Tag: lessons learned

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Try It Before You Realize How Hard It Is.

When I was 17, I got an summer internship working at a paper on Nantucket. It didn’t pay much, but the paper was small — there were maybe eight of us, total, putting out a newspaper every Wednesday — and they gave me opportunities to write. For a high school junior, it was a great job.

Being young had its advantages: I was willing to say “yes” to assignments that more veteran reporters would have been wise enough to say “no” to. I pitched a weekly profile on local workers, a new police blotter column, and several big feature stories. It was a lot for one reporter to take on, but I didn’t have enough experience to know better.

But nothing really compared to something my boss, Don, pitched to me. He’d seen a weekly paper in another town that had printed an ambitious special section. They’d dispatched a handful of reporters and photographers, in shifts, to document a single day in their town, and then packaged it all together into a special section on 24 hours in the life of their city.

Don suggested that instead of having a team of reporters and photographers attempt that, I could do it alone. 24 hours, a bunch of stories and original photos — by myself.

No one else on staff would have been dumb enough to agree to that. Of course, I did.

So what happened? That day, I set out with a camera, a notepad, and my RadioShack tape recorder. (It was 2004.) It was a quite the day: I interviewed people all over the island, ate lobster on the beach (for journalism! And also for my first-ever expense report!), and reported a story from a nightclub that wouldn’t legally allow me to enter their premises for another four years. At one point, in the middle of the afternoon, I stopped by the office to hand over a flash drive of photos. I remember one of my co-workers semi-jokingly announcing, “Look! He’s still alive!”

In the end, we turned my package of stories and photos into its own eight-page section of the paper. My bosses were thrilled, and so was I: By trying something that no one else was willing to try, I ended up with my own section of the paper. Not bad for a summer intern!

Naïveté was my secret weapon that summer. I wasn’t scared or nervous or overwhelmed by anything at the paper — just excited to try new things. That mentality got me all sorts of exciting opportunities. Over and over, I tried things because I didn’t know how hard they were supposed to be. Fifteen years later, I’ve learned how hard many of these things really are — but I’m still trying to push for new things anyway.

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That’s a photo I took a few years ago, flying above Nantucket.

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You Can Learn Something From Everyone.

The next time you meet someone new, try this: Assume they have something they can teach you.

It could be a coffee with a new acquaintance, a big meeting at the office with several co-workers, or a casual chat at a cocktail party. No matter who they are, or what they do, make that simple assumption: They know something you don’t, but they’d be happy to tell you more about it — if only you asked!

What happens when you meet someone and you’re curious to learn more from them?

1) You ask more questions.

2) You listen more closely.

3) You end up building deeper relationships with them — and perhaps sparking the types of conversations that can lead to new ideas and initiatives.

Just that one shift in perspective — this new person has something to teach me! — can change the way you approach a conversation. It can put you in a mindset where you’re curious to learn.

I know I’m sometimes guilty of shutting myself off from conversation before one even starts. I do it for all sorts of reasons: I’m busy, I’m tired, or I’m just disinterested. Sometimes, on my worst days, I’ll sit in on a meeting and think, “I know more than these people.” That’s always a mistake — I’ve eliminated the chance of learning something right from the start.

Instead, keep that open mindset. Ask lots of questions, and be willing to challenge yourself and your own beliefs. You never know when you’re going to meet someone who might teach you something new.

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That photo of a dog with big ears — the better for listening, obviously — comes via Kyle Smith and Unsplash.

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That One Time I Sent An Email To Ted Leonsis.

Back in the winter of 2001, I was in 8th grade, and I went to a Caps game with my Dad and my cousin Don. Don always seemed to find new opportunities: he was great at staying in touch with people, was willing to try new things, worked hard, and found ways to open interesting doors for himself. Don had a good idea for me: I should email the new owner of the Caps, Ted Leonsis, and ask him if I could get a press pass to write an article about the Caps for my middle school paper, the Pyle Prowler. This was back in the days when Leonsis — a former AOL executive — would respond to every email from fans. (His email was [email protected].) I was a little nervous, but Don and Dad were so supportive, so I sent Ted the email.

