“在这个行业里，尤其是在当下这个时代，很容易让人觉得什么都不重要，”Abby Vesoulis 说。“有时我会自我煤气灯效应，怀疑：会有人在乎这件事吗？”Abby 是我们驻华盛顿分社的记者，来自俄亥俄州，她曾报道该州 2024 年的参议院选举，当时共和党人 Bernie Moreno 借着 Donald Trump 的声势击败了现任议员 Sherrod Brown。
“It’s easy in this industry, especially during the current era, to just feel like nothing matters,” Abby Vesoulis says. “Sometimes I gaslight myself into thinking: Is anyone going to care about this?”Abby, a reporter in our Washington bureau, is from Ohio, and she covered its Senate race in 2024, when Republican Bernie Moreno rode Donald Trump’s coattails to defeat incumbent Sherrod Brown.
那一年也有众议员 Max Miller 参选，他刚与 Moreno 的女儿 Emily 离婚。尽管曾在特朗普第一任期担任白宫新闻秘书的 Stephanie Grisham 指控他有虐待行为，他还是在一个特朗普以 55 比 45 获胜的克利夫兰郊区选区轻松连任。（他曾以诽谤罪起诉 Grisham；双方庭外和解。）今年，随着 Miller 的下一次连任竞选启动，当地新闻媒体报道了 Miller 提起的另一起诽谤诉讼，被告是他的前妻，以及 Emily Moreno 的强硬回应。
Also running that year was Rep. Max Miller, who had just gotten divorced from Moreno’s daughter, Emily. He skated to reelection in a suburban Cleveland district that went for Trump 55–45, even though Stephanie Grisham, a White House press secretary who dated him during the first Trump term, had accused him of abuse. (He’d sued her for defamation; they settled out of court.) This year, as Miller’s next reelection campaign got underway, local news outlets reported on another defamation lawsuit that Miller filed, this time against his ex-wife, and a blistering response from Emily Moreno.
Abby 决定深挖，申请这对前夫妻的子女监护权案件卷宗。很快，2000 页文件发到了她的邮箱。其中包含婚姻期间身体暴力的指控、Miller 高中时期因一名女生拒绝让他触碰而将其扔下楼梯的描述，以及更多内容。
Abby decided to dig deeper and request files on the pair’s child custody case. Soon, 2,000 pages landed in her inbox. There were allegations of physical violence throughout the marriage, accounts of Miller throwing a girl down the stairs back in high school for refusing to let him touch her, and much more.
当 Abby 联系 Miller 时，收到的是一位发言人的回复，对方告知她“Max Miller 有很多诽谤案律师”。这威胁意味很浓。但他们不了解 Abby。“那个电话反而让我更有动力，尽可能多地获取文件证据，”她回忆道。于是她又申请了更多记录，包括警方报告。她发现文件显示，Miller 在争吵中把手伸穿了玻璃门。他曾在体内检出酒精、摇头丸和氯硝西泮的情况下撞车。而他 2 岁的女儿曾对母亲说“爸爸的房子很可怕”，最终锁骨骨折，身上还有警方认定为可疑的瘀伤。
When Abby reached out to Miller, she heard back from a spokesperson, who informed her that “Max Miller has a lot of defamation attorneys.”Subtle. But they didn’t know Abby. “Having that phone call just made me feel more motivated to get as much documentation as I possibly could,” she recalls. So she asked for more records, including police reports. She found documents indicating that Miller put his hand through a glass door in an argument. He’d crashed his car with alcohol, molly, and Klonopin in his system. And his 2-year-old daughter, who told her mother that “Daddy’s house is scary,” had ended up with a broken collarbone and what police deemed suspicious bruising.
在信息聚合、剪辑和人工智能摘要无处不在的时代，人们有时很容易忽视真正揭示选民需要了解的信息所需的努力。
In an age of ubiquitous aggregation, clipping, and AI summaries, it’s sometimes easy to lose track of what it takes to actually uncover the information voters need to know.
