Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life

Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life

Nicholas D. Kristof

Published by Knopf in 2024

480pp / $30.00 / 978-0593536568

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This is my first time writing a book review, and before I sat down to read Chasing Hope by Nicholas D. Kristof, I imagined the process going something like this: I’d take diligent notes as I read, building parallel columns of things I liked and didn’t like about the book. Then, I’d type up these notes in paragraph form, alternating between critiques and praise. The end result would be a beautiful, balanced book review that captured as much of the story as possible in the space of 750 words.

Then, I actually read Chasing Hope. 

While engrossed in the chapter on his Pulitzer-winning coverage of Tiananmen Square on my third consecutive night reading past midnight, I realized Chasing Hope had truly pulled me into the Nick Kristof’s improbable life story.  

Even better, Kristof leaves a treasure trove of advice sprinkled throughout his memoir for anyone looking to write an opinion for an audience. Avoid both-sideism scrupulously. Tell stories before preaching shrill ideology. Always look for a dash of complexity. Throw in a word Noah Webster himself would be proud of every once in a while. 

Chasing Hope begins by telling the story of the author’s father’s experiences during the Second World War, and his subsequent arrival in America as a refugee. The reader is introduced to a young Nick at the scene of his first attempt at journalism. He is three years old, and has just printed a two-sentence newspaper with the neighborhood kids, using a toy printing press.

In between rides to school through rural Oregon on his No. 6 school bus, Kristof’s budding journalism career continues to grow throughout grade school and high school. He writes op-eds about the unfairness of the dress code, hoping to catch girls’ attention. In high school, Nick gets ample mentorship and opportunities to cover events for his local paper. He does well in school, becomes class president, and is accepted into Harvard thanks to another Oregonian on the admissions committee. 

As a student at Harvard and then at Oxford, Kristof turns his vacations from school into freelance reporting trips through India, Poland, and the Middle East. These early adventures turn out to be just the spark of connection Kristof needs to land his dream job at the New York Times, where he becomes a foreign correspondent. 

I’m a regular reader of several newspapers, including the New York Times, so after hearing about all the daring pieces of reporting that Kristof was able “get out and file” (Ghana), I began to wonder whether I had read anything penned by Kristof. He went on to write about the experience of profiling his childhood friend Bill Beard, a column I remembered reading, who met a young Nick on his No. 6 school bus. In contrast to Kristof’s meteoric rise, Bill has suffered through many of the downturns in rural America. One day while he’s high, Bill violently assaults a gas station clerk and ends up in prison. Kristof writes the profile of Bill in an attempt to figure out how a person he remembers as a kind, happy child could have done something so horrible. As the reporting project continues, Kristof realizes just how differently his life turned out than those of so many others on his old No. 6 school bus. 

“I had plenty of friends in Yamhill whose misfortunes multiplied. Their factories closed, they lost good union jobs, they self-medicated, they were arrested for possession of controlled substances, they couldn’t find good new jobs because of their arrest records, they quarreled with their partners over money, they broke up, their kids struggled, and they blamed themselves. Conversely, I seemed to keep winning the lottery precisely because I had already won… At the time, I saw my success through the prism of luck because I didn’t have the vocabulary of privilege, but of course that’s what it was.” (71)

The Bill Beard story is emblematic of a major shift in Kristof’s reporting career. Beyond his work as a foreign correspondent, he begins to look for the America few others see. Covering the stories of people across rural America changes Kristof profoundly, and eventually inspires his to run for political office.

Like anyone writing a memoir, Kristof occasionally lapses into providing long lists of names, mostly coworkers from a half-century-long career in at the Times. Sometimes his rolodex of anecdotes become indistinguishable from each other, a fact he acknowledges by writing “A Day in the Life of a Columnist” as a composite chapter. Despite these flaws, I found most of his writing highly engaging, as evidenced by the many late nights I spent turning pages.

Throughout Chasing Hope, Kristof shows remarkable intellectual humility while retelling his life. He’s unusually frank in calling out ideological bias, saying:

“I disagree profoundly with evangelicals on abortion, same-sex marriage, and may other issues, but I also recognize that they have been leaders on prison reform, on tackling sex trafficking and on fighting the global AIDS pandemic. I knew Chuck Colson and, despite his Watergate involvement, deeply admired his pioneering work on prison reform. The best single government policy in my lifetime was perhaps President George W. Bush’s pathbreaking initiative against AIDS, called PEPFAR, which has saved 25 million lives and turned the tide of the pandemic. So if we believe in being inclusive, let’s be inclusive.” (411) 

This year I am the editor-in-chief at my university student newspaper, the Calvin Chimes. I love interviewing people and collecting stories. My favorite stories to write are usually about faith, disability, or the environment. I think Chasing Hope, full of Indiana Jones-style stories from Kristof’s career, is a dangerously enticing book to hand to an aspiring journalist like me. The book opens with a Horace Greeley quote: “Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.” This wry sense of humor about the journalistic profession is woven throughout the remainder of the book. 

At times, Kristof also risked discouraging me from pursuing journalism as a career. With many references to “the old days” of work as a foreign correspondent, he sometimes writes as if mourning a lost golden age. On the whole, however, Kristof welcomes the changes he’s witnessed in the field of journalism during his career. Even with everything he’s seen while reporting in the field, “covering genocide and poverty left me an optimist” (325) Kristof says. 

Explaining why he chose Chasing Hope as the title of his memoir, Kristof writes: “I’ve seen that we can solve problems when we work at it… we have solutions, however imperfect, and we have the resources, what we lack is the will. Journalism can help muster that will. I believe with all my heart that we can summon will and change the landscape.” (420)

Towards the end of Chasing Hope, Kristof expresses concern about whether, with his impressive resumé, he’s cultivated enough of what he calls “eulogy virtues.” For anyone who’s read his memoir, it should be clear that Kristof possesses extraordinary quantities of compassion, honesty, and courage. His eulogy writer will have plenty of material to work with.