‘Subvert your routine’: Anne Quito on embracing art and anarchy in daily life
Plus: Stiff competition for remote jobs in journalism
Welcome to The Writethrough! Last week’s newsletter featured The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman on hope for journalists in the age of AI. This week: staying competitive despite not living in a city, and editor Anne Quito on how to stay curious in your career.
Talking to journalists about working in the industry these days can be kind of a bummer. But a conversation with design writer and editor Anne Quito is like eating a multi-course meal prepared by a boundary-pushing chef: She never says what you’d expect, and you walk away feeling not just satiated but electrified.
This week, Anne and I talk about what it’s like to work remotely in Barcelona (“idyllic, because there’s no hustle”), the necessary cacophony of a good magazine, and the importance of entering interviews with an open heart. Our conversation left me feeling hopeful about all the possibilities a career — or a single day — can contain. And speaking of remote work, don’t miss our advice column from career coach Phoebe Gavin on how journalists can weigh the pros and cons of moving outside media metropolises like New York and London. — Sarah Todd
Ask a Career Coach
Phoebe Gavin dives into journalists’ dilemmas
Dear Career Coach,
What's your sense of how feasible it is for journalists these days to live outside of major industry centers like New York, Los Angeles, D.C., and London? Lots of newsrooms seem to be increasing their demands about how many days a week people spend in the office, and even the ones with more flexibility often have some in-person work requirements.
I have a full-time remote reporting job right now and have been contemplating a move from New York to a lower cost-of-living area that's closer to family, but I worry that I'd be shooting myself in the foot if I want or need to apply to new jobs in the future. (Probable, given that most people don't stay at the same newsroom for their whole careers these days.) I'd love to hear your advice on how to weigh the pros and cons.
Phoebe: I've been working remotely or hybrid since 2014 and so this is something that I know and have thought a lot about. Remote work has been around for a very long time, but after the pandemic everybody got a taste of that flexibility. The demand for remote work increased, and the people competing for those sorts of roles has become much higher than it was before. So the big tradeoff that you're making is, yes, there are going to be fewer opportunities that are available for you if you aren't able to commute into the office. The remote opportunities that will be available to you are going to be more competitive, and that is probably going to be the case going forward.
There's a risk in the reward there, both professionally and personally, and so you have to decide: What do you want to prioritize? Having that flexibility that comes with working remotely in a lower cost-of-living place, or having a broader array of opportunities available to you if you decide that you want to make a transition?
Either way, the thing that I would really want you to do is to focus on building your brand and your network. Ultimately, your relationships and your reputation are going to be what helps you have a successful career, and that is particularly important for folks who are outside of these key metro areas. And so if you decide that's the direction that you want to take your life, then professionally, it is going to be very important for you to focus on keeping your skills fresh and at the cutting edge, making sure that you are networking regularly, and making sure that you are posting about your work, whether that's on your portfolio website or on your LinkedIn or other social media that you might use for professional purposes.
Phoebe Gavin is a career and leadership coach helping ambitious professionals build successful, fulfilling careers without sacrificing work-life balance. She has counseled over 1,000 clients, many of them journalists. Sign up for a starter session with Phoebe here to tackle your career concerns and make headway on your goals.
Have you managed to stay in a competitive journalism role despite working remotely? Email us at thewritethrough@gmail.com so we can share your experience anonymously as inspiration for others.
Hacks
Reading between the lines in job ads
Journalists are great at asking the right questions to fill in information gaps. We should apply the same approach to job hunting, by keeping an eye out for red flags in job postings and interviews that might signal a problematic work environment, advises Jasmine Escalera, career expert at LiveCareer UK. Be wary of fluffy descriptions and vague responsibilities—we’re expected to be precise in our language every day, and should expect the same from future employers.
Inspiration Corner
Design writer, critic, and editor Anne Quito is the managing editor of a new print magazine about cryptocurrency called Use Case. Anne and I met when we worked together at Quartz, where she regularly dazzled readers with design and architecture stories on everything from fonts to old-timey elevators. She’s also the writer and editor of Mag Men: Fifty Years of Making Magazines as told by Milton Glaser and Walter Bernard, and is currently working on Glaser’s biography. Here are a few highlights from our conversation on staying curious and the romance of making a magazine. — Sarah Todd
Anne on what it’s like to live and work in Barcelona:
I feel life here is idyllic, because there's no hustle. But it also works both ways – they’re complaining about their strife and their ambitions, I’m like, You gotta do it man.
It's sort of a philosophy that they’ve de-centered work. And it's a palette of elements that builds up a life in equal terms: Family, friendship, work, side artistic projects. Absolutely sports. Working on your body. And it's not even a thing that people discuss. It's just like an element of a day. Of course I go to the beach. Of course I hike.
My friend has a lunch break from 1 to 4 — insanity. And then there's a culturally accepted thing called sobre mesa. So after you eat, you can just linger for hours.
On how she structures her days:
There's a streak of anarchy in me. When I wake up, I really think, How can this day be different than yesterday? I don't have a routine. Most of the people I work with are in the States. So work starts at four; the whole day is mine.
