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When Tyler Pager joined The New York Times this year, it was something of a homecoming.
In 2018, Mr. Pager, who was then completing a master’s degree in comparative social policy at Oxford University, had been selected by Nicholas Kristof, a Times Opinion columnist, as the winner of his annual “win a trip” contest. Mr. Pager earned the opportunity to join Mr. Kristof on a global reporting trip.
Mr. Pager spent a little over a week visiting schools, homes and clinics across the Central African Republic, one of the poorest countries in the world, and one in the midst of a violent civil conflict. He filed dispatches about the daily lives of the people there, which were published in The Times upon his return. Later that year, Mr. Pager interned on The Times’s Metro desk, and then eventually joined Bloomberg as a national politics reporter.
This February, after a four-year stint covering the Biden administration for The Washington Post, Mr. Pager returned to The Times as the newest addition to the team covering President Donald J. Trump and the White House. One day at a time, the team tackles the challenges of reporting on an administration that makes news at all hours, and on all platforms.
“I’ve always been drawn to the office of the American presidency, to understanding the power one individual in the country has,” said Mr. Pager, 29.
In an interview from The Times’s Washington office, Mr. Pager, who is a co-author of a forthcoming book on the 2024 presidential election, reflected on his start in journalism and a typical day on the job. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How did you become interested in covering politics?
When I was in journalism school at Northwestern, there was a program called “Medill on the Hill” that allowed you to spend a quarter living and working in Washington. During my sophomore year of college, when Obama was president, I moved to D.C. for three months and covered Congress.