And sure enough, Ted emailed me back to tell me that he was happy to set me up with a press pass for an upcoming game! I got to sit in the press box, eat with the other reporters, interview Olie Kolzig in the locker room, and get a glimpse of what it was like to be a reporter. It was one of those experiences that made me think, “I could probably do this when I grow up.”

It’s incredible to think what’s changed in the years since. I’m lucky enough to work in journalism. And last night, after all those years of heartbreak, I got to watch the Caps win the Stanley Cup.

So I wanted to say: Thanks for the encouragement all those years ago, Don. Thanks for the press pass, Ted. And thanks for the win last night, guys. Thanks for finally — finally! — bringing the Cup home to D.C.

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Don’t Make Business Cards. Build Your Own Website Instead.

I talked to a group of journalism students last week, and they had a professional question: Do students need their own business cards?

The short answer: I don’t think business cards help much with the job search. Every journalism student’s business card looks pretty much the same: Your name, your contact information, and a line somewhere that says “Reporter/Editor/Journalist.” When you’ve got three inches of space to work with, you can’t say much.

If I were in J-school, I’d focus instead on the space where you can say a lot more: Your own domain. I’ve given this advice before, and I’ll say it again:

When someone gets your resume, the first thing they’re going to do is Google your name. And if you’re pitching an organization on your digital skills, you need something better than yourname.wix.com. Go to domainr.com and search for your name. If you can buy yourname.com, do it. If that’s taken, try something that fits your career aspirations: yournamereports.com, byyourname.com, yournamestories.com, etc. Build a website that showcases your reporting, and make it easy for someone to contact you. (You wouldn’t believe how many people build websites with no contact information!)

Then take the next step: Open up an incognito window, and search for your own name. (That way, you’ll see results that aren’t personalized for you.) What comes up? Is there anything on there you wouldn’t want a potential employer to see?

Your goal should be to get your own domain to the top of the page — but at the very least, you want it on the first page. (If you built your site with WordPress, use a tool like All in One SEO to set up your site correctly for Google.) Make sure that what comes up represents you: a LinkedIn profile (and yes, take a minute and personalize your LinkedIn URL), a Twitter account, and clips or work from your previous experiences.

If you meet someone new, remember: What matters most is what they’ll see when they Google you. Make sure that what shows up there — your personal domain, your professional social media profiles, etc. — showcases who you are and what you want to do next in your career.

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That photo is by Nick Adams from Unsplash.

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Some People Specialize, Some Are Versatile.

A basketball team can put five players on the floor at one time. A baseball team can have 25 players on the roster on game day.

So how do you build the best possible roster with those limitations?

I’ve been fascinated by some of the ways teams are trying to address that question. In basketball, the buzzword of the moment is “positionless.” Instead of trying to find players that fit traditional roles — like a big, burly center to play in the post — teams are looking for players that can fit multiple roles. In today’s NBA, the ideal big man might be asked to dribble the ball up the floor, hit 3s, and also defend inside.

Of course, it’s not easy to find players who can do that. LeBron James is built like a center and passes like a guard — but he’s a once-in-a-generation type player. The challenge is how to find lesser talents that still bring a meaningful combination of skills — scoring, passing, defense — to the table.

Baseball started moving in this direction last season, when the San Diego Padres tried to use their backup catcher, Christian Bethancourt, as an occasional pitcher. (He got hurt in the first month and only played in eight games.) Still, the idea made a lot of sense. On a baseball team, you’ve got eight starting position players and five starting pitchers. That leaves 12 spots for your backups: 7 or 8 pitchers, and 4 or 5 players for the rest of the field. But if you can maximize those spots by having a pitcher who can also field, it opens up new possibilities for a team. Suddenly, you can keep an extra player on your roster — a sixth starting pitcher, an extra pinch hitter — instead.

This year, the Los Angeles Angels have a player on their roster who might really kickstart a trend towards versatility: Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese-born player who came to the majors this year with LeBron-like hype. He’s one of the Angels’ starting pitchers, and when he’s not pitching, he’s the team’s designated hitter. It’s only the second week of the season, but so far, it’s going incredibly well:

The old model would have forced Ohtani to specialize: You can hit, or you can pitch, but not both. But if Ohtani continues to play at a high level at two positions, this might change the game for good. It could take a few years for the impact to trickle down to college and high school ball, but eventually, you’ll see more players who can serve multiple roles on a team.

