Manu Raju | Senior Congressional Correspondent at CNN

This interview has been edited for clarity.

What drew you to journalism?

I sort of fell into it. At the University of Wisconsin, I started pursuing a degree in business. On the side, I started writing for my student newspaper. I was covering sports teams there and I got increasingly involved. I started my freshman year, first semester, by the time I was editor of the section. And I picked up a couple of journalism internships in college. One was at the NBC affiliate in Los Angeles. I was working on the sports desk there.

The other one was with the NBC affiliate in Madison. By the time I was about to graduate college, I still got a business degree but I thought hey why don't I pursue this journalism thing.

Can you talk a little bit about what you do as a senior congressional correspondent at CNN?

My job is I'm going to cover Capitol Hill. We have a responsibility also to question and hold to account the people who make our laws. This means that we are questioning them, pursuing stories about things that they're doing on a daily basis.

People walk around the halls of the Capitol, the members of Congress do, and we confront them with questions about what's going on. That's unusual in Washington, it's a beat that's really different than most. You can't walk into the White House as a reporter and go up an question the president, vice president or even the senior aid necessarily.

It's a great place to do reporting. So my job generally in a day is I have a list of stories that I'm pursuing that are big questions that lawmakers have to answer. And my goal is to nail down my story, report it, hopefully report it first, and then drive the coverage that way.

You're one of the few prominent South Asian journalists in mainstream media. Do you feel a sense of responsibility because of that?

I don't think about it that way. I know that there are not that many South Asian journalists and I definitely fortunate to be here. I recognize that people notice me more perhaps because I am a rarity. In that regard if I'm able to help, you know, pave the way a little bit for Indian and South Asia parents to realize that their kids can do different types of things, I'm happy to help with that.

What would you say motivates you to keep pushing for answers and report on sometimes difficult things

What motivates me is my sense of competition. I really want to be first on explaining why something is happening. If I'm able to tell people something that they don't know, I feel like that is what drives me. Our job is to provide new information. In Washington, lawmakers just want to tell you things they want you to know. So, if you're able to find out things that they don't want you to know tell that in a way that helps people understand and shapes news coverage not just for your network but for your competitors as well it's a great feeling.

Recently you were a keynote speaker at the 2018 South Asian Journalism Association awards. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah that was also a difficult thing for me to pull off to me because I had been working nonstop for the past month basically. That day was the day of the confirmation vote. But I enjoyed it because it's great to see there's a significant number of South Asian journalists who are involved.

In your words, why is diversity important and how do we show people that

It's important because people approach stories in a different way based on their experiences, upbringing and even family history. If people covering a story about immigration were people whose parents had immigrated to the U.S. hundreds of years ago, people may dismiss the significance of the immigration story. It always helps to bring a different set of eyes to the story. In a newsroom we have to avoid groupthink. That's never healthy.

How would you say your background has helped shape the journalist you are today?

One of the things that comes to mind is hard work really. My parents were incredibly hard workers and they still are. A lot of that is the immigrant mentality. They came here, they didn't have very much so they worked hard. That instilled a lot in me. People say I'm the hardest working reporter on Capitol Hill and I don't know if that's true but I do work hard. Working hard helps my ability to get news fist and be smart about how I'm reporting stories. That family background and hard work has really driven me.

Do you have any advice for aspiring journalists?

Journalism is changing so much but if you want to be a news repotrer, our job is to not get distracted by all the chaos and the noise that's out there. Our job is to report the news.