Jodi Kantor

And then the second astonishing thing is that Bill O'Reilly was fired.

And it was like, whoa, because the history on this issue had been a history of lack of accountability from Bill Clinton to Justice Clarence Thomas.

And the idea that somebody could actually be fired for this kind of behavior was wild.

So after that, the editors got a bunch of reporters together, including me, and they asked what now seems like a very quaint question.

They were like, are there other powerful men involved?

in American life who have covered up allegations of inappropriate treatment of women.

And that's when I said, I want to investigate Harvey Weinstein.

You spent three years investigating, conducting hundreds of interviews with women.

who he'd sexually assaulted.

When you first started your investigation, did you have a sense of the scope of what you were taking on?

Oh, I didn't know if Weinstein had ever crossed a line with women, like whether they were just rumors.

You know, when I was alone, Megan was off having a baby.

So it was me.

I remember the blank Google document where I started the Weinstein investigation.

And I just started listing every actress I could think of.

And by the way, I didn't know any actors at the time.

And so I wasn't sure how I was going to reach any of them.

You started to use a line when you did approach sources.

You said, I can't change what happened to you in the past, but together we may be able to use your experience to help protect other people.

What made that particular framing effective in giving somebody the sense that they actually could speak about what happened?