By Galina Olmsted

After 13 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, MichaelGreen walked free in October of 2001 after DNAevidence proved his innocence. But it took a five-part series by nationally syndicated columnist Connie Schultz for proper restitutions to be paid and for justice to be served.
Schultz’s The Burden of Innocence ran in the Cleveland Plain Dealer the week of October 13th, 2002. After its publication, Rodney Rhines confessed to the rape, and the state of Ohio awarded Green $523,186 for his time in prison. Subsequently, the City of Cleveland awarded him another $1.6 million and agreed to reopen over 100 rape and murder cases. Green credits these substantial victories to Schultz and her series, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Social Justice Reporting and was a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize.
            Connie Schultz, a lifelong resident of the greater Cleveland area, was born July 21st, 1957, in Ashtabula, Ohio. A self-described “daughter of a factory worker who hated his job everyday he was in it for 36 years and a nurses’ aide who came home with bruises on her arms because she worked on the mental health floor” first considered a career in journalism because a guidance counselor in high school advised her to choose a career doing something she loved. Schultz remembers, “No one had ever told me you could love what you do for a living. I have never wanted to do anything but be a journalist ever since.”
She graduated with a degree in journalism from Kent State University in 1979 and began working as a freelance writer in the greater Cleveland area. Before joining the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s fulltime staff in 1993, she wrote some 40 cover stories for the paper’s Sunday magazine. She advanced quickly after being hired by the Plain Dealer, and 18 months after she started as a general assignment reporter for Geauga County, Schultz was promoted to features writer. It wasn’t until 2002 that she was granted her own column, and even then, the column was met with resistance from editors who felt it alienated conservative readers.  One managing editor in particular threatened to cut the column because of complaints from local restaurant owners about the stories reprimanding management for skimming from waitress’ tips. One month later, that same editor submitted those columns for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2005, an award she won for “her pungent columns that provided a voice for the underdog and underprivileged.” When asked why he submitted the same columns he had warned her against writing, he said simply, “Because that’s all she did.”
            Schultz’s columns, although nationally syndicated, have a distinctly local style and often comment on issues pertinent to the greater Cleveland area, but also touch on larger, more national issues related to tolerance, families and education. Her style is at times devastatingly honest and instinctively human, as evidenced by the tremendous response to The Burden of Innocence.
            Schultz is also the author of two books, Life Happens: And Other Unavoidable Truths (2006), a collection of her previously published columns, and …and His Lovely Wife: A Memoir of the Woman Beside the Man (2007), a poignant, hilarious commentary on her experiences as the wife of a Senatorial candidate on the campaign trail. Schultz is married to Senator Sherrod Brown. Together they have four children and split their time between Washington, D.C. and Avon, Ohio.

Schultz discusses her craft in the following Question and Answer.

Q: I have to ask you about Michael Green. How did you find that story?
A: I had done two serial narratives before and I knew I wanted to do another narrative series. I really liked working in narrative journalism, because I find it really challenging. Narrative journalism is a fiction writer’s tool to tell a non-fiction story, but I knew that I didn’t want to do another medical story. An overwhelming amount of narrative journalism tends to be centered around medical issues because they’re inherently dramatic, I think. But I thought, I can’t do another one of these, and I care about social justice issues a lot so I was hoping something like that would come about.

Q: And it did?
A: I actually looked right at this story and didn’t recognize it for its potential. I remember watching the local news the night that Michael Green got out, and he was saying he wasn’t bitter. I sat there and thought, “Oh, you’re not bitter, wow, how’d you do that?” So I look at the paper the next day, and I see that he said it again and thought “Wow, what guy is not going be to bitter?” Did it occur to me? No. A colleague walked up to me with a clip in her hand, with the story, and said, “This is right up your alley. You said you were looking for another project, and I’d like to know why he’s not bitter.” And that’s how it came about.

