Alumni Files: Catching Up With Rick Klein, Network Newshound

In this installment of the Alumni Files, Patch talks with a familiar face, at least to those who tune into ABC's "World News with Diane Sawyer."

Rick Klein graduated from Babylon High School in 1994 and has since reached the highest levels of political punditry: he's now a senior Washington editor at ABC News, a regular on-air political analyst, and also hosts a weekly segment on the network and a daily news webcast called "Top Line."

He previously covered politics for The Boston Globe and attended Princeton University. He now lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and son.

Patch asked Klein about growing up in the village, the nonstop pace of modern news coverage, why scandals matter, and stopping by to root for his hometown team.

Tell us a little about growing up and attending school in Babylon Village?

Looking back, it was idyllic – but of course you don’t know that at the time. Probably three-quarters of my graduating class at I knew since kindergarten. My dad was commissioner of the Little League, and we played baseball in the backyard. I rode my bike to school. I did every extracurricular activity known to man. I worked hard in school, and it was rewarded in a solid and nurturing district. There was something special about being able to address the class at graduation and see rows of faces I’d known basically my entire life.

How and when did you get interested in politics and current events?

Even my parents don’t really know the answer to that question, and I don’t either. I remember asking my second-grade teacher if she voted for Reagan-Bush or Mondale-Ferraro. I followed the 1988 campaign by reading Time and Newsweek in the library of the Babylon Grade School. My parents were pretty apolitical, but they always got multiple newspapers a day. I always read them, and absorbed the information (particularly the sports section, I should note) and social studies became my favorite subject. My interest in politics and current events really solidified in high school.

Has political journalism changed since you started in the field? You became well-known writing the blog-like The Note on ABCNews.com. How has the rise of blogs and citizen journalists changed what you do on a daily basis?

The pace of everything has picked up astoundingly over the decade that I’ve been doing political reporting full-time. When I covered campaign events for The Dallas Morning News in 2000, or The Boston Globe in 2004, I filed once a day. I reported, I watched, I wrote, I sent a story. That’s unthinkable today. Reporters – even print reporters – file constantly, for blogs, for Twitter, via Facebook, you name it. Add to that the new voices you reference, and we have far more people covering national politics, not all of them with any particular expertise. Much of the content (my own included) doesn’t include much thought or content. So there’s more of a premium, I’d argue, on authority.

You almost need to be a news junkie to keep up with the rash of scandals that pop up on a regular basis. This month we had Weiner's spectacular downfall and Palin's American history snafu. Do you think the mainstream media pays too much attention to salacious scandals or do news outlets simply provide the type of coverage that the public demands?

Yes and yes. We try not to do stories that don’t interest people, as a general rule. That said – what I believe about campaigns and political coverage generally is that the little stuff matters. You can learn important things about the men and women who run our country by the way they conduct themselves in political campaigns, and sometimes in personal life. The Weiner story holds a particular interest, for obvious reasons, but there’s a basic government accountability function the media has in cases like this, to ask uncomfortable questions of our elected leaders.

Tune in tomorrow for part two of Patch's interview with Klein.