Don Van Natta
As an investigative reporter, I expect people to refuse to talk, or be reluctant to talk, or talk only grudgingly and sometimes only with an attorney or a PR person present. For my first story for ESPN about Penn State, the Pennsylvania governor refused to be interviewed. In 2013, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell declined five invitations to talk with me for this in-depth profile. And during the reporting for my current project (stay tuned!), most sources have refused to comment or will talk only on background.
So it may not surprise you that my most memorable project for Outside the Lines involved getting an initially reluctant source – Dallas Cowboys owner, president and GM Jerry Jones – to agree to cooperate. Over a couple of Johnny Walker Blues after a May 2014 NFL owners meeting in Atlanta, I managed to persuade Jones to be the subject of a profile. My summer with Jones – aboard his Gulfstream (G-V) jet, in his AT&T Stadium suite for a George Strait concert, at training camp in Oxnard, Calif., and over a late-night steak dinner in Dallas – amounted to the most fun I’ve had since joining ESPN. And all that access, I think, produced TV and digital portraits that were deeply revealing about one of sports’ most compelling and powerful figures.
