How I Got Into Journalism, Part 1
The first in a thrilling two-part saga aimed at telling you that you are not washed-up and you should probably just go follow your dreams or you will die wretched and bitter.
NOTE: It has come to my attention that my liberal use of footnotes can be a pain in the ass in these emails. If you’re reading this in email, I recommend you click the title of this post to read in a browser instead, which makes the footnote user experience way better.
It’s a depressing time in journalism. It’s medication-resistant-depression time in journalism. It’s capitulation-and-layoffs o’clock in journalism.
And if you’re 22 and stumbling bleary-eyed out of the warm college cocoon, it probably feels like, if your name isn’t Trip Buchanan Sulzberger-Bezos, you aren’t ever going to be a reporter or editor or producer or even an intern for those fine people.
Unfortunately, I am here to give you an important but irritating message: Try anyway.
I’m not saying you’ll succeed – indeed, the odds aren’t great. But hear me out: (1) Journalism always needs more people who aren’t from the private-school Sulzberger-Bezos set. (2) Regret is a nasty beast. She has multiple rows of teeth and a muscular tube-shaped body and does dark rituals to strengthen her life force, which she will use to gnaw you open, from the inside out, if you don’t at least try to do that thing you want to do.
I was reflecting on all of this as I wrote my answers to a questionnaire sent to me by Ryan Teague Beckwith, of the wonderful Your First Byline newsletter (which you should subscribe to).
The point of said newsletter is to show people the many paths into journalism. And as I wrote the short version of how I got into journalism, I realized that all those years ago, as I was at least nominally attempting to become a journalist, I was also, on the side, just as busy building myself exit ramps and safety nets.
And that’s because I was standing in the corner, toes together, aw-shucksing down at my feet, muttering about how “ohhhh but it’s too hard and no one gets jobs unless their uncle is the publisher of the radio station” or whathaveyou.
Which was a waste of energy. And so I’m going to tell you the moral before we even get to the end. The moral is this: Just go fucking try.
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Chapter 1: The cliched backwater origin story
Regular readers know I’m a grown-up farmkid from Titonka, Iowa (hence my BlueSky handle). No joke, I wrote a college essay about how I found the banging sound of hog feeder lids at night soothing as I fell asleep.1
As proof of the farminess, I offer this video of the yard outside my house during December’s gnarly Christmas blizzard.
Anyway. The town newspaper (The Titonka Topic) most of the time functioned as more of a newsletter than a newspaper. Front-page news was far less likely to be about a local crime or city council meeting than to be about the latest high-school chorus concert.
There was a regular column by the school superintendent, usually some Bible verses just to break things up, and a few paragraphs each issue devoted to news from the neighboring town, Woden. The Woden News often consisted of – and I am not joking – tidbits about how Mae Stohr had gone over to Jeannie Hanna’s house for coffee and cookies, and a good time was had by all.2
But my family did get newsier publications – namely, The Des Moines Register and Newsweek.
And I attempted – often fruitlessly – to understand the stories in the Register and Newsweek about the war in the Persian Gulf, about Bill Clinton, about farm subsidies.
The news was intimidating. Which I hated. I didn’t like not-understanding things. But I did like to write. And the Register and Newsweek were, not to be too banjos-and-Hee-Haw about it, telegrams from a world where people had the unattainable job of reporter – a job where people figured shit out and wrote it down so other people could get it.
And so that germ of a desire sat in my brain as I went off to college. But I had no idea how I could ever make it happen.
All of which is to say that while I had some basic advantages – my parents were always gainfully employed, the rural-Iowa public schools were good enough, I got all the sausage and bacon a girl could ever want – I would have to figure out the college and career stuff mostly on my own.
LESSON 1: Most people aren’t nepo babies. It’s fine. It’ll be that much sweeter when you get a job anyway.
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Chapter 2: Being a College Idiot
In college, did I still want to be a journalist? My God, I did. Did I write for the newspaper or do anything remotely journalism-related? I did not. I spent most of my time struggling to do the assigned reading, then falling asleep in the library while failing to do the assigned reading.