Q: Once you had the story, how did you get started?
A: It didn’t work well at first. I’ll never forget sitting in his parent’s living room with his stepfather, his mother, and Michael himself. At one point it just wasn’t going well, and I finally said, “Look, I know this is difficult, because I’m a white woman,” and they all just stared at me. Michael said, “Yes, you’re about the last thing I want following me around.”  I mean, he had been falsely accused by a white woman, but I didn’t immediately bristle. I said, “Why don’t you use me? Because I’m going to have a voice on your behalf, and I’m going to put your voice in the paper, why don’t you just let me hang out with you for a while and see if you can get more comfortable?” And that’s basically how it started.

Q: And what was most challenging about writing the story?
A: I had a black man who was the hero of the story. I had two other black men, one of whom was a convicted murderer, and both of whom play heroic roles in Michael Green’s life. The challenge was: how do you get past the issue of race for a lot of readers so they’re willing to read a remarkable story about a pretty ordinary man who was extraordinary in the way he recovered? I knew that it would be especially interesting to people who wanted to know what I wanted to know: how can you not be bitter after spending 13 years in prison for a crime you did not commit? So it was cast that way in the series.

Q: You were a finalist for the 2003 Pulitzer Prize with The Burden of Innocence, and won in 2005 for your columns. How is writing a column different from writing a longer narrative piece?
A: The only difference in the final product, really, is in the length of the pieces. Columns are, of course, shorter, but the narrative structure is the same. You want a beginning, a middle and end, and I never start writing a narrative without knowing where I want to end up. When you're reporting for narrative, you tend to take a lot of notes on quotes and observations that might not readily appear to be important because you never know what will end up being a crucial thread once you begin adding flesh to the bones. And when it's a serial narrative, what you're really doing is writing a series of essays that knit together in a narrative arc.

Q: Where do you get the material for your columns?
A: I can’t really say that there’s a single force. I certainly read a lot; I always try to write off the news. But I also have incidents in my own life, or I see things unfold in front of me, even when I’m just running errands. You just never know what’s going to trigger an idea. The good thing about having written a column for a while now is that I know not to panic if I don’t have anything on Monday when I have to file on Tuesday afternoon for Wednesday’s column. I know something’s going to come.

Q: Once you have your content decided on, how do you go about the writing process?
A: When I already know what I want to write about, I try to at least map it out in my head a little bit and jot down some notes. I sleep on it, and inevitably, I wake up with more ideas.

Q: And where do you go from there?
A: Typically, I get up very early on the days I write columns. I try to have a first draft by 9:30, and then I push away. I write better at home than I do in the newsroom, partially because of the interruptions, but increasingly, because it’s a depressing place to be. We’ve got 50 cuts coming in the next two weeks and we don’t know who they are. I try not to be too much of a creature of habit, because I travel a lot. It’s really important for me not to have too many things I need to have in place to be able to write.

Q: Do you enjoy your work?
A: I love it, and as hard as it is in our industry these days, I still love starting a conversation. That’s what I feel a column does. I love to write about people, to give a voice to those people who would otherwise not be heard, or are seldom heard. I don’t mean to hold myself up as some icon of any sort, but the idea that I can write about Michael Green, because I had to write about him to get him his money, or all these other people who are invisible to so many, waiters and waitresses, with all that I’ve written about the working class. That is just such gratifying work to me. Also, I feel like I’m really staying true to my roots when I do that.

Q: Why have you stayed Cleveland all these years?
A: Before 2005, the Cleveland Plain Dealer hadn’t won a Pulitzer in 52 years. The last thing I wanted to do as soon as I won was leave it. And I love being a progressive voice from the Midwest. When I go on talk shows panels,  I’m virtually the only Midwesterner who is on these shows, and I like being that, I like being that progressive voice because I know that there are a lot of progressives that live in Ohio, despite the stereotypes. And also, being nationally syndicated, I’ve been able to cast a bigger net, so I can stay here in Cleveland.