For anyone early in their non-sporting careers, it’s worth thinking about what’s happening here and how it might impact your career. If you had the choice, would you rather pitch yourself as a specialist, or as someone who’s versatile?

There are some limits to versatility: I remember pitching myself after college as a do-it-all backpack journalist, someone who could shoot video, write and report, handle social media, and edit stories. The truth was: I was a hard-working reporter, but barely proficient at the other skills. There’s a big gap between “I can produce video” and “I’m great at producing video.” Companies hire for excellence, not competence.

I wish I’d pitched myself as more of a compromise, a combination of versatility and focus. I was a strong writer, a good reporter, and starting to develop as a photographer. Those three skills made me an interesting candidate. But the more I added in — I talked about work I’d done with interactive graphics in Flash, and experience with data — the more it looked like I was trying to pad the resume.

The point is: Versatility can be an asset. It’s something that might get you in the door at a place that only has so many spots on their team. But if you’re going to pitch yourself that way, you’ve got to be good at everything you do — recruiters will see through it if you’re just adding fluff to your resume.

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Everything Will Go Wrong.

Watch this video of Stevie Ray Vaughan, the legendary guitarist, on “Austin City Limits” back in 1989. You’re about to see something extraordinary: About 30 seconds in, one of Stevie Ray’s guitar strings is going to break. He’s playing live, in the middle of a guitar solo. He’s recording for TV.

And he doesn’t miss a note:

Somehow, he plays through it, signals to his guitar tech for a new guitar, switches to the new instrument, and continues playing — like it’s no big deal.

Maybe because to a guitarist like Stevie Ray — someone with decades of experience on stage and in front of the cameras — it simply wasn’t.

All those hours of practice, all those hours on stage — they’re not just about helping you gain experience. They’re also preparation for all of the tricky situations that inevitably arise along the way.

There’s really only way to learn how to make things work when things go wrong: By screwing up, over and over again. The more things break in key situations, the more you learn how to handle it, and how to prepare for the next time.

That video of Stevie Ray? That wasn’t the first time — or probably even the hundredth — that he’d broken a string on stage. He’d been through it before, and so had his crew. They knew their roles.

Things will go wrong. Have you put in the work to learn what to do when it does?

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5 Tips For Anyone Graduating From College This Year.

So you’re graduating in May, and you’re not ready for it. I remember the feeling — I wasn’t ready when I graduated from Mizzou in 2009. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for in a first job!

But now I’m on the other side of the table. I’ve hired entry-level employees at both BuzzFeed and Stry.us — young reporters and editors just like you. Here’s what I’ve learned that might help you get that very first job:

1) Buy your own domain name — When someone gets your resume, the first thing they’re going to do is Google your name. And if you’re pitching an organization on your digital skills, you need something better than yourname.wix.com. Go to domainr.com and search for your name. If you can buy yourname.com, do it. If that’s taken, try something that fits your career aspirations: yournamereports.com, byyourname.com, yournamestories.com, etc. Build a website that showcases your reporting, and make it easy for someone to contact you. (You wouldn’t believe how many people build websites with no contact information!) Forget about business cards — a website is so much more valuable.

2) Launch something — Whatever you’re passionate about, build something around it. It doesn’t matter if it’s good — in fact, whatever you try probably won’t be very good at first — but that’s OK! Create an Instagram around your original photography. Partner with a friend and launch a podcast. Create a TinyLetter around stories you’re reading, and send it every week to your family and friends. Just make something.

3) Make sure your resume doesn’t suck — If you’ve got a skills section, go ahead and get rid of it. (Otherwise, I’m going to ask you about your expertise in the Microsoft Office suite, and you better have a mind-blowing PowerPoint presentation you can send me on the spot.) Instead, go build those skills into every bullet on your list. I want you to tell me about the stuff you’ve done and the stories you’ve told. I want to see numbers: The number of stories you published at a particular outlet, the impact you had an organization. “Handled social media” is an OK line on a resume; “Helped grow our Twitter presence by 10,000 followers” is far better. And make sure you follow these six other tips to craft a great resume.

