Chris Jones on "Animals," his Zanesville Zoo massacre story

Isn't it more impressive when the guy you're looking to hire went head-to-head with someone and came away with all the best anecdotes and stories for the feature? You want every story to be great. But that's not how it works. Nothing Jones did prevented Heath from writing the better story. But Jones wanted to preserve his story.

Suggesting Jones had an unfair advantage would be the same as suggesting that the basketball player who takes thousands of jump shots a day has an unfair advantage on the one who doesn't. Reporters work hard to get sources to trust them. Sources don't trust every reporter who works hard, though. Baseball executives call Peter Gammons with breaking news because he's Peter Gammons. He did the work and earned their trust, so they call him in lieu of reporters who might very well be working far harder on that particular story.

That's true throughout journalism, from Bob Woodward's White House sources to Joe Blow's inside information on the Podunk High boys' volleyball team. It's not an unfair advantage, it's something to strive toward.

You're approaching the journalistic process as a competition. It's not. It's a business.

 

Does anything think when Chris Heath wrote a excellent profile about Michelle Williams that was the cover story for the current GQ on newsstands, he or his magazine would be totally fine with Michelle wrapping up a 3-day interview with him, and then doing a 3-day interview with Esquire?

 

I think there might be a misunderstanding here.

Did you directly tell people not to talk to Chris? Or did you jokingly say it would be nice if I was the only person you spoke with?

At first, I was thinking you were telling people not to speak to anyone else, but now I do not think that happened.

 

In a nutshell.

 

You would not be happy, but she is a person who can do whatever she wants.

Do you think Williams' agent would be happy if she turned down a magazine cover just to make the other magazine happy? Unless there are signed contacts and money exchanging hands, Williams can do whatever she wants.

For the upcoming Olympics, if anyone who is granted 24 hours with Prince Harry actually not going to ask him not to speak with anyone else? If that's the way the game is played in the rare air, then I obviously don't understand it.

 

Particularly with celebrity interviews, exclusivity is almost always guaranteed by agents. It's a key part of the pitch to get their clients on the cover. It's done all the time. I don't think it's consistently put in writing, but I absolutely think Williams' agent would have turned down Esquire after agreeing with GQ.

 

I can see the logic.

 

Here!?! Never!

 

Yes, 93Devil, Versatile is right. Covers are negotiated and they're exclusive, at least within that magazine category or whatever you want to call it. If we'd asked Michelle Williams to do a story with us, she would have said no. That's the deal.

I asked sources in Zanesville if they would turn down future interview requests. They didn't have to honor that request; I don't know if any of them did. Hell, they can do whatever they want—they're doing me the favor by talking to me in the first place. But I ask. I've always asked. Sometimes I've been beaten—People got Mark Kelly on the cover despite my spending eight months trying to get that story—and sometimes I've won. I like winning a lot better.

To answer STG's question... Yes, you want readers to get lost in your story. But this story was so nuts—not my writing of it, but the story itself—that I worried that people would forget that it was real. The killing of the last tiger, for instance, is so cinematic that I worried people would forget that this all happened, exactly this way. You don't want to lift readers out of their trance or whatever, but you also don't want them to put down a story like this one and think it was all some kind of dream.

 

Did someone actually suggest that this was ANTITRUST BEHAVIOR??? As in ... FUCKING CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR???

Am I dreaming at this point?

 

Is that why the Feds go after restaurants that have exclusive contracts with Coca-Cola and don't carry Pepsi? Will my favorite pub get sued by MillerCoors, since it doesn't have it on tap but does have A-B and Guinness products?

 

This really is a ridiculous stretch.