In the few spare minutes I did have, I was off singing a cappella and playing rugby, which is to say that I was annoying people and drinking beer…thus discovering two of my greatest talents in life.3
What this means is that I did not do any journalism in college. And so, by the time I was a senior and thought it would be a career I’d like to try, I was convinced it was impossible – I was too late at the age of 21. I was a washed-up hag who would go live a humdrum Office Space life of quiet desperation.
Or was I? I could do more, by God! And so I did what any clueless 22-year-old chock full of motivation but with zero direction does: I took the LSAT. In a pinch, I could just get a bunch of loans and go do more school. Right? Right!
LESSON 2: My God this sounds stupid from my over-40 vantage point, but: Your college extracurriculars do not define your future. Go try for the thing you want.
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Chapter 3: Law school! Great idea!
I did reasonably well on the LSAT, which convinced me that law was my calling. But I had taken it too late to apply to law schools immediately.
So I would spend a year working, that’s what I would do. The only job I could find right out of college was bartending at The Old Wagon Wheel in the town where I went to high school (Buffalo Center) (Go, Lady Bison!), where beers were $2 a bottle ($1.50 at happy hour).
It was easy enough work – handing out rum-and-cokes; serving greasy burgers on Texas Toast; selling 30-racks of Miller Lite at around 6 PM to the guys headed down to the speedway. Said guys would come in around 10:30 or 11 to continue the drinking and try to goad us bartenders into playing the Alabama “Roll On” drinking game.
(What – you don’t know the “Roll On” drinking game? It’s simple: one person drinks every time the band sings the phrase “roll on.” The other drinks every time they sing “eighteen-wheeler.” Everybody wins – or loses, depending on how you look at it.)
But I had decided I was going to be a lawyer. I would be a crusading, bitchy, pixie-cutted attorney telling America’s corporate overlords in no uncertain terms that no, you can’t pay women less or promote men because they’re a “better fit” or grope your employees, and by God, I’m going to teach you some respect, you patriarchal sons of bitches, now bow down and kiss my Louboutins and acknowledge that I am your better.
And if I wanted to do that, I needed to get acquainted with legal jobs, right? And after months of hurling resumes into the void, a law firm in Minneapolis called me back for a job as a legal assistant. They said they worked in estates and probate, whatever that was. And so, hot damn, I packed up my twin bed and CD collection. I found a room to rent and bought my first cell phone and, feeling like the most adult person on the planet, rode that happy cloud straight in the doors of Balogh Becker law firm.
I only truly understood what my new job was during on-boarding, sitting in a low-ceilinged, windowless, beige conference room with a half-dozen other ill-fated recruits.
“Okay! Hello!” said the nice onboarding lady, punctuating her greeting with some claps. “Have any of you ever worked on a dialer before?”
No one raised their hand.
Long story short, I was a “legal assistant” in name, but really, I was a debt collector. Except it gets better: I was a DECEASED debt collector. I was on Team Citi 2, meaning I was specifically collecting money for the Citibank corporation, wringing every last penny out of America’s grieving families.
My phone calls went more or less like this:
“Good morning. I’m calling from Balogh Becker Law Firm. I’m looking for a family member of Mavis Satterwhite. Is that you? … OK, ma’am. I’m very sorry for your loss. Does she have an estate or a trust? … No? OK. I’m looking at an account we have here – it appears that Ms. Satterwhite left a balance of $7,532 on a Citibank Home Depot Visa card. How is the family planning on resolving this balance? … Well, an estate or trust would be legally responsible. … Well, the family is not legally responsible, but … Well, the balance doesn’t exactly go away, but … No, you do not have to pay it, but some families choose- … Uh huh. … Ma’am, there’s no need for you to speak to- … No, I’m not proud of myself, since you ask. … Look, this is the only job I could get, ma’am. … Okay, I’m hanging up now. Thank you for your-” [dial tone]
It was not a promising time in my life. And perhaps unsurprisingly, I would soon decide not to go to law school.
LESSON 3: Don’t go to law school.
