Stephen Harrison, author of “The Editors,” talked with Student Life ahead of the novel’s August release. (Courtesy of Stephen Harrison)

“The Editors” by Stephen Harrison follows a collection of characters through the early days of the pandemic as they face the challenges of neutrally describing the changes happening to the world around them online. The novel takes place on Infopendium, a fictional version of Wikipedia, where some users edit pages for neutrality while others edit with an agenda in mind, trying to slant the truth. Throughout the story, Harrison asks the reader to consider what it means to come to a consensus on the facts in an age of increasingly siloed information. 

Student Life spoke with Harrison ahead of the novel’s August release. In the discussion, Harrison talked about the writing process, how the characters interact with Infopendium, and whether writing this novel has changed his view of Wikipedia. This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Student Life: Did your time at WashU impact you writing this novel? 

Stephen Harrison: One thing that was really rewarding was the Howard Nemerov writing scholarship. My college dream was writing a novel, and now I’m still pursuing that, and it’s kind of funny how 15 years later, it seems to be gaining a little traction, which I’m excited about. To the undergraduates: the harder dreams take time. 

SL: Wikipedia describes you as a “Wikipedia beat reporter” on their website. How did you discover that beat? 

SH: I had been trying to place op-eds in the The Outline, which was a short-lived publication, and one of the ideas an editor had was to take a Wikipedia article, but treat it like a piece of literary criticism. I became really interested in the site while on a business trip in New York. I was reading about the subway — because I grew up in Texas, I did not have a ton of knowledge about public transportation — and I realized how detailed each page was, and not just about the subway generally, but each train, and each station, too. 

After seeing that only two people were editing the entire Wikipedia page, I reached out for an interview. One of the guys was like, “Yeah, that’s good, but I need to ask my mom.”

In my head, I thought that everyone [editing Wikipedia] was a middle-aged man, but one of the editors was a high-school senior, [and] the other was a freshman in college. They both lived in Queens, they never met each other, and that was my first article for The New York Times. After that, I started pitching stories about Wikipedia more regularly. 

SL: At what point did you start thinking “I should write a novel about this.” Why make that jump? 

SH: If I were to write a true nonfiction book about Wikipedia, it would have so many characters — there are around 10 thousand primary editors on the site. I had this voice in my head from 2018-20 telling me to write a novel, and that it needed to be a novel. When the pandemic happened in March 2020, I found my central conflict. 

SL: You open the book with the line, ‘This is a reported work of fiction,” and I’m wondering: why choose to open the book with that line? And also, what does that line mean to you?

SH: In my view, creative nonfiction is very popular right now, but I almost think we’ve hit a different era where we almost need the flip of that, which is “deeply reported fiction.” A story based on themes that we’re finding in our lives. Some of the fiction that I’ve always admired the most would be Tom Wolfe. “The Bonfire of the Vanities” is deeply reported. 

One element of writing this novel was talking to real-life Wikipedia editors around the world who live in oppressive regimes, and if I outed them, that would compromise their safety, so there is an element of trying to protect people in making it fiction.

SL: What do you think the value of Wikipedia is in society?

SH: I like to think of Wikipedia as information infrastructure because it is a text-based resource, but it also informs so many other applications, including search engines and AI. It’s so important for the resource to be free, but it’s also really important for it to be accurate, and I like the idea that Wikipedia can be something that’s shared so that we can get out of these media echo chambers. On Wikipedia, there’s one page for each topic — there’s one page for Donald Trump, for the campus protests, and WashU. People have to come to a consensus and agree on the language for that page. Wikipedia represents the hope that we can continue to exist in a shared informational environment.

SL: The book opens with a prologue that drops you right in the thick of what editing a Wikipedia page is without providing much context, even though it is really central to the plot. What was your reasoning for doing that and starting the novel out that way? 

SH:  [Wikipedia] can sometimes feel petty or combative when people are adding and deleting information. I wanted to dramatize how it feels to come across it like Morgan did. Who these people are behind the editors is not clear to the reader, because it’s not clear to anybody on Infopendium unless you’ve been developing relationships with editors and know them. It’s just some sort of faceless person. I did decide at the end of the prologue to reveal that one person was controlling three different accounts to give that tip to the reader, but in general, I just wanted to immediately put the reader in that world. 

SL: In the novel, there is a lot of back-and-forth between editors on Infopendium. Is that similar on Wikipedia, or was that part of the story you fictionalized? 

