What a Reporter with Autism Wants You to Understand

Now, you may be won­der­ing: If someone has dif­fi­culty with so­cial in­ter­ac­tions, why would he be­come a re­port­er, which by defin­i­tion re­quires in­ter­ac­tion with oth­ers? Then you also should know that an­oth­er symp­tom of be­ing on the aut­ism spec­trum is a nar­row and sharp in­terest in sub­jects that can bor­der on the ob­sess­ive. For me, one of those in­terests is Amer­ic­an polit­ics. Which means that while aut­ism makes my job as a polit­ic­al re­port­er tough­er, it also, in some ways, makes it easi­er: My abil­ity to my­op­ic­ally fo­cus on sin­gu­lar sub­jects helps me to learn about things like the in­tric­a­cies of tax policy or the latest polling num­bers com­ing out of Iowa.