“I just had to get this experience out of my head”: The story of Tom Scocca's "Unraveling"
And why his onion-caramelizing story is his proudest work. Plus, a profile of NFL coach Andy Reid and a comic look at Dry January.
Tom Scocca says he felt an unusually strong compulsion to write what would ultimately become his viral New York magazine essay “My Unraveling.” In the unsettling 6,000-word piece, published at the beginning of the year, the veteran writer and editor details his sudden, mysterious decline in health, a situation compounded by his struggle to find a job in the crumbling journalism industry and the need to help provide for his family. “I just had to get this experience out of my head before I could even think about writing other stuff,” Scocca tells Depth Perception.
“Through the hospitalization and the aftermath, this was topmost in my mind, to get a little bit of control over the experience and to organize my own thinking about it — to clear up my brain to think about anything else in the world,” he continues. Scocca, who has worked as an editor at publications such as Slate, Gawker, and Deadspin, originally intended to publish the essay in his newsletter, Indignity. But first he showed it, unsolicited, to New York features editor Nick Summers, whom he’d worked with before. The magazine subsequently ran the story in its print edition, accompanied by a stark, black-and-white photograph of the ailing writer.
Scocca, who’s heard from many readers who are (or have been) in similar circumstances, says he’s been surprised by the “breadth and intensity” of the public’s reaction to his piece. “When you’re writing something that's extremely first person and, in this case, quite literally inside your own body, you don’t necessarily expect that it’s going to go big,” he says. “You just hope that if you can write it up as clearly and accurately and honestly as you can that people will respond.”
Scocca graciously agreed to answer Depth Perception’s inaugural Leading Questions. His interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity. —Mark Yarm
Why did you become a journalist?
I was out of college and applying for whatever jobs were around. And I put in an application for a job at the Walters Art Gallery [now Museum] in Baltimore. I don’t know what I wrote in my cover letter, but the woman who got it called me up and said, “We would never hire you based on this cover letter, but you should go talk to my friend who’s the editor at Baltimore City Paper.” I started freelancing for them, and that turned into full-time work, and I never left that line of work.
What story of yours are you proudest of?
The one that I keep circling back to, because other people keep circling back to it, is one I wrote a long time ago for Slate about how long it takes to caramelize onions. That was one where I was mad about something, and I had to put it out there. Recipes kept telling people that it would take five or 10 minutes to caramelize onions, when you just can’t. People were really traumatized by failing to cook something following a very simple-seeming recipe, and people were very, very glad to be reassured that something really was wrong. People kept returning that piece year after year; the longtail on that thing is just incredible.
It has made a difference in the world. The New York Times is much better about onion-caramelizing times in recipes. It’s probably at the root of my belief that if I yell at The New York Times about what they’re doing wrong on something, they might listen and change their ways.
What story of yours do you most regret?
I haven’t really had any really terribly huge regrets. You know, I didn’t advocate for going to war in Iraq. People always want you to apologize for Gawker [where he worked from 2013 to 2016], but I don’t feel apologetic at all for the stuff I did there.
What’s the best journalistic career advice you ever received?
It would seem that I might not have received the best career advice [laughs]. But long, long ago, someone told me that starting out you had a choice of writing what you wanted to write or writing where you wanted to write. I chose the former — places like City Paper, where whatever you were interested in you could do and no one’s putting emphasis on job rigidity or dues-paying. That’s always been the more attractive model to me.
What is the worst journalistic career advice you’ve ever received?
One thing that I picked up probably more by osmosis, as opposed to someone sitting down and telling me, was the idea that editing was a necessary, practical skill that you could always sell. I’ve always tried to really be active as a writer and as an editor. I’m attracted to each job for different reasons. When it came to writing, if the world didn’t want to hear your voice, then that was the world’s prerogative, but people would always need stuff edited.
But I think that with the devaluing of a deep editorial process across the industry — copy desks have been hollowed out and eliminated, layers of editing are gone — the idea of having the ability to edit means that you have an employable skill seems unfortunately to be less and less the case.
What is a widely accepted journalistic rule or norm that you hate?
Shibboleths around the performance of neutrality and the performance of balance — it drives me nuts. I’m just very annoyed by the pretense that journalists and journalistic outlets are not constantly making judgments and value decisions. Like there’s some sort of purity to what they do, where the world is just happening around them and they’re taking it all down, and there’s no agenda, purpose behind it.
It's been really fascinating to see The New York Times get like a dog that can't stop licking its paw at the Harvard presidency. They’re like, “Well, this is happening, so we have to write about it.” But you’re not observers, you’re participants — and you can’t stop yourself from participating. How can you be one of the major journalistic institutions in the country and have that little ability to direct media literacy at your own activities?
What was the most indulgent media event you've ever attended?
Probably one of the Time 100 parties. It was sort of like weird leveling of everything, with this collection of celebrities all in one place. Like here’s Arianna Huffington, here’s Jennifer Lopez, here’s the Queen of Jordan. Having all these people in the room made the world a little bit less comprehensible. It was a sort of self-inflicted blacktie context collapse.
What’s one app, tool, or service that you can’t do your work without?
Firefox for beating paywalls. My phone for taking pictures of the sky.
What makes you think journalism is doomed?
