This interview has been edited for clarity.
I'm a special projects editor which means I do a little bit of everything. So, about one fourth of my job is reporting and writing my own pieces. I usually cover a mix of health issues and infrastructure issues. And then I work on our podcast. We have a podcast that we run regularly called The Vice Guide to Right Now and several other sort of seasonal series or podcasts. I help oversee that department and make sure that we have a good slate every year. I also edit on a project basis. For example there's a gun reform project we're doing I'm editing a bunch for that. There's a mental health project we're doing for the magazine so I'm editing a bunch of magazine features.
I think the managerial stuff was new to me. I've always written and reported and then I started editing a couple years ago. So I was used to overseeing a bunch of writers but now the podcast producer directly reports to me in addition to a bunch of writers so I think the stuff involved with managing, not just the content but it's also managing people's time is stuff I had to learn.
It's more important than it's ever been in my life. I think there was kind of an awakening with the political moment we have. I think that it's something that should've been happening a lot even before this election but at least it's happening. Unfortunately it took that to wake us up. The most exciting thing for me personally is I like hearing stories that help connect different issues together so people can see common threads. For example I'm writing about the impact of gentrification and housing issues on lead poisoning. It's a housing and economic story with a public health story. That's personally what's motivating to me is being able to do that and I think it's a good time to do that and people are looking for it.
There's a lot of mistrust in the industry but there's also an incredible amount of spheres to hold people accountable in.
I think since I've been at VICE for example, we're pretty militant. Once it comes into the consciousness of the organization, everyone who is at the organization has to keep pushing it. We've had hiring things where we've just said we are going to look at applications from everyone but we're pretty much not gonna hire a white dude right now. Things like that which are not black and white but it's a mutual understanding: Are we careful about that? Are we making sure our teams are diverse and balanced not just racially or ethnically but also socio-economically? Are we making sure that there's all sort of people from different backgrounds involved? Once your at an organization doing your part to uphold what that organization says they want to do, I think unions are really strong. In the last year a bunch of publications have sort of reinvested in making sure they have strong unions. I think unions are able to hold their organizations accountable to a greater extent that we are on our own. Metrics and data is really powerful. Company-wide surveys that help people make these disparities really obvious, not to to shame the company, but just to have numbers. It's helpful to point at and be like: hey look this isn't about needing to be super woke. It's about the numbers.
Yeah tons. More in reporting. When I first started reporting, I was covering a lot of Obamacare and Capitol Hill stuff and the way I got treated by the people at Capitol Hill was a very obvious I was being snubbed very often like being passed off or just having to work a little bit harder to get access to things. I've had weird in-the-office dynamics. For example, if there was another South Asian person on my team, being called their name or being mistaken for them or people not taking the time to just understand that we are completely different people. That's super awkward and it's not intentionally malicious but it's just microaggressive-y.
What's also happened is being told to read pieces that are tangentially related to what I'm doing just because I'm a brown woman and they want a sensitivity check. It makes sense to read something about India because I've worked in India but there's a lot of other things that I shouldn't be the last person to read. If I'm the only person of color around that's pretty sad. I think in reporting I've been in a lot of weird sometimes racist situations or made remarks to me or made me feel uncomfortable in other cases being a woman has been hard.
It's been a little different with me because I have covered so many of those South Asian issues so it's not weird for people to come to me for that. But I think as a whole we've done these workshops where instead of having powerpoint that explain how you should treat these culturally sensitive issues, it was a little small group session where we just all told our personal stories and experiences. It was one of those helpful things you can do because as soon as you understand a person's viewpoint and what they actually care about and where they are from people are able to see everyone as a whole person more clearly. It helps when it comes to work and stuff like that.
There's a lot of blanket rules you can set but taking it a level deeper and having employers and bosses understand each other — having the fuller conversations so you know what this person is excited about and what this person is known for or hired for — is probably the most helpful thing.
I wish I didn't go to grad school that was a waste of my time. I think it creates this economic disparity in the industry that's very unhelpful to journalism. Most people can't afford to go and that leaves a lot of people out of the industry. Those of us who can afford to go most of the time are not getting that valuable experience.
The other thing I wish I started doing earlier is freelancing even when I was in school. I think the most helpful thing in my career has been pitching stuff on my own. It's a really great way for people to get to know you and for you to work out the ideas you care about the most. It's also very good to build up a thick skin because you just stop caring about rejects all together.
What was helpful to me is focusing on a couple of topics. Its good to be a generalist but as you go on it's good to be known for a couple of things that people can point to. then, your stories build on each other and you get more sources. For me every story leads to another one. your always learning. And second, editors get to know you for that too.
Apply to grants. There's a lot of money floating around and everyone thinks it's incredibly competitive but I have helped give out some of the grants and sometimes there's only 20 people applying and we have $10,000 to give away so don't be scared to apply to lots of grants. Make sure you get the money that's out there already.
You don't need to know people in the industry right off the bat so don't be discouraged if you don't have insider knowledge I definitely did not. At the end of the day the work is the most important thing so all these sort of side things that people freak out about like "what's my online presence" or "should I go get coffee with this person?" or "should I go to this happy hour and network?" At the end of the day when I get pitches from writers the only thing I care about if what they've done and their work.