Suketu Mehta is a journalist, fiction writer, and Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University. His nonfiction book Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found won the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award, and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, the Lettre Ulysses Prize, the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize, and the Guardian First Book Award. He has won the Whiting Writers Award, the O. Henry Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. Mehta’s work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harpers Magazine, Time, and Condé Nast Traveler. Mehta is currently working on a nonfiction book about immigrants in contemporary New York, for which he was awarded a 2007 Guggenheim fellowship.

Selections from interview with Sarah Hart in April, 2008:

What’s the use of journalism school for would-be journalists. Why not just train on the job?

I don’t think there’s any requirement that journalists should go to school. I have a MFA in creative writing, and there’s certainly no requirement that a novelist go to school to learn how to write. Yet, for both creative writing and for journalism, school gives you a period of time to do nothing but practice your craft, and the opportunity to be in a community of people all chasing after the same dream, and all taking it very seriously—which can seriously help a writer shape her craft. But going to school is an individual decision and not right for everyone. Maybe for others it is better to join the staff of a cargo ship, or fight in a war, or travel around the world. Maybe that’s the right experience for them.

Why did you become a journalism professor?

What I teach is literary journalism—it straddles literature and journalism. Call it what you will—long form, narrative nonfiction, literary journalism—this is the form that is increasingly explaining the truth of our age. It encompasses books and magazine—story telling that cannot be accomplished on a computer screen. That’s what I practice, so that is what I will teach.

What are you teaching that’s different than what students in other journalism departments are learning?

Well…I’m new. I’m not sure yet, and I have much to learn. But my focus is on the development of narrative that is not made up in the author’s mind. I believe that research and reporting can lead to art that competes with the novel in the delivery of pleasure—through plot, character development, scene. That is what narrative nonfiction is—information delivered in a pleasurable way.

People will always need news—it’s always been around, from villagers beating on drums to our current methods of satellite transmission. News is an essential element of the human condition—the desire to know about more than just immediate surroundings and family. We’re all doing the same thing, whether in broadcast or any form of print. We’re storytelling. The question is, what form is our story going to take? In the modern world, journalists should know how to use lots of different tools—be able to make a video story even if you are in print, for example. Everything, however, begins with writing.

What should the relationship be between journalism education and the journalism industry?

Journalism education and the journalism industry should be much more closely tied than they are now. Maybe we shouldn’t have semester-long courses taught by one teacher. Maybe more seminars, and taught by editors? Maybe students should be more frequently out of classroom?

I sense a dissatisfaction with traditional mode of education. Journalism school is not scholarly, in some sense. It is often accused of being a trade school, but I think that’s a compliment. I know so many book and magazine editors. I would like to bring them in, and I’d like to take my students out to show them the editorial office—see how editors really go over a piece. I’d like to take them to some book parties and literary festivals.

What are some of the more heartening trends in Journalism right now, and how can J-school promote them?

Long-form narrative nonfiction has seen a resurgence all over the world. These are the kind of books that people are reading. It's as if, since 9/11, people feel that what's going on in the world is too bizarre for novelists. It seems the dramatic value of the real has overwhelmed our capacity to imagine new things. It's a very exciting time to be a writer of narrative nonfiction. This is the one kind of writing that, for the foreseeable future, is resistant to the internet. A story can come to life in a book in a complete way. It may be enhanced by video, picture, or audio, but doesn't need to be.