Career Backstory: I came to New York when I was 17 to study fashion design. I thought I was a natural, that years of sewing up the sides of jeans and punk shirts would mean I could breeze through FIT and get started at Prada. Of course it didn’t work like that. School was hard; working on the side was hard; building a life in New York was hard; and I decided that if I was going to spend the better part of a decade working towards a career, it should be something I really enjoyed. During my short high school career, I had been a reporter and editor for the school paper, the U-High Midway, and a photography/darkroom fanatic. I (thought I) knew there wasn’t a future in film photography (I have since decided this was one of those “I’m 17 and know everything” decisions) so decided to go with journalism. I’d found a great apartment in the East Village with my brother, so when I found out that The New School had a writing program AND was within walking distance from my new digs, I went about tricking them into admitting me. Before long, I’d gone from a fashion student who did makeup on the side to a writing student who bartended nights. It made a lot more sense. Now I’m a fact checker and writer for Rolling Stone, and kind of a mess when it comes to fashion. (I literally wear the same jeans and t-shirts I did as a teenager.) But I couldn’t be happier.
Industry Pet Peeve: Writers who think it’s in their best interest to battle fact checkers. We’re all on the same team; we all want the story to be as accurate as possible while still being fresh and exciting. I am not looking for an incorrect fact just for the sake of being right. We’re all in this together. So just send me your transcripts and ease up, man.
Industry Confession: Chances are I am not covering your show for the website. I just wanted free tickets to your show. And yes, I will take that free LP. (See: Favorite Job Perks)
Work Must-Haves: Overpriced mechanical pencils, colored pens, phone tapper and tape recorder, post-its (multiple sizes and colors, but of course a big stack of classic yellow squares), headphones, GChat. Oh, and an e-cigarette for when I don’t have time to make it downstairs.
Favorite Job Perk: Advance albums, free concerts, and finding weird promotional crap around the office and bringing it home as presents for friends.
How was being heavily involved in your college paper help jump start your career?: Wow. In every way. It introduced me to working journalists (Sean Elder, Rob Buchanan, Sarah Saffian, I can never thank you enough) and showed me exactly how hellish a closing night actually is. It taught me to write on deadline, write for the audience, report, manage, design, plan, deal with other people, work as a team, take responsibility for people working for me—basically all the parts of working in any industry, but especially journalism. I started there as a writer, then became the opinions editor, then the editor in chief. I made some terrible decisions in my years there, but learned from each of them. I would encourage everyone to be part of their school paper, whether they want to be in journalism or not. It teaches you a lot about how media works, how opinions get shaped and argued, and about the fallibility in writers.
Did you do an internship? Where was it and what did you learn during it?: I’d done a couple internships during school—an advertising trade magazine, the Elle photo department—and found those entertaining enough, if just for resume fodder. I’d spent the past year running a paper, and wasn’t sure what it would be like to go to from EIC the bottom of the food chain, even if it was just a school rag.
After college I gave myself three months to not worry about starting my career. I’d been busting my ass for long enough that I just wanted to work as a waitress, get drunk with my buddies, and take advantage of the fact that my best friend had a pool in her back yard on 3rd street, right around the corner from my house. Some former professors, however, (most notably Jennifer Baumgartner, to whom I owe much of my career) encouraged me to apply for an internship at The Nation. I was wait-listed, cried my eyes out, got drunk at the aforementioned pool, then got the call about a day and a half later that I was in.
The Nation internship program taught me everything about pitching and writing—it was a crash course in what it actually means to work at a magazine. Seeing my name in print for the first time was a rush. (Such a rush, actually, that a good friend got that little news item framed, and I still have it hanging in my house. Right above my toilet.) But the best part was that it introduced me to fact checking, a little part of journalism I hardly knew about and soon grew to love.
How did you start freelancing and eventually working for Rolling Stone?: Short answer is, again, fact checking. When I’d started at The Nation, I thought it was more about checking names, dates, basic things like that. But there they teach you to tear apart an article and put it back together, re-report pieces by writers you have read and respected for years. Naturally I loved it—it was like J School, but instead of paying 50 grand, someone was paying you! After the program ended in December 2009, I knew that I wanted to continue with that. A few weeks later, my former boss emailed me and asked if I’d be interested in working at Rolling Stone. I’m pretty sure my response was laughing maniacally alone in my room, where I may or may not have fallen off my chair in happiness and disbelief, before responding yes, of course. He put me in touch with the research chief here, who had me in for a quick interview and told me I could start in a month. I spent three years coming in every other week, working at other magazines (New York, Health) while pitching lots of stories, publishing some, but ultimately holding out for a full time fact checking position to open up. Finally, in May of last year, one did.
What do you love/hate about music/culture journalism?: Only about half my life is in music and culture journalism, and I am lucky enough to spend a fair amount of time fact checking stories about national or international issues—climate change, Iraq and Afghanistan, gun control, domestic politics, drug policy, and LGBT issues. But a lot of the writing I do is about music—I love getting to talk to an artist I admire about how they went about making the music they make. I love music, but am a pretty terrible musician, so I find the songwriting and general creative process fascinating. And getting to interview them, and incorporate your own thoughts and feelings about their music into something bigger, is incredible. That being said, sometimes when you post your article about a new dance record you just love, and then your friend posts something about kids being killed in the middle east, it can feel a little frivolous.
Favorite published piece: Here’s two things I did recently that I’m really proud of: Interviews with gun shot survivors for a package Rolling Stone did on gun violence in America (“Gunshot Surviours Speak Out”) and an interview with Zola Jesus about her new album, Taiga. There’s also a travel piece I did last year for New York magazine that was maybe the hardest, longest thing I’ve ever done, but such a relief when it was finally on stands (“The Urbanist’s Amsterdam”).
Advice on cracking into the industry: No matter what, keep pitching. I probably pitch at least ten ideas for every one that gets a bite, and then even those will fall through. And the more you pitch, the better at it you get. So long as your ideas are well thought out and tailored for the publication, no editor will get sick of hearing them. But it’s their job to say no, and believe me, they will.
Location: New York, NY
Twitter: twitter.com/elisabethgp
Instagram: instagram.com/xelisabeastx
Amanda Jean Black is a guest blogger at Ed2010, sharing stories from her site onthemasthead.com. When not hunting down publishing’s elite for an interview, you can find the native New Yorker obsessing about style and culture, shopping for designer streetwear, and jamming out to 90′s alt rock.
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