Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Dave Schechter. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Dave, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

The idea for the book came to me or, I should say, was handed to me, in the form of a letter that my father received from an academic expert on Soviet penetration of the United States. Let me back up several decades. My paternal grandfather died when my father was 11. My father rarely talked about his. At some point growing up, I asked my father: Did your father have any siblings? I was told yes, two sisters. One moved to South Africa and the other was a Socialist arrested in a strike in North Carolina. And for many years, that is all I knew. Until the summer of 1999, when my father received a letter asking if he knew of a man with whom the latter aunt had a relationship. Along with that letter came three, heavily-redacted pages of an FBI report. My wife and I were visiting my parents at the time. “Here, this may interest you,” my father said. My curiosity was piqued. I suggested aloud (without much to go on) that there might be a book in her story. You can read in the forward of my book how my father reacted. Anyway, through years of research (thank you Freedom of Information Act) I discovered that, yes, my great-aunt Amy was arrested in a strike in North Carolina, a headline-making strike in 1929 at the Loray Mill in Gastonia. She was not a Socialist, but it turned out, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party for more than 40 years, who engaged in Party work across the United States and in Russia. From the day I received the letter, it was a shade past 25 years until I held a (self-) published book in my hand. One of my sons reminds me that writing the manuscript was as much an achievement as publishing the book.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My mother says that I learned to write by tracing newspaper headlines. I would ride my bike to the public library in the Chicago suburb where I grew up and look at papers from elsewhere in the country. I began reporting in 7th grade, on my junior high school’s mimeographed newspaper. I received my first paycheck as a stringer for a chain of suburban weekly papers while in high school. I wrote about sports for my high school and college papers. In fact, I did not write about news until my Washington, D.C., semester as a journalism graduate student. I “turned pro” in June 1978 at a Midwest newspaper, where I learned the values of speed, accuracy, and judgment (the second two more important than the first, in my view). Along the way, I learned how to make a mistake (and live to work another day). I learned, as a copy editor told me, that the more questions I ask tonight, the fewer I’ll have to answer in the morning. When I was put in charge of U.S. news coverage on weekends at CNN, I learned that I could not expect everyone to work to my standards, but that I could encourage them to do their best. I learned that I did not need to know how to do everything, I just needed to know who did know how to do things I couldn’t. And I developed a set of personal ethics that served me well, whether others agreed with them or not.

Any advice for managing a team?

I had never managed a team until I was put in charge of U.S. news coverage on weekends for CNN. The first few months were difficult. I knew how I wanted things done and would be frustrated when work was not done to my standards. It took a while to learn that once I established how I wanted things done, I could loosen my grip on the wheel and that encouragement, thanks, and praise (to supervisors, not just to the individual) would motivate most people to see the job through, if not to my standards then close enough. I was good at managing sideways and down. I just never learned how to manage up, as the saying goes, at least not well enough, I guess.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In the spring of 2014, CNN and I parted company. My job was blown up, as they say, and the options available in-house were not workable. My wife reminds me that I was bereft for several months, no longer in the job or workplace that had become so much (too much) of my identity. I was convinced to seek career counseling, not from a $200/hour shop but at $35/hour from the local Jewish career services agency. I was fortunate to have a counselor who not only was good at this line of work, but also had a background in clergy and psychology. They put me through a battery of tests – and came back with the conclusion that I should be at home writing, the one thing for which I had a passion. But that doesn’t pay well, I said. You’ll figure it out, they said. (It helps if your wife also works.) In early 2015 I began freelancing for Atlanta’s Jewish newspaper, writing a column and long-form articles, as well as for national Jewish publications. I had not written regularly since 1983, when I left print for television news (another transition story for another time). I sometimes wonder what kind of a writer I would have been if I had stayed with the print media, but I am a better writer now than I was at the beginning of my career, even with the years when I did not write regularly.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://daveschechter.com
• Twitter: @daveschechter
• Other: My Facebook is set to private.