I’m James Nani, a reporter at Bloomberg Law. Previously, I worked at Law360 covering state and local tax developments, and at the Times Herald-Record, where I covered a range of beats across the mid-Hudson Valley.
At its core, my goal as a reporter is to give readers the information they need to make better decisions—and to tell stories that help people better understand the systems and communities they’re part of.
I’m a records hound by nature. I like digging through databases, court filings, and public records to surface new and interesting information. But I’m equally committed to knocking on doors and picking up the phone, because documents alone can never fully capture how policies, decisions, or failures actually affect people’s lives.
I often think about something the late David Carr said about reporting, which was advice he framed around young reporters, but which applies to writers at any stage:
“I don't think people who read your work, who are involved as sources, should be surprised. I often read significant parts of the story to the people that are involved, because I don't want to sit up in the middle of the night and wonder whether I was fundamentally unfair… I don't want anybody to open up one of my stories and have their nose broken by what they read.”
That idea, being tough, fair, and transparent with sources, guides how I approach sensitive or high-stakes stories.
Reporting also means resisting neat narratives. Some stories initially appear to fit perfectly into a preconceived frame, but real life is rarely that clean. That’s why I often return to a quote from Ira Glass, whether I’m writing a quick brief or a long-form piece:
“The natural state of all writing is mediocrity… so what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such a fucking act of will.”
Good journalism, to me, requires that act of will—questioning assumptions, pushing past the obvious version of a story, and doing the extra work to get it right.
And finally, there’s one old newsroom rule I always keep in mind:
If your mother says she loves you, check it out.