SH: What I tried to do is highlight that Infopendium is under threat both within and from outside forces. I have noticed a battleground mentality that sometimes exists among Wikipedia editors. They say, “This is my turf, and I’m not going to let you edit my grandfather’s page, my alma mater’s page,” etc. The best Wikipedia editors do maintain neutrality, or at least aim for it. They may aim for it knowing that they will never get there, and that no one will be perfect because we all have our own biases.

SL: You choose to cast Morgan as an up-and-coming author who has a little bit of a chip on her shoulder. Why put her in that role, rather than having her character be a more established figure? 

SH: What I was really trying to go for with Morgan is the idea of legacy media and traditional media that I think we’re all kind of dealing with, and a lot of us are feeling sad for. So I wanted her to be dealing with that loss, which is represented by her father. There are aspects to her that are a little biographical or autobiographical, but I think for the most part, I tried to come up with a character who’s struggling because I think most full-time journalists really are struggling and facing layoffs and the like. 

SL: Throughout the book, you do a good job highlighting this theme of burnout for multiple characters who all have different motivations for the work that they’re doing. Why do you think that is a recurring theme in the book? Was it something you were intending to write about, or did that naturally come about through the writing process?

SH: A little bit of both, but especially when I was writing the character of Alex. There’s a moment when he is really stressed during the pandemic, and the notifications that just come on the screen sap his energy and can be discouraging. I was really feeling that in the moment as I was writing it. When you look at some of these pages and their edit history, it can make you a little crazy, because I don’t even know if the human brain is wired to get [that] much information all at once. Looking at the back-and-forth, you have to summarize, and you can’t read it line-by-line because there’s too much information, and that’s one issue. There is something in the internet world that’s overwhelming. I did deliberately want to make the point that I do worry that maintaining Wikipedia is being left to younger people who have other commitments. 

SL: The ending of the book, to me, has something to say about the modern media landscape, and I’m wondering how you think that’s changed since Wikipedia has come online.

SH: In the beginning, or early on with Wikipedia, the idea of notability was a little bit easier to define, because there were more local newspapers and sources to cite. Now blogs and podcasts are filling that void, and Wikipedia doesn’t allow self-published sources, which can lead to a scenario [where something] might be genuinely notable, but hasn’t been covered by a newspaper and doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. I worry about that because if the people the younger generation views as important are not on Wikipedia, then they’re not going to use Wikipedia as much.

On the other hand, I understand the argument that not everybody deserves a Wikipedia page — it shouldn’t be a free-for-all. We are going to have to get to a place where some of these major substacks can be cited on Wikipedia even though they are technically self-published. The reason we’re going to have to get there is because we won’t have enough reliable sources from traditional media. 

SL: Do you think that Wikipedia will eventually change their guidelines to allow some established self-published sources on the website? 

SH: Yes, and I think that they’re going to have to do it really carefully. If a publication, over time, has developed a reputation for being credible, then it might be deemed reliable in a certain subject matter.

SL: How do you view Wikipedia’s existence as a source where people have to come to an information consensus, in a world where media is becoming more and more individualized and influenced by social media? 

SH: I worry that one side is trying to portray Wikipedia as liberal-leftist and that sometimes Wikipedia editors take the bait. I really do hope that it can be a place where people are aiming for neutrality. I think that I do put a lot of the blame on capitalism. I’ve been there, trying to write a catchy headline for an article hoping that it will go viral on Twitter at the time, and that is not as much in service to the reader. The business model [for journalism] is based on engagement and attention, and so these publications are making a calculated decision to try and attract one audience or the other, because the more centrist [takes don’t] seem to get as many views and generate as much business. When I was in college, Wikipedia seemed like the vanguard, the Wild West, and now people are writing pieces saying it is the last best place on the internet, and it’s the only shared source of truth, and it’s seen as [a] model. 

SL: Do you plan on writing more novels or focusing more on the nonfiction side going forward?

SH: I do have another novel coming up. It’s a murder mystery set at a Federal Reserve Bank. I used to work for the Federal Reserve System, and I think it gets into what I am really interested in, which are institutions that are experiencing a crisis. The Fed currently fits that description — people are not happy about inflation, and there’s even questions about: what is money, and what is currency?

SL: How do you want your reader to think about misinformation and disinformation after reading this book? 

SH: I think that we all need to be really wary of people with agendas. I like the process of Wikipedia, where people are discussing, working behind the scenes, pointing to reliable sources, and having debates about which sources are more reliable for a given topic. I do think that the system can be vulnerable when people are bad actors — which can happen for a couple reasons. They can be bad actors because of their own biases, affiliations, or ties to subject matter. They can be straight-up capitalists who are getting paid to edit. I do admire the people who have altruistic motives, and I do think that good intent can go a long way on a project like Wikipedia.