Travis M Andrews, The Washington Post
Story Behind the Story: Nude Trump vs Nude Hillary
Travis M. Andrews is a staff writer for The Washington Post covering a wide variety of topics such as education, health, tech, science and entertainment. A Louisiana State University alumni, Andrews began his writing career at the campus newspaper The Daily Reveille. After graduation, he found work in online marketing because “it was a way to write daily during the recession.” Eventually, Andrews moved back to his hometown of New Orleans and began to write freelance stories anywhere and everywhere he could. Soon after he received an internship with Washingtonian, a weekly magazine. Later, he was an editor with Southern Living and from there, he went to The Post.
Andrews feels that the best way to approach a story is simply to report all the facts. Providing all the facts leaves no room for speculation and is a straightforward method of informing the public. He decides that if something is relevant to the story then it should be included.
“I don’t tend to leave out details,” Andrews says. “At least none that I’m aware of.”
I talked to Andrews about his story “Nude Hillary statue vs. nude Trump statue: Fair game or sexist?”. Andrews writes about caricatures of a naked Donald Trump were popping up around the country. The point of these statues were satirical and meant to portray the then Republican candidate in his most humiliating form; naked. A couple of months later a statue of an almost naked Hillary Clinton appeared, causing an uproar. The Clinton caricature was much more controversial, sparking heated debates about double standards and gender equality. I chose to talk to Andrews about this story due to its ethical implications and various angles that it could’ve covered.
According to the story, Trump’s caricature was viewed as a bold political statement of satire that was meant for sparking political debate. Hillary’s caricature, in contrast, was viewed largely negatively as the exploitation of a naked woman’s body.
“The history of how the female body appears has clearly been so negatively coded and inscribed that it makes for a completely different intervention when you see the sculpture of a naked woman than when you see a naked man,”
Contemporary art professor Carin Kuoni explains the double standard discussed earlier in depth and how this portrayal can have a detrimental affect on women who may have body insecurities.
Andrews first came across the story at work, after seeing the story trending. Interested in the conversation the story sparked, he decided to write it as a piece in The Post’s Morning Mix section.
“The conversation surrounding the nude Hillary statue was so different than that around the Trump one, it seemed like a piece worth doing.” Andrews said.
Andrews wrote the piece as a news story to ensure his thoughts weren’t interjected, but he didn’t have to since “there were enough people sharing their own unique viewpoints” to stand on its own. The biggest challenge for Andrews regarding this particular story was trying to find a new angle because it was being almost over-reported that day. Despite his difficulty in finding a fresh angle on the story to write about, Andrews was able to find what he thought was the most important part of the story and produced a newsworthy story for that day.
The reader responses continued on social media. After publishing the story Andrews says it didn’t leave much of a mark among readers, presumably because the story had been trending before he wrote it. He says having only a few hundred comments are a good thing, “means I was even in tone.” What seems to be most important for Andrews is that readers are able to come to their own personal conclusions of a story without him influencing opinions.
“I simply tried to present both sides as evenly and thoroughly as possible,” he said. “That’s always the goal.”