Progressive Pa. lawmaker says working in journalism prepared him for politics

State Sen. Nikil Saval, a journalist-turned-lawmaker, reflects on his career as a writer and editor and how it affected his career in politics. 

Making the crossover from working as an editor or a journalist to serving as a politician can sometimes be frowned upon in media, but according to one member in the Pennsylvania Senate, this foundation helped prepare him for a career as a lawmaker. 

“I think journalists and people involved in the media generally can be really skilled and good candidates for office,” State Sen. Nikil Saval (D-Philadelphia) explained in an interview with The Keystone. 

Saval, a self-described Democratic Socialist, was first elected to the Pennsylvania Senate in 2020 after defeating a 12-year incumbent at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but prior to getting elected to office, Saval carved out his career working in intellectual spaces after earning a doctorate in English Literature from Stanford University in the early 2000s. 

Following that, he helped launch “n+1,” a progressive literary magazine that focuses on political commentary, social criticism, and other topics in 2005 as a founding editor. 

In 2014, Saval released “Cubed, A Secret History of the Workplace,” which examines the social and cultural history of office spaces, and some of his work has appeared in The New Yorker and New York Times. 

“Working as an editor in a magazine turns out to be really good preparation because you’re rarely expert in the topics that you are editing pieces on or soliciting essays for,” Saval explained.

He added “sometimes you have a topic that you want covered. Sometimes there’s a subject that you’re interested in, but you don’t have the knowledge, and so you need to find people…and talk to them and really dig into the guts of that topic.”

During the 2016 campaign, Saval got involved with US Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign, and then he used that leftover energy to help launch Reclaim Philadelphia, a progressive organization that helped elect District Attorney Larry Krasner and State Reps. Elizabeth Fiedler (D-Philadelphia), Joe Hohenstein (D-Philadelphia), Rick Krajewski, and others.   

“ In 2016, a democratic socialist ran for president and won a huge amount of support in his primary elections across the country. I can safely say that even people who did not support him, had no idea that that was possible,” Saval said.

“Since then, a number of people who are self-identified democratic socialists like myself, or people just generally on the progressive side of the political spectrum, have gotten elected to office.

According to Saval, the process of learning new topics and digging into different issues is what has helped the most when transitioning into a life as a lawmaker.

“In the course of editing a piece, you become kind of an expert in it,” Saval said. 

“There’s something similar to legislative work, to building political power more generally. You need to find lots of creative, interesting people to come together around a particular issue, and politicians are rarely experts in any given field.”