Jim Rutenberg is a political reporter for The New York Times who has covered presidential elections since 2004. He recently gave a lecture at Binghamton about the 2012 presidential election and Pipe Dream sat down with him to discuss what it’s like to write politics on the campaign trail.

Pipe Dream: What kinds of relationships do you form with the people that you’re writing about on the campaign trail?

Jim Rutenberg: On some level, you get to know each other really well, and you spend a lot of time with each other at the bar after work. Even if you don’t drink, that’s where everyone gathers. It’s weird, because we’re not friends at the end of the day; we’re a source and a reporter, but you can’t help it, we all get to know each other and we’re all humans. The interesting thing about it, and people say this about sports writers, but if you write something really horrible about them, you need to face them the next day, so you better be able to stand by it. If I’m in my office, they might be mad, but I don’t have to hear it directly, because a lot of the time these guys just don’t call you, and you find out that they’re mad after the fact. So to face them the next morning is pretty intense. I think that sports writers have a similar deal, but that part is really interesting.

PD: How did the campaigns differ in how they interacted with you?

Rutenberg: On the road they’re the same, but institutionally they’re quite different. With the Obama campaign, I could talk to the campaign manager any time I wanted, and I don’t think it was unique to The Times; I think it was that way with a bunch of the bigger publications, and TV people and Internet people … With the Romney campaign, I had enough people I could talk to at the time that it was okay, but sometimes I would have to beg to talk to Matt Rhodes, and he usually wouldn’t talk to me, he was their campaign manager. Their communications director never called me back. Ever. Same with their senior communications director Eric Fehrnstrom; it was so hard to get these guys to even engage with us.

PD: What was your personal schedule like on the campaign trail?

Rutenberg: It depended on the point in the campaign, but there were times where I must have worked 80 percent of weekends and often 17 or 18 hours a day. So it was pretty hard. You’d kind of, on a big story night, get off deadline at 11:00 or 12:00, try to catch a late dinner, maybe if the bar is still open you’ll go see the campaign guys, sleep for a few hours and get up and get on top of the news or blog. So it was pretty grueling. I’m 43, so I’m still young enough to do it, but maybe only one more cycle, and the next one will be harder. It’s non-stop, seven days a week, and even if you aren’t working on a weekend, which is rare, you have to be completely plugged in and watching everything to see if you need to jump in.

PD: What is it like when you get breaking news?

Rutenberg: We were in South Carolina for the primary there, and Jon Huntsman had said in New Hampshire that he was going to roll on through. He had staked everything on New Hampshire and he didn’t do well there, so the question was, would he drop out? He said, “Absolutely not, on to South Carolina.” So we had all flown into South Carolina, and we were getting in on a Sunday night, and I get an “in” from a source that he’s going to drop out and it’s going to be competitive. And while we get it, there’s a Romney table in the back of the restaurant, all his senior advisors. And he’s certainly told Romney, because we were also told that he’s going to endorse him. So luckily there were two of us, so I started to just type it up on my iPhone, because it’s like 9:00 at night and we have to get it into the edition. [David] Zeleny went and started pigeon-holding the Romney guys, who wouldn’t say anything. My favorite quote was like “This steak is delicious!” but we got it confirmed by someone closer to Huntsman, so we had two sources and we got it onto the front page and scooped everybody with it.