Don’t ask me how to break into journalism. You won’t like the answer

My first real job was at a publication called Ocular Surgery News. It was in a rural town of nothingness simply called Thorofare, N.J.?

I drove past peach farms on my commute every morning. During my lunch break, I either ate a sandwich in my car or killed time at a gas station convenience store.?

I was 21 years old, the youngest by a lot.

I often tell this story as a motivational one. Look at where I started. Look at where I am now.?

I found that first job in a newspaper classified section a few months before I was about to graduate from an Ivy League university. The New York City daily where I had been interning for the past four years had enacted a post-Sept. 11 hiring freeze, and now I was stuck.?

And worse: I had bombed the writing test for The Associated Press, where I was almost offered a job in the Philadelphia bureau. I don’t know what happened. My mistakes were so elementary, the editor called to tell me what a shame it was. They really liked me.?

I never talk about that because it’s so embarrassing; how did I fail so badly? And it meant I was left with just two choices: Ocular Surgery News in Thorofare — or working at a law firm in D.C. as part of a program that was supposed to introduce lost grads like myself to a possible legal career. I was leaning toward the law firm. At the very least, it was in a city. But my dad, for whatever reason — and entirely out of character — talked me out of it and steered me back to journalism.?

So off I went to Thorofare to pursue what was supposedly my passion.?

Every so often, I get emails from journalism majors asking for advice on how to break into the field. I never know how to answer that question. And I’ve never heard an answer from anyone else that I’ve found satisfying. The answer usually breaks down like this: they knew someone, they impressed someone or they took a crappy first job.

I suppose you could say I was in the latter camp. I don’t mean to knock my first employer, and certainly not my colleagues. But it was a deeply unfulfilling job. I’d interview doctors about their research, and then my editors would send my articles back to the physicians, who more often than not would rewrite their sections in stilted jargon. My byline would appear on these pieces, but they weren’t clips I’d ever use. This wasn’t my writing. Moreover, it didn’t feel like journalism – at least not the kind of journalism I wanted to do.

I moved on after 11 months, when I finally found a job in New York. But once again, I had two imperfect choices: an entry-level job at a well-known glossy magazine that paid $24,000 a year or a reporter position that paid $39,000 but was still at a trade publication.

I chose the trade publication.?

You all know how this story ends. (Better than I ever imagined.) But in the Choose Your Own Adventure that was the early years of my career, How did I fail so badly was the refrain that kept playing in my head.?

And then there were my friends, my former Ivy League classmates. I couldn’t help but compare my own attempt at a journalism career (at the worst time to go into journalism) to the more lucrative decisions they had made when they decided to go into industries like law and investment banking. And there I was, with an apartment in Brooklyn infested with mice, and my bible at the time, a book called Debt Free By 30.?

And every few years, I’d purchase (but never open) a new LSAT study guide, as if the crisp pages might have the answer.?

Still, I stayed the course.?

The funny thing about career decisions is that they’re never just about a career. When I was 24, I turned down a promotion because it would have meant moving cross country. It was a stupid decision. But I didn’t want to leave my friends, my family and – truth be told – the guy I had started dating eight months earlier. (I’d end up marrying that guy. It was still a stupid decision. I regretted it almost immediately.)

In some ways, I also had career inertia; I couldn’t think of anything I really wanted to do besides write. Growing up, all I had ever wanted to be was a writer living in New York. And now I was living the dream – technically, at least.

The low point came about four years after I graduated. I was applying for jobs at the same time when that-guy-I-would-eventually-marry was applying to residency. I was waiting to hear from a company – a company I was really excited about – that had been stringing me along for a couple of months. They finally called the morning of Match Day – with a rejection.

That afternoon, my boyfriend called during my lunch break. He had gotten into his first choice internship and residency programs. After nearly two years of Buffalo-to-New York dating, he was moving home. This was the future I had fantasized about, unfurling before me. Finally! My boyfriend, a doctor! The two of us together in New York! Maybe we could even live together, his success in some ways my success, although that idea didn’t feel particularly great.?

As I tried to congratulate him, I couldn’t seem to get the words out without my voice breaking. I was antsy to get off the phone. He didn’t seem to notice. He had plenty of people to call.

I think it’s important to normalize the following things: Getting a foot in the job market is HARD. Not everyone has connections in their chosen field. And not everyone gets that lucky break – sometimes you even get unlucky, like, oh, say, a global pandemic sweeps across the globe. Sometimes you have to go with option three: the crappy first job. That doesn’t mean you failed.

And to the extent I learned anything, it was this: You can gain new skills at any job. You can find people you admire at any job. You can build a list of accomplishments at any job.?

When I talk to student journalists now – because yes, I am finally the type of person who gets invited to speak to student journalists – I tell them not to think of their careers in terms of jobs at all. After all, the job I have now didn’t even exist when I was a student. And I’m confident that over the course of their careers they will have jobs that don’t exist today.?

Instead, I encourage them to think about the skills they want to use, the things they want to learn and the experiences they want to have. Because those are the true building blocks of a career.

By my early 30s, I finally felt like I was on the cusp of something. I was starting to make a name for myself on my beat. I found plenty of mentors, editors who taught me how to write with more maturity or encouraged me to experiment and build things. And my crowning achievement: winning a year-long reporting fellowship to study how the Affordable Care Act was reshaping hospital finances.

Things seemed to be coming together. For the most part.

And then, one day, there was LinkedIn.

I found my job at LinkedIn on LinkedIn. I didn’t actually expect them to call. I had applied through their website, sending my application off into the void. I didn’t have any connections at the company, and I had no prior tech experience. I didn’t have any flashy news organizations on my resume.?

And yet, somehow, they wanted to hire me. The process moved fast, and in less than three weeks, I got a phone call from the recruiter detailing my offer.?

I was so excited, I screamed into a pillow as soon as we hung up, like in a movie.

But a few days later, when I went to give my two weeks’ notice, my boss at the time spent most of the call yelling at me. He told me I was throwing away my career by leaving traditional journalism, that I was one of those rare writers who he thought could make it at The New York Times.?

I was rattled. As I walked home from work that day, I considered whether he was right. LinkedIn wasn’t the news organization it is now. I’d be joining a tiny team of about 20 journalists who were still experimenting with what content could look like on the site. I wasn’t even 100% sure what I’d be doing.?

But it was an opportunity. I would be the first healthcare editor – and if I didn’t know what that meant, it was because they expected me to write the playbook on how to do this job. “Inertia” was the opposite of what I felt. It was a risk, but it felt like the right one.

In the early years of my career, I couldn’t see where the course would lead – until I was far enough along to see what I’d been charting.

This time, I got to take the job I wanted. I haven’t looked back.