Hahahahaha just joking. That’s mean. Some of my best friends are lawyers! My spouse is a lawyer! The real lesson here is I guess that sometimes life delivers you a harsh awakening, and when you get that awakening, you should look deep inside and NOT GO TO LAW SCHOOL sorry that just slipped out.
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Chapter 4: Men, amiright?
I often say that not-going-to-law-school was one of the best decisions of my life. And so you might be saying: “Wow. You had the presence of mind at 23 to make what would be a smart, life-defining decision.”
And it’s true that the shine came off the law profession after I spent a year taking money from grieving people.
But also, let’s be real. There was a boy.
I was 23 and, as 23-year-old straight women tend to do, I had fallen madly in love with a guitar-playing guy with a mattress on the floor of his studio apartment. But importantly, he listened to NPR and got the New Yorker. And so while I was falling in love with him, I was also growing infatuated with the idea of writing (or speaking) the news.
So anyway. I got my law school acceptance letter and sent my $500 deposit to the University of Michigan and squinched my eyes closed and tried to convince myself that yes, I could be a lawyer, even as I watched various friends death-march through law school.
But I couldn’t leave Minneapolis! What would become of me and my soulmate? I couldn’t let this relationship slip through my fing-
Let me stress again: I was 23 and had let a guitar-playing boy convince me Wilco was good. I had a lot to learn.4
Two things happened in relatively rapid succession somewhere shortly after I decided not to go to law school. Mr. Dreamboat and I broke up, and I got a new job. (Spoiler: this job was also not in journalism.)
LESSON 4: I don’t even know. I guess the lesson might be: sometimes you make the right choice for the wrong reasons. Also, making a decision because of a boy doesn’t make you weak or a bad feminist. Really, it makes you human.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? JOIN ME IN A WEEK OR TWO FOR PART II, IN WHICH WE TRY YET ANOTHER CAREER PATH AND ALSO SELF-SABOTAGE A FEW MORE TIMES BEFORE MOVING TO WASHINGTON, D.C., AND FINALLY GETTING OUR ACT TOGETHER. SORT OF.
LINKS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
It’s Been A Minute! The wonderful people at NPR’s It’s Been A Minute (including Brittany Luse, who — don’t tell her or anything — is kind of a major friend crush of mine) invited me to guest-host, and I had a blast. I brought along my politics deskmate Elena Moore to talk independent voters, and I also talked about whether veganism just isn’t ~*~*cool*~*~ anymore.
Dissociative Identity Disorder. This NYT Magazine article sucked me in, and also made me feel complicated feelings about how (bonus recommendation) I still think the United States of Tara is one of the best shows I’ve ever watched, despite okay fine probably getting the disorder very wrong in key ways.
The bus ride from hell. I am so late in sharing this but boy oh boy this is a social media thread for the ages: this person live-skeeted a bus ride where the driver just kind of snapped and decided to drive wherever he wanted.
The Oscars snub of the year. Before next weekend’s Oscars, go see The Testament of Ann Lee, the best movie you won’t see win any awards because IT WAS NOT NOMINATED FOR ANY. As far as I’m concerned, this movie (feminist religious musical period piece incorporating modern dance) is right up there with Tar (lady orchestra conductor who gets Me-Tooed) in terms of movies that were lab-made for me and that I want to inject directly into my body. Anyway if Amy Madigan doesn’t win best supporting actress I’m just boycotting the Oscars for forever, or at least for a year.
A quick note: Am calling every man at NPR “big dog” now. Will let you know when I get my own show as a result.
A new life lesson! Have I watched Alysa Liu’s free skate 9 times? Yes. Also this meme made me cackle.
OLD-INTERNET JOY FOR THE DAY: The Square Hole Girl. (This is totally safe for work, promise.)
“Danielle, have you used your farmy upbringing as a crutch for decades, particularly among the snooty private-college set and maybe even more so in Washington?” Quiet, you.
Names anonymized to protect the identities of all involved in this tawdry business.
This is, of course, a joke. The truth is that I had discovered around age 3 that I’m great at being annoying.
Ok but let me be clear: he was a genuinely good dude, despite the Wilco, and if he’s reading: Hey! I hope you are leading a fantastic and happy life!