Headcounts in newsrooms. The trendlines on employment. The readiness of the people who are buying media companies to destroy them to loot them for whatever dollars they can briefly squeeze out. The enthusiasm for ChatGPT doesn’t seem like a great sign either. Why are we fired up to get bullshit out of these machines that doesn’t have reference to truth or falsehood? That people don’t seem fazed by that at all is extremely alarming.
What makes you feel hopeful for the future of journalism?
People do still want it. People want to know true things about the world around them. And uptake clearly hasn’t gone away, even as the economic models that need to help people access it are dismantled. I can’t believe that people are going to keep on living without local news, for instance. I don’t think that synthetic news products can really supplant it. It’s hard for me to believe that people aren’t going to find a way to give people useful information about where they live. I just hope it’s not drowned out by the bizarro propaganda operations, ad spam sites, and everything else out there.
“Over a sparkling 26 year career with more than 100 SI bylines, she was ‘one of the only women writing the kinds of in-depth stories the magazine became known for,’ writes Emily Sohn.” — The Sunday Long Read recommends “The Catch” in its January 14 edition.
Read the tale of one of journalism’s forgotten trailblazers on Long Lead.
This week, Parker Molloy highlights pieces with subjects from Andy Reid to Gen Z, including how stories help trauma victims, why the U.S. has so many stillbirths, and the decline of coding. She’s even included a bonus pick for all you Dry January participants. (You’re halfway there!)
“The Horror Stories We Tell Ourselves in Order to Live,” by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, (The Atlantic, January 9, 2024)
Israeli author and clinical psychologist Ayelet Gundar-Goshen was writing a new novel when the October 7th Hamas attacks occurred. “I saved the file, knowing I would not be revisiting it for weeks,” she writes, as she was called to work during a state of emergency at a psychiatric hospital outside Tel Aviv. Gundar-Goshen had always considered stories to be her “escape,” and in this piece, she explains how a narrative has power to help people cope with traumatic experiences and how the aftermath of October 7th helped her understand the therapeutic potential stories hold. She also discusses the importance of being able to find words for often wordless experiences as part of the process of working through trauma, big and small. This is a fascinating piece about life beyond trauma and loss.
“As the U.S. Struggles With a Stillbirth Crisis, Australia Offers a Model for How to Do Better,” by Duaa Eldeib, (ProPublica, January 10, 2024)
Duaa Eldeib pens a fantastic look at the steps Australia has taken to reduce stillbirths nationwide. The country’s Safer Baby Bundle strategy includes smoking cessation help, prenatal monitoring, sleep coaching, and delivery timing. Meanwhile, the U.S. doesn’t have a concerted national approach to preventing stillbirths, and the results speak for themselves. Implementing a similar program could help the U.S. catch up to other wealthy nations in this category.
“A Coder Considers The Waning Days of The Craft,” by James Somers, (The New Yorker, November 13, 2023)
For years, “Learn to code” was pithy advice handed out in good faith and bad to people in dying industries, especially media. Oh, the newspaper you work at laid a bunch of people off? Perhaps you should learn to code. Coding, we were told, was a skill we would all need in the future, one a great many Millennials and Gen Xers missed out on while Gens Z and Alpha soaked it up like a sponge, which would one day send us olds the way of the dodo.
Not so fast, writes James Somers. The rise of large language models like Chat GPT may, as it turns out, make the jobs of coders themselves obsolete. In this beautiful meditation on “the waning days of the craft,” Somers’s piece tackles purpose and loss amongst the 1s and 0s.
‘The All-Time-Great Coach Who Makes Football Fun,” by Michael Sokolove, (The New York Times Magazine, January 11, 2024)
Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid is more than just one of the NFL’s great coaches, with more than 250 wins. He’s a complex and intriguing individual whose history is shaped by personal challenges and tragedy. Michael Sokolove delves deep into the legendary coach’s life painting a portrait of a man who juggles triumph and tragedy, innovation and adversity. This piece can be enjoyed by football fans and non-fans alike. Read it instead of the avalanche of “Bill Belichick’s legacy” thinkpieces.
“The Gerontocracy Waged War on Gen Z. Now They’re Fighting Back,” by Cassady Rosenblum, (Rolling Stone, December 17, 2023)
Who doesn’t love a good the-youth-is-rising-up-to-reclaim-its-rightful-power story? I know I do, and Cassady Rosenblum delivers with this piece about Gen Z’s political organization against its elders who have made their lives and those of future generations worse. The article centers on a summit hosted by Voters of Tomorrow, a Gen Z-led organization and emphasizes their demand for politicians to listen to their concerns. Gen Z has grown up with lockdown drills, the loss of “third spaces,” and witnessed the rise of figures like Donald Trump, and these factors have distinctly shaped their worldview.
Other long-ish media
“My year of Dry January,” by Alanna Okun and Aude White, (Vox, January 11, 2024)
The headline describes exactly what this piece is: the story of a woman who set out to complete the annual tradition of pausing alcohol consumption for a month, and then just… kept going!
That’s the thing about resolutions. Sometimes they just become good habits. And sometimes you do keep them! If there’s something you’re giving a shot this year, maybe read comic a read for a little extra inspiration. (If you want a longer comic memoir about quitting drinking, check out Julia Wertz’s Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story.)