Janelle Harris is a multimedia producer, director, and founder of Harris Two Productions with decades of experience in non-fiction storytelling for networks including Bravo, Discovery, and A&E. A Howard University graduate, she specializes in amplifying diverse voices across television, film, and digital media.
9 min read • Originally published October 20, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Janelle Harris is a multimedia producer, director, and founder of Harris Two Productions with decades of experience in non-fiction storytelling for networks including Bravo, Discovery, and A&E. A Howard University graduate, she specializes in amplifying diverse voices across television, film, and digital media.
9 min read • Originally published October 20, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Whether interviewing a world leader or hurling water balloons at her co-hosts, that’s Tamron Hall’s signature move: journalistic dexterity. As a co-host on Today, the face of her weekday MSNBC program, NewsNation with Tamron Hall, and host of Deadline Crime on DiscoveryID, the Texas native has been juggling gigs since joining the NBC news team five years ago.
And, like anyone with a national platform, she hasn’t been without her critics and controversies. (One of her election season interviews was quickly labeled a “throw down” by the good fans of YouTube. More on that later…) But, true to her local TV roots, Hall’s commitment is to the folks on the other side of the camera. “I’m about being honest and knowing that people are watching, and they want to know that I’m asking questions that they want the answers to,” she told Mediabistro.
Here are more of her thoughts on objective reporting, balancing perspectives and getting to the bottom of a story.
Name: Tamron Hall Position: Anchor of NewsNation with Tamron Hall on MSNBC, co-host on NBC’s Today and Weekend Today, host of DiscoveryID series, Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall. Resume: Started as general assignment reporter in Bryan, TX, then moved to Dallas. Spent 10 years at WFLD in Chicago, where she was a general assignment reporter, consumer reporter and morning show host on the local Fox affiliate. Joined MSNBC in 2007. Served as correspondent for Emmy Award-winning NBC News special, The Inauguration of Barack Obama, in 2010. Birthday: September 16 Hometown: Luling, TX Education: B.A. in broadcast journalism from Temple University Marital status: Single Favorite TV show: The Walking Dead Guilty pleasure: Anything chocolate Media idol: Iola Johnson. “She was a local news anchor in Dallas when I was growing up. She was this brilliant, strong, African-American woman who was on TV before Oprah, before anybody. She was the inspiration for me to get into this business, at least part of the equation.” Last book read: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle Twitter handle: @tamronhall
What important lessons did you glean from starting off in a smaller market before moving into the big time and how did it prepare you?
I think it was just a growth process. By the time I left Bryan, I’d had a chance to cover small town, local stories, so I had an opportunity to see how these stories impact someone’s life. On a national scale, obviously we’re playing to a broader audience, even though they say all stories are local.
But there was something special about local news, especially in a smaller market where you got to know the individuals of that town. It’s a small town, so I could go to the gas station and everyone would have a story idea. Not that I go unrecognized now — people call all the time with story ideas — but if I look back at it in a nostalgic way, there was something special about covering news in a smaller community.
You’ve recently been contributing more to Today. Is being on that show where you see yourself down the line? How would you describe your role there?
My role there is filling in for Natalie [Morales] and on the weekends. I consider myself a part of the Today show family but, more than that, I consider myself just a part of the synergy. I really enjoy my days for example, like today, where I co-hosted with Willie [Geist] at 9 on Today and now I’m getting ready for my MSNBC NewsNation show. So, I don’t see my role with one or the other.
I love the back and forth of politics and hashing out things that are of great importance in our lives, but I also love, for example, the conversation I had in a segment on Today at 9 with a group of moms where we posed situations to them like, when would you allow your daughter to date and should you cry in front of your child?
It was stimulating; it was real. I enjoy that aspect of the Today show. I know some people would see that as fluff, but the reality is that’s something that parents face every day, those kinds of topics. Here I am talking with these moms about parental issues, normal life, if you will, and then I will be awaiting a news conference with President Hamid Karzai on NewsNation.
They’re vastly different worlds but both stimulate a part of my natural instinct as an individual and born journalist.