4) Start scheduling some 15-minute coffees — When you’re in a city with reporters, editors, producers, or leaders you respect, send them a quick note. (hunter.io is a great tool for finding professional email addresses.) Tell them you’re a college student, you’re going to be in their city, you’re a big fan of their work, and you’d like to bring coffee to their desk and ask them 3-4 questions. (Make sure you have really good questions!) You’d be surprised how often people will say yes when they know that, A) Their time won’t be wasted, and B) They don’t have to leave their office.

5) Buy stationery, and send thank you notes — When you’re done with a coffee, send that person a written thank you note. Not an email, not a DM — a thank you note. It’s a small gesture, but it’ll be noticed.

Good luck, soon-to-be grads. You’re graduating into a strong job market, with so many new tools that can be used to tell stories. You’re going to have some incredible opportunities ahead of you. It’s up to you to do something with it.

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Thanks to Cole Keister for making that graduation photo available on Unsplash.

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Something We Tried (And Loved) In 2017: Wishing More People Happy Birthday!

A few years ago, my friend Leslie’s dad died, and she wrote a wonderful piece about him. This one part of her story really stuck with me: Every year, Leslie’s dad would call family, friends, and co-workers on their birthdays and sing “Happy Birthday”:

“The dude had a goddamn calendar full of people he would call on their birthdays. From what I’ve learned in the past couple of months, it numbered in the hundreds. If he knew your birthday, he would call you on it and sing happy birthday. He had what I would call a church choir voice. Which is to say, not great, but he would belt it out nonetheless. If you picked up, he’d sing your ear off. If you screened, he’d sing it to your voicemail.”

And it wasn’t until after he died that Leslie realized how much of an impact those yearly birthday calls had made on everyone who was on the receiving end:

“In the past three months, I’ve had untold numbers of people approach me and tell me they had messages from my dad on their phones singing them happy birthday. Happy birthday to Mark! Happy birthday to Suzanne! Happy birthday to Margaret! Happy birthday to family and friends and to people I don’t know from Adam!”

I loved the idea that one little gesture could matter so much to so many people. I’m not much for singing loudly, so Sally and I made a resolution to try something new in 2017: Sending birthday cards.

We made a calendar of people we love, we got their addresses, and we started sending cards to them. This year, we’ve sent about 75 cards — next year, I hope, we’ll send more.[1. Etsy, I’ve learned, is a great place to buy birthday cards. I love stores like HenPenPaperCo, YeaOhGreetings, hellosmallworld, and lafamiliagreen for original cards.]

This has been a strange, stressful year for all of us, but sitting down and writing a birthday note to friends and family reminded us how lucky we are to have such great people in our lives. No matter what’s happening in the world, we have these relationships, and we’re so grateful for them. And every birthday is a reminder that there are always great reasons to celebrate with the people we love.

Here’s to getting older — and many more years of happy birthdays (and birthday cards) to come.

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That’s a birthday card from hellosmallworld on Etsy. They make great cards.

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Pay Your Debts.

A few years ago at BuzzFeed, my co-workers on the Product side of the house — the folks that built our website and kept it running — started talking about this idea of “tech debt.”

Here’s a simple way to think about it. (And I’m going to oversimplify things here — my former colleagues were incredibly bright, thoughtful people, and this doesn’t at all reflect the amount of work, effort, thought, etc. they put into building some amazing products.) At BuzzFeed, we’d built our website on systems that were a few years old. Over time, our team hacked together solutions to build new features and tools using these older systems. These weren’t supposed to be long-term fixes — a lot of these solutions were hacked together.

Almost a decade later, we’d ended up with was a website that — from a coder’s perspective — was like a Jenga tower. We stacked these hacks and workarounds one on top of the other, and eventually, we couldn’t go any further. The building blocks of our site could no longer support it.

By making all these short-term compromises, we’d put ourselves in a tricky position. We couldn’t really move forward with new projects until we’d gone in and fixed the basic infrastructure of our website.

