Word: phoning
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...phone, Caleb was polite but wary. I told him that I was writing about the dynamics of political ambition on campus, and about the arc of political ambition from freshman year to the final years of college. (I would also be interviewing the inevitable Harvard freshmen who publicized their presidential goals.) I said he was a well-known figure in campus politics and that I wanted to fly down to D.C. and profile him in-depth. He asked about the other people I would be interviewing. Finally, he agreed to the interview...
...hung up the phone and turned to my editor. He nodded. Fair enough, he said. I was good...
...hung up the phone feeling better. I had given Caleb his chance, and we hadn't agreed to put any of the questions I cared about off-limits. When I told him he wouldn’t end up looking like a tool, I believed it. He seemed smart and grounded, not someone prone to making toolish pronouncements. I thought he would come out looking okay...
There wasn't much Caleb could do, in fact, except register his objections, and then, when the article came out, call me on the phone to tell me that he thought I had done exactly what he thought would be most unfair: portray him in the pages of Fifteen Minutes as some toolish junior with delusions of presidential grandeur...
What I hadn't realized, though, was how different it would be for Caleb to experience what it was like to have a journalist writing a full profile about him. It wasn't just a phone call for a few quotes. I spent the better part of two days with him. I went inside his apartment to take notes on the magnets on his refrigerator and the peanut-butter-covered spoons in his sink. And then, after all that, I wrote an article about him based on a premise I had come up with before I met him and which...