There’s a lot of talk about CNN’s “objective” positioning in prime time being partly responsible for its losing ratings. Do you think that’s a fair assessment or are the other networks, like MSNBC, just better?
When I came to MSNBC, its identity as the place for politics was growing. It’s been widely accepted by our audience. I don’t think that our primetime coverage is the same coverage offered all day. We have a fantastic lineup of people — I don’t know if you would describe them as pundits or voices in the community.
Rachel [Maddow], to me, is more than a “pundit.” She’s phenomenal, and I think she offers a reasonable perspective based on who she is and her political views. I think she does a fantastic job at it. I feel the same way about Chris [Matthews] and Lawrence [O’Donnell] and Ed [Schultz] and, of course, Rev. Al [Sharpton]. So, they offer something different that has resonated for reasons that I think are obvious. People want to hear those perspectives.
That’s not what we do on NewsNation. I don’t have the same role on MSNBC as Rachel. I discuss obvious questions. Right now, we have gun control debate. Why does someone need a gun clip with 20 rounds? That’s not right or left. That’s an obvious question.
Now, upon me asking that question, you will have some people who will say, “Oh, she’s a lefty” or “That’s MSNBC’s left-leaning perspective.” No, it’s not. It’s a logical question. So, for me, our show is not an opinion show, but it’s not a show that’s afraid of opinions.
How do you balance delivering news without interjecting your own personal opinions, even on issues you feel strongly about?
I balance it like the journalists before me. I’m 42, so I’ve been on TV in some capacity since I was 18. It’s not a struggle for me to hold out my opinion. I’m here to explore and ask questions of our guests. I’m not a puppet. I don’t just sit there.
Everything I ask is a question from Tamron, like it or not. My team does not write my questions. We put together a segment. We talk about the elements that I want, but we have a conversation for that hour with our guests.
I think that I don’t struggle with “Oh gosh, will it look like I’m giving my opinion?” “Will someone be upset if I say this?” I don’t go through my day like that. I go through my day trying to provide the most accurate and relevant information. We try to book the most compelling guests. We don’t say, “Oh, we can’t have this person on, because he or she subscribes to this point of view.”
We invite a range of people on our show, and I always tell myself my opinion doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you over coffee or dinner at my house, but during that hour, my opinion doesn’t matter. My ability to not be afraid to ask tough questions or to confront, that matters.
Tim Carney of Washington Examiner came on your show and alleged that you and other reporters were focusing too much on Mitt Romney’s past, after which you promptly served him for dodging the question he was invited on to address. Considering you started trending on Twitter almost immediately, how do you feel you handled the situation in retrospect? Was there any fallout from the producers?
I received no fallout from it. I handled it, I believe, the best way at that time. I don’t think that I — to use your word — “served” him. I just handled a situation that wasn’t best for my audience and my viewers.
We were having a conversation and I was asking a legitimate question, and I felt at the time that we were cheating the viewer with what was just political gamesmanship. I’m not here to judge anyone’s opinions, but I would like to have a question answered.
So, for me, it was not about admonishing him or creating a moment or trying to be controversial. My job is to ask questions and get to the bottom of the story or the issue at hand, and I felt that we were being unfair to the viewer in having a conversation that was not about the issue at hand.
“Gut Check” and “We Just Thought You Should Know” are popular segments of your show that are built on viewer reaction from Facebook and Twitter. How do you keep the dialogue constructive and positive when the online world breeds trolls?
You don’t. You have no control, which is the genius of it and, I guess, the peril of it as well… It doesn’t always feel good, I don’t always agree, but it’s interesting insight. I’m from a very passionate family — I’m Southern — and we wear our feelings on our sleeves.
You do a lot of apologizing when you grow up in the South, because somebody’s going to blurt something out and then come back and say, “Well, I didn’t mean to say it that way.” But I grew up in a home where we speak our minds and I was always encouraged to say what I felt, even when my parents disagreed.
So, I appreciate it but I don’t like the anonymity. I do wish we knew who we were talking to. I like the rawness; I love the real reaction; I don’t like the anonymity. But, on the counter to that, if people had to identify themselves, would we have that raw reaction?