Q: What other writers of narrative non-fiction do you admire?
A: I got into journalism, in part, because I came of age during Watergate, so Woodward and Bernstein were huge for me. Anna Quindlen, she’s become a friend, but even before I ever met her, she’s been the gold standard when it comes to column writing. I’ve been subscribing to the New Yorker since I was in my teens, really superb writing there. I read the Washington Post everyday, the New York Times, the LA Times, the Miami Herald, and the Chicago Tribune, too. Also, I look at little papers. There’s an online network of rural publications, and I’m always looking for the quirky thing out of small town America, because I think there’s always something interesting in that. There are so many great writers who don’t get a lot of attention but who really know what they’re doing. You always find them just by picking up magazines and newspapers you wouldn’t normally think to read.

Q: You left the paper for a year in 2006 to campaign for your husband, Senator Sherrod Brown. What was it like to come back from that?
A: I remember on my first day back at the Plain Dealer, Maria Shriver called me at my desk, and said, “Please don’t leave your career,” because she’s really regretted it. A Senate historian told me that it was the first time a working journalist had been married to a Senator, and I thought there is no precedent for this. I will be the precedent.

Q: How did your memoir, “…And His Lovely Wife”, come about?
A: The book wasn’t my idea. Random House had published a collection of my columns, but it hadn’t even come out yet when Sherrod decided to run for the Senate. Anna Quindlen read that Sherrod was planning to run for the Senate, and she and I had the same editor at Random House, Kate Medina. So Anna called Kate and said, “Sherrod Brown is running for the Senate and I know whose book I wanna read, but it ain’t the candidate’s.”

Q: How do you balance your career as a journalist with being a wife and mother?
A: My family comes first. Period. They are, in large part, why I haven’t left the Plain Dealer. I’ve had invitations to consider other papers, but I kept making the conscious choice to stay in Cleveland. I remember one friend in particular saying to me, “You will never progress in your career if you don’t get out of Cleveland”, and she was wrong, but even if she had been right, I still made the right decision. If I had failed as a mother, none of the other successes would have mattered. The Pulitzer is as big as it gets for us, but it doesn’t hug me at night, and it will never tell me it loves me.

Q: Do you ever struggle with a conflict of interest when writing about political issues?
A: I’m not a reporter, I’m a columnist, and that makes a huge difference. If I was a reporter, I couldn’t cover politics, on the federal or even the state level. As a columnist I have my own views, and I’m a liberal, so is it any surprise to anyone that I would marry a liberal? Why would I marry someone other than that? I was 46 when I got married; I was past that age where you think you can just change somebody.

Q: What do you see for the future of print journalism, especially with the rise of blogs and that sort of fast-paced commentary?
A: We are still the fact-gatherers, and we’re the analysts more than anyone else. We’re still sorting out what we’re going to be at the end of this, and we’re going to be a leaner operation, certainly, but that’s not all bad. I think that journalism at its best is the ultimate watchdog. It’s the last stop between politicians that engage in corruption and the public actually being defrauded. We are the ones who can check on it; we’re the ones who can really call them out. And finally, the blogs are so dependent on print journalism. They wouldn’t have a lot to talk about if they weren’t talking about the coverage in papers.

Q: Do you believe that journalism has the power to bring about real change?
A: I don’t doubt it for a second. I write about little things like tipping, but when you multiply that by how many people depend on tips to make minimum wage, it’s significant. I don’t doubt for a second that we can make a difference. I just saw an interview with Bob Woodward, and they asked him why he still loves what he does, and he said there was still that young reporter in him asking, “What are the bastards hiding?” That drives so many of us. There will always be that role for us. Will there be support from management and from the corporate end of journalism to do it? That’s the question that remains right now. I sure hope so.
(Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Galina Olmsted)

Schultz’s Five Tips On How To Be A Successful Columnist:

1. Prioritize. Having a career is important, but don’t overlook other responsibilities and pleasures for the sake of professional success.
2. Be honest. Your column should be your voice, not another’s. Stay true to your experiences and to yourself.
3. Be flexible. You might not always be able to indulge in ritualistic writing habits. Be sure you can write anywhere and at any time!
4. Write what you know. Even if you don’t think your day-to-day is particularly interesting, your perspective and experiences are unique.
5. Write what you love. Maintain tone and content that rings true to you. Pursue the issues and topics that are important to you as a writer, but also as a person.