Origin Story
How I found my way to journalism and freelancing
Hello everyone!
First of all, thank you to everyone who subscribed this week! Some of you are longtime supporters and others are newcomers to my work, and even journalism more broadly. Either way, I hope you find this interesting, useful, gratifying, helpful, insightful. All the things. Thanks for being an subscriber here as I navigate this new territory. Message me with your thoughts, feedback, things I should cover. If you missed my welcome post, you can find it here.
I figure I should introduce myself more and give you all my how-I-got-here spiel.
I don’t want to bore anyone with my whole backstory — because really I’ve been on the path to writing my entire life — but I’ll provide the Cliffs Notes. A little over a decade ago I realized that I wanted to be a magazine writer and features journalist. I was working at a public relations agency at the time, just out of college, on its Microsoft account. The job was valuable and important, but ultimately not the longterm career I wanted. The more I worked with reporters, the more I realized I wanted to be the reporter. This surprised me somewhat. In college, I initially wanted to major in journalism but later bumped it down to my minor after taking a required breaking news course. The inverted pyramid — a structure reporters use to shape news pieces — didn’t vibe with me. I felt too constrained within this writing style. I wanted scene setting! Narrative arcs! A hero’s journey! Somewhere along the road — I can’t pinpoint an exact moment — I realized that magazine reporting felt like a better fit.
All of this was coming together in my mind post college. I had no clue at the time how to break into the journalism industry. I hadn’t interned at a newspaper and I didn’t know any journalists personally, except the ones I worked with at the agency. So, I decided to go to graduate school. There’s been a lot of discussion in journalism about whether receiving a masters degree is necessary, and the debt people go into for an industry that, frankly, doesn’t always pay well. It is not necessary for everyone, or maybe anyone. But it felt like the right choice for me, and I still believe that it was. I can’t say the same for anyone else — it’s a personal decision.
I didn’t have a job lined up after graduation (this is sort of an enlightening anecdote, I think, about being young and naive and the value of chutzpah), so while I was visiting Montauk with my family that spring, I walked into the house where The East Hampton Star has its office and asked if they were hiring. Turns out they wanted summer interns and I moved to East Hampton that June after graduation to report for the paper (when I got there, I convinced my editor to give me the title “seasonal reporter”). I had the best time there. Perhaps I’ll write a post about that, my first job in journalism that I remain forever nostalgic for.
Now onto freelancing! I left The Star to work at The Forward newspaper as a fellow for a year (another great job where I learned a lot as a young reporter and met one of my best friends). But still, I had a very specific idea of what I wanted my career to look like and the kinds of stories I wanted to write. That’s not to say goals don’t change — they do! — but looking back I think having a clear north star helped to propel and encourage me to me to strike out on my own, which is a scary and daunting prospect. Another thing: I studied the career paths and stories of longform journalists I admired, including Rachel Monroe, Brooke Jarvis and Jennifer Percy (I still love them all, please check out their work). They wrote about the American West and other topics I now write about myself. They also worked independently at the time I came to their writing. I figured that I would try to do what they did.
The plan has always been to keep going until it no longer works (full-time freelancing that is). I’ve had to re-evaluate this on occasion, including right now in the current state of things with industry layoffs, publications closing and the general precarious position that many, if not all, outlets and reporters seem to be in. I’ve always had some sort of permalance gig or side hustle — as freelance journalists do — but I’m finding those harder to come by right now too.
And yet! I’m a big advocate for freelancing and freelancers. I continue to remain hopeful about the work and to encourage anyone who’s toying with writing to go forth and write.
I’m still noodling on future posts (lots to say about pitching, for instance) but I think it would be helpful for me to share the first story I sold and how it came to be. More to come.
Thanks for being here <3
Britta Lokting
Endnote: I’ll share one thing I’m reading, watching, listening to or observing every week. It seems like everyone in New York saw the movie “Civil War” last weekend, including myself. I won’t give away any spoilers, but it was one of the more accurate depictions of journalism I’ve seen aside from the movie “Spotlight,” which showed the tedious work of investigative journalism: poring over old documents, doors slammed in faces, general groping around in the dark. The worst depiction of a journalist, in my opinion, remains Rory Gilmore in “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.” I still cringe whenever I think about her — please don’t get me started — and I’m a huge GG fan.
All that being said, go see “Civil War”! It brings up some interesting ethical questions about journalism, I think, not to mention the state of the country. If nothing else, I am extremely here for the emerging power couple that is Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons.