

Kantor began her talk by detailing her career path, explaining how her experiences with student journalism at Columbia, which she said were marked by burnout and interpersonal tensions, temporarily turned her away from journalism as a profession.

After graduating from Columbia, Kantor attended Harvard Law School but dropped out when she realized her true calling was journalism.

Using this switch as an example, Kantor assured students that they do not have to have their lives meticulously planned out to be successful.

“I wasn’t one of those perfect people who knew exactly what I wanted to do professionally from the age of 16,” Kantor said. 

After giving a summary of her path to journalism, Kantor explained what investigative journalism consists of and how it differs from other forms of reporting. 

Throughout the talk, she emphasized that investigative journalists must keep their personal opinions out of the public eye to remain credible. To be an investigative journalist, she said, is not to be an activist but to rather “let the truth speak for itself.”

“I want people to look at me the way they would ideally look at a judge in a courtroom – somebody who will really be willing to listen and keep an open mind,” Kantor said.

The results of an investigative piece should not be foreordained, she said, pointing to how she did not foresee the outcome of the Weinstein investigation.

While Kantor said she keeps her work as objective as possible, she said that there are certain things she seeks when looking for a story, namely holding the powerful accountable, evidence of harm and a “read-me factor.”

“You want to look for a social discussion that you think should happen,” she said.

She added that her work is thorough as she strives to fully examine all sides and perspectives of a story. On this note, Kantor talked about how she builds relationships with sources, balancing objectivity and empathy. She said she has to make it clear that she is not a friend, but a reporter, even when sources are confessing something deeply personal.

Kantor said that when she was investigating Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse, she had to maintain a professional relationship with the women who came forward. 

“I will say ‘I’m so sorry to hear that’ but I’ll never go beyond that,” Kantor said. “You’re not their friend. You’re not their advocate.”

On a related note, one student asked Kantor about how to best establish trust with sources.

While Kantor acknowledged the difficulty of getting sources who are resistant to talk to open up with her, she said she has also observed that many are more willing than one might imagine. 

Kantor cited her experience interviewing Amazon workers. She said that when she asked the workers their opinions, it seemed to her that no one had asked them for their perspective before. One of them, she said, told her they felt like a celebrity. 

“On the one hand, people are scared to talk to journalists, but on the other hand, everybody wants to be understood,” she said.

Kantor concluded her talk with advice for aspiring journalists. Though journalism is not always the most lucrative career, she said it is needed now more than ever. 

In explaining the importance of journalism today, Kantor pointed to the decline of local newsrooms and how factual reporting, which used to be taken for granted, is in peril because of a loss of trust in these basic facts. 

“The stakes are so high,” Kantor said. “We have got to reestablish a common basis for truth in this world. We have to establish that facts are facts.”

At the end of her talk, Kantor took questions from the audience, many of which revolved around student journalism and how students can prepare themselves for future careers in this field.

Although she recognized that student journalism is valuable for building reporting skills, she also emphasized how it differs from real-world journalism.

“Student journalism is really hard because the ethical debates we face as journalists are complicated. Sometimes we have more than five meetings over a single decision at The Times, and we are also working in an environment where there are all these professional standards and strictures,” she said. “Student journalists are working, ideally, with an approximation of those things. You don’t have that support and you’re also reporting on your own community which is really, really hard.”

Ángela Pérez ’24 and Isaac Yu ’24, co-fellows of the Yale Journalism Initiative and former Managing Editors at the News, said that there was immediate interest in the event.

Yu said slots filled up quickly after the YJI sent out a Google form in their newsletter.

“That’s what YJI is all about,” Yu told the News. “Bringing students who are interested in journalism closer to their inspiration and the pathways into the field.”

While there were many prospective journalists in the audience, the event attracted students from different majors.

Madison Butchko ’24, a physics major, said she attended the event due to her interest in Kantor’s work.

“I really enjoyed this talk because I found it to be informative about how journalism works about how the essence of investigative journalism is truth, not activism,” Butchko told the News.

The event was followed by a dinner at Mory’s, where students were able to engage more personally with Kantor.

Demand for spots at the dinner was extremely high, with several students remaining on the waitlist, according to Pérez. 

“We’re really excited to keep bringing speakers that students care about,” Pérez said.

The  Yale Journalism Initiative is also sponsoring an event on Nov. 27, when the program will host a talk with Jordan Schneider, creator of the ChinaTalk podcast and newsletter.