经过数周的深入挖掘，Abby 于7月18日发布了她的报道，仔细阐述了所有细节。随后一周，她又发布了一篇基本回顾Abby 所发现内容的文章——但从未提及她的报道。该媒体仅指出，“该问题在最近几周已升至特朗普政治运作的严重关切层面。”该媒体有重新报道我们故事而不注明出处的记录；一位媒体评论家曾指出，“如果今天出现，可能是六个月前就出现过。”但其他记者知道是谁完成了这项工作。Abby 曾出现在CNN、MS Now和Fox News，并且她的报道几乎被每个主要媒体引用，从《》到《》。
After weeks of digging, Abby published her story on July 18, carefully detailing all this. And a week later, published a story that essentially recapped much of what Abby had found—without once referring to her reporting. The merely noted that the issue “has in recent weeks risen to the level of a serious concern to Mr. Trump’s political operation.”The has a track record of re-reporting our stories without attribution; a media critic once noted that “if it’s in today, it was probably in six months ago.”But other journalists knew who’d done the work. Abby appeared on CNN, MS Now, and Fox News, and her reporting was cited in virtually every major outlet, from to and .
最终，参议员伯尼·莫雷诺发表了一份情绪激动的公开声明，称“我每一分钟都在屏住呼吸，[米勒]拥有我孙女的监护权。”他指出，他的前女婿甚至拒绝归还这名幼女最喜爱的毛绒玩具——一只蓝色的兔子。米勒否认了这一点以及针对他的其他指控。但那天晚上，阿比发布了文件截图，显示那只兔子被一次次扣留，艾米莉·莫雷诺恳求道：“她从出生就有了它，每晚抱着它入睡，在屋里走到哪带到哪……如果你生我的气，请别惩罚[她]。”
Eventually, Sen. Bernie Moreno made an emotional public statement saying that “I hold my breath every minute [Miller] has custody of my granddaughter.”He noted that his ex-son-in-law had even refused to give up the toddler’s favorite stuffed animal, a blue bunny. Miller denied this and the other allegations against him. But that night, Abby posted screenshots of documents showing that the bunny had been withheld over and over, with Emily Moreno pleading: “She’s had it since birth, sleeps with it every night, carries it with her around the house…Please don’t punish [her] if you’re upset with me.”
在无处不在的聚合、剪辑和 AI 摘要的时代，人们有时容易忘记，要真正挖掘出选民需要知道的信息，究竟需要付出什么。到 9 月中旬，阿比已经在这个米勒的报道上工作了三个多月，其中包括前往俄亥俄州报道该案件的法庭听证会，以及为他的对手布赖恩·波因德克斯特撰写人物特稿。此外还有她的编辑、我们的律师、视频制作人、事实核查员，以及所有为使新闻报道经得起推敲而付出劳动的其他人。
In an age of ubiquitous aggregation, clipping, and AI summaries, it’s sometimes easy to lose track of what it takes to actually uncover the information voters need to know. By mid-September, Abby had been working on the Miller story for more than three months, including traveling to Ohio to cover court hearings in the case, and to profile his opponent, Brian Poindexter. Then there was her editor, our lawyer, video producers, fact-checkers, and all the others whose work is needed to make journalism airtight.
这花费了我们 8 万到 10 万美元——与预计将在中期选举中花费的 116 亿美元政治捐款相比，这只是一个微不足道的零头。事实上，据一些估算，总政治支出的 10% 就足以支撑独立的非营利性报道覆盖全国每一个角落。
It cost us between $80,000 and $100,000—a ridiculously tiny fraction of the $11.6 billion that political donors are projected to spend on the midterms. Indeed, just 10 percent of overall political spending would be enough, by some estimates to power independent, nonprofit reporting in every corner of the country.
当我问阿比是否有什么想让读者知道的，她说她感到惊讶，在新闻报道瞬间登陆又瞬间消逝的当下，“读者们表明了他们真的在乎。”（在她的报道之后，米勒所在选区的竞选形势从“共和党很有优势”变成了“势均力敌”。）她补充道，在厌女情绪被我们的领导人公开歌颂的时代，“就我个人而言，作为一名女性，看到人们认真对待这类指控，感觉很好。”阿比之所以能完成这篇报道，只有一个原因：像您这样阅读此文的人，让我们的新闻事业得以延续。非常感谢您的支持。
When I asked Abby if there’s anything she wanted our readers to know, she said she was surprised, at a time when news stories land and vanish in an instant, that “readers have shown that they really care.” (Miller’s district was moved from “likely Republican” to “toss-up” in the wake of her reporting.) And, she added, at a time when misogyny is openly celebrated by our leaders, “personally, as a woman, it was nice to see that people take these kinds of accusations seriously.”Abby was able to do this reporting for one reason only: people—like you, reading this—who keep our journalism alive. Thank you so much for that.