Career backstory: The goal has always been magazines for me, but I didn’t take it seriously until I was about 20, which is very late in the game for an aspiring editor. I remember being a freshman in high school and going to see How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in the theatre and it just clicked. It’s so embarrassing to admit that that was the first “ah-ha” moment in choosing my future career, but it was! I interned at a radio station in Chicago during college and also wrote for my university’s newspaper, but I didn’t kick myself into high gear until senior year. I knew that I wanted to move to Ireland for grad school, so I finished college a semester early in order to earn enough money to go so my parent’s couldn’t say no.
Once I got to Ireland, the industry just burst open right in front of me. Instead of focusing on dollar beer nights with my friends, I finally had a professional state of mind. I worked in all areas of journalism as part of my course (print, radio, photography, broadcast, etc.), and ended it with an internship at Galway Now, one of the country’s leading fashion magazines. I worked there for a few months while also pitching ideas to other glossies around the country. I got myself published in every magazine that I could, and kept in touch with the people at my internship after it finished. I ended up back at Galway Now as a freelancer after graduation, and did that for about a year while also working full-time as an events coordinator and journalist for a quilt festival (that is a story for another day!).
I stayed in Ireland for two-and-a-half years and then New York started calling my name. I moved here with my Irish boyfriend with no job or place to stay and with just a little savings. We lived in a hostel for two weeks and then found a room in an apartment in a very sketchy neighborhood. I got an internship at FashionIndie.com for the first few months while I looked for full-time work, and it was one of the hardest times in my life. Thank God for my wonderful parents who helped support me and my crazy dreams, because I ran out of money extremely fast. I got rejected by hundreds of jobs for a good six months and I just sat in my apartment wondering why the hell I moved here in the first place. I felt like a ghost in the big city—nobody knew or cared that I was there. Then, just in the nick of time (literally with about $10 to my name), I got an email from Star to come in for an interview, and the rest is history!
Industry pet peeve: When people don’t answer emails. When I was first starting out, I sent out so many carefully crafted emails to people I admired about everything from internships to informational interviews. I would religiously check my inbox at all hours of the day and night (seriously, my mind would wake me up at 4 a.m. to see if there was any responses). I made so many amazing connections with the people that emailed me back, but there were far too many that I never heard from. It was heartbreaking! And when I sent follow-up emails and still got nothing, it was worse. Knowing how that feels has made me a stickler for emails in my professional life. I try and answer every single email I receive, no matter the subject. It just shows people that you care, and it takes two minutes!
Must-have on the job: A thick skin and a lot of snacks, which are completely random but also 100 percent necessary. In terms of a thick skin, you have to be able to take criticism without taking it personally. Feedback is meant to help you, even when it’s hard to hear. Editors will take your work and change it. Their red pen will bleed all over your pages, and you have to be ok with that. They aren’t trying to insult you or say that you have no talent. They hired you for a reason! If you allow yourself to realize this then you will become a much stronger editor in the long run. You need to ask, “What can I do to improve my writing? Is there a specific area of features I can work on?” You will be shocked as to what you can find out about yourself if you just ask your boss. If you learn to accept feedback on a regular basis, your copy will continue to get stronger. And you can’t fear rejection, whether it’s applying for a job or pitching an idea. Dive in head first, and if you get told “no,” just brush it off and move on to something bigger and better!
As for snacks, you can never have enough on the job. I have a lot of late nights in the office, and on the rare occasion that I do get out on time, I’m usually covering an event or red carpet at night. And if you get “hangry” like me, you definitely need a tote bag full of goodies to keep you going. You can be standing on a red carpet for at least two hours sometimes before any celebrities arrive (the nerve, right?), and you need to be on your game once everything starts.
Favorite job perk: Getting to go to movie premieres and celebrity events, and also being a part of the magazine process up close. It’s crazy to come up with an idea, see it come to life and then have it sit on every newsstand in the country. It’s amazingly terrifying.
What made you go to Ireland?: I was born and raised in Chicago, so the urge to see the world started hitting me hard when I was about 19. I spent the summer before my senior year of college in Galway and it completely changed my life. I fell in love with everything about the country—the people, scenery, and lifestyle—and knew that I needed to go back. I felt at home when I was there, and I wasn’t going to be happy being anywhere else. I applied for graduate school and, when I got in, packed up my life and moved back a few months after my college graduation.
You have interviewed your fair share of celebrities. Do you have any tips on interviewing?: Do six degrees of research. It’s such a simple thing that not enough people practice. You need to know all of the basic facts not only about the person you will be talking to, but also about their costars, family, friends, etc. Once an interview starts, a lot of the time you will ditch your notes and just let the conversation flow naturally. New things and questions will pop into your head and you need to know what you’re talking about. I’ve seen way too many editors and reporters ask a celebrity about their favorite cocktail when it’s common knowledge that that particular celebrity is a recovering alcoholic. Google is your best friend pre-interview, so take full advantage of it. Also, always have five general questions that you can ask any celebrity on the planet. When you’re covering red carpets, a lot of random stars will show up that weren’t on the tip sheet and if you can snag an interview with them, you need to be prepared. For example, I was covering the Anchorman 2 red carpet and usually when a movie has big stars like that, they only do TV interviews and then walk past all of the print journalists. You can easily grow accustomed to that, but at this premiere, every single star stopped for every person on the red carpet. Expect the unexpected!
What do you see yourself going next?: I’ll definitely stay in the celebrity and fashion facets of journalism, but I see myself moving away from tabloids at some point. I like to think I’m too nice! In terms of working in print or web, I will never say one or the other because they go hand in hand these days. You need to know both, and I love working in both. I also don’t think that an “end job” exists anymore. If you asked me this question five years ago, I would have said editor-in-chief of a major glossy magazine without hesitation. But this industry is constantly changing and can take you in so many unexpected directions, so I try not to put a cap on that. I would love to do more on-camera work for a mainstream celebrity news show, but I’m very open when it comes to my next step. As long as I’m still producing content that people want to read/watch, I’ll be happy.
Advice for others trying to break into the industry: Be hungry without being entitled. Nothing is going to get handed to you; you have to go after what you want. Very few editors are going to beg you to write a five-page feature. You have to approach them and say, “I want to do this and I think I’ll do a great job.” Carving your own way is key, but you also need to know the fine line between being persistent and pesky.
Also, don’t compare yourself to others. That is something I cannot stress enough. It’s so hard not to do, and I am guilty of it even now. There will be a lot of jobs that you don’t get, and you’ll see people younger than you with senior level positions. Don’t beat yourself up over it. You have to trust your gut and allow yourself to enjoy your journey because it’s completely unique to you. Once you finally do land that amazing job, you will realize that you didn’t hear back from all of those other jobs for a reason. And be kind to everyone!
Location: New York, NY
URL: www.blogofbliss.com
Twitter: twitter.com/caityh436
Instagram: instagram.com/caityh436
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.