We’d accumulated all of these debts, and we finally faced the realization that we had to pay those debts off. In order to move forward, we first had to tear down and build from the ground up.

So our tech team did. It was challenging, and it took an incredibly smart team the better part of a year to do it. But they did it — and moving forward, with the right systems and structures in place, that team at BuzzFeed is going to be able to do amazing things. They’ve got a strong foundation to build off of.

But there’s more than just tech debt out there. In the first few months at my new job, I’ve been spending a lot of time figuring out what debts we need to pay at The New Yorker. I’ll ask co-workers: What are we doing that drives you crazy? What are you spending too much time on? What could we fix that would change the way you work?

Slowly, we’ve started to identify our debts. We’ve been able to streamline old processes that were broken, and build new processes that will allow us to move quickly. We had process debts (teams using inefficient systems to do work), communication debts (teams struggling to work together towards common goals), and quite a bit of tech debt (teams using outdated or ineffective tools and apps).

It’s going to take us a while to pay off these debts. But by identifying them, and putting together the teams to fix them, we’re making the short-term changes to allow for long-term success.

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That piggy bank photo was taken by Fabian Blank for Unsplash.

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My OOO Misadventure.

email ooo

A few months ago, I started thinking about ways to handle email while out of the office. I was getting a lot of email while I was on vacation, and I wanted to figure out a way to, A) Reduce the number of emails in my inbox, and B) Make sure that my co-workers weren’t sitting around and waiting forever for a reply.

That’s when I read this story about a company in Germany that auto-deleted emails sent to employees on vacation. It seemed a little intense, but intriguing. Maybe there was a way, I thought, for me to shut off the email spigot on vacation.

So I dug a little deeper. I read about Huffington Post trying a similar email strategy, and other leaders adopting this auto-delete strategy. They all raved about it. Communicate what you’re going to do, they said, and how you can help them when you get back from vacation. And then try it.

So I did. I reminded my team that I’d be on vacation and not checking email. I wrote an out of office reply explaining that I was on vacation, and declaring email bankruptcy. I’d be deleting my entire inbox when I got back, I said. So I asked co-workers to email me again on a specific date — the day I was returning to the office — and promised that I’d be able to help them quickly if they emailed me on that date.

I turned on the out of office reply, and I went on vacation.

And I got feedback pretty quickly: People hated it. They thought I was acting like a jerk.

And honestly? I couldn’t blame them.

Here’s what I believe: What matters most is not what you say — it’s what others hear.

What I thought I was saying was: Please help me maintain my sanity! Email me when I’m back at work, and I can help you then.

What my co-workers heard was: You clearly don’t value my work or my time.

And they were right! My OOO reply came across as rude, and borderline hostile. Instead of pointing people towards someone who could help, I was shutting the door on them entirely. And at a big company, where I was getting emails from people in other offices (and sometimes in other countries), there were a lot of people who were asking for stuff who didn’t really know me. This might have been one of their first interactions with me — and this was how I was treating them?

The “auto-delete” strategy seemed nice in theory, but at a big company, it didn’t work. (I sent a lot of “I’m so sorry” emails afterwards to apologize to co-workers. I probably spent more time apologizing than I would have spent just replying to my normal, post-vacation inbox.)

So I’m doing something different now. Now, the email you get from me says, “I’m out of the office until (this date). If you need to reach me, text or call my cell at (xxx) xxx-xxxx.” Then I list the contact info for colleagues who can help, and I explain how they can be helpful.

Here’s what I like about my new OOO reply: If someone desperately needs my help, they’ll reach out directly. But most people see it and think, “This can wait.” And they do. If not, they can reach out to a co-worker to get the answers they need. It’s an OOO that’s designed to make sure that others can get the help they need as soon as they need it.

As for the emails: Sure, they pile up a little. I have to take an hour on that first Monday back in the office clearing through my inbox. But if my OOO does its job, most of the emails are about issues that were sorted out while I was gone. I get my vacation, and the office keeps moving forward. That’s a win-win.

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That photo at top, “Email” by Aaron Escobar, is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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