What’s your ultimate goal? What do you want to do that you haven’t done yet?
I think that’s an impossible question to answer. I’m too young for a bucket list. I’m kind of a hippie — I’m not regimented in the sense of my life. I don’t look at life like a list of goals, and I say that because each and every time in my life I’ve said “I want this” or “this is where I should be,” something else has happened and it’s always been a beautiful experience.
So, I’m not one of these regimented people. I don’t have a resume of what I expect from life. I stop and smell the roses, and if I get pricked by a thorn I just move on to the next flower.
I don’t have an outline of what Tamron should be doing. I just said my name in third person. That’s awful. But, no, I don’t outline life. That’s boring.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
10 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
To folks used to slowly toiling their way up the ladder in the world of magazines, Noah Callahan-Bever may seem to have shot up really quickly to the role of EIC at Marc Ecko’s Complex. But Callahan-Bever has been working at urban music/culture magazines in New York since before he graduated high school, and had plenty of seasoning at Vibe, Mass Appeal, The Source and MTV News on his way up.
Here he talks to mediabistro.com about his career path, where Complex fits in the world of men’s magazines, and his collaboration last year on 50 Cent’s biography.
Name: Noah Callahan-Bever Position: Chief Content Officer and Editor-in-chief, Complex Magazine, as well as Four-Pins, First We Feast, Pigeons & Planes, Sole Collector, Green-Label, Collider. Birthdate: 5/2/79 Hometown: New York City Education: A few years of college at NYU (dropped out) Marital status: Single First section of the Sunday Times: The homepage, though I’ll occasionally buy the print edition if the magazine looks interesting Favorite television show: Seinfeld Guilty pleasure: Will Smith movies Last book read: The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq Twitter handle:@N_C_B
You’re a pretty young guy to be editor-in-chief of a major magazine — tell me a little bit about your career up until now. How did you get started in magazines and what was the draw?
I got started when I was 17. I was a senior in high school and AP classes wrapped up in May, so I had a month of downtime when my school made me find an internship program for the month before graduation.
So, in anticipation of that, I reached out in January to the makers of this small, independent magazine called ego trip — they’re the guys who do Miss Rap Supreme and The White Rapper Show on VH1, and have subsequently stopped doing the magazine — and I became the intern who wouldn’t go home.
Had you always been into writing-related stuff?
Not at all. I was just really into rap music and I really liked comics, and I originally wanted to be a comic-book writer.
But at the time there was a really vibrant independent magazine scene that had cropped up around New York — graffiti, hip-hop and such things — and ego trip was absolutely hilarious — super snarky, very informed and very critical of all kinds of music.
I’d never read a magazine before that dealt with rock and with pop from the perspective of someone who was originally a hip-hop fan, which is where I was coming at it from. I basically just cold-called them and kept leaving messages until they finally called me back.
A lot of the book was a collaborative effort, so here I was at 17, and I got to sit in to watch these guys who are essentially writing most of the cover stories for Vibe and The Source at the time. They had sort of formed this as an outlet because they wanted to write freely about music and not be constrained by the kind of commercial issues that The Source and Vibe had to deal with.
I started out doing this comic strip for the magazine called “Jiggy,” which was a lampoon of “Ziggy,” only putting Ziggy in hip-hop scenarios. Then someone who was supposed to write a Chubb Rock review fell out, and I said “I could write it.”
And then you pretty quickly moved on to Vibe that summer.
After the internship was over, I needed a summer job, and Sasha knew this guy who got promoted to be the research chief there, and he was looking to put together a research department. He said “We’d kind of have to lie about how old you are, but I can put in a good word.” So we sat down and he was cool with it, and was like “Okay, you can be a fact-checker, but as far as the higher-ups are concerned, you’re 20.”
So I fact-checked four issues of Vibe that summer, and in the middle of that I found myself in another situation where a writer bailed on a 400-word thing, and the music editor got informed of this while she was standing at my desk.
By then I was pretty familiar with how raw copy came in, and so I said “I’d like to try.”
And that set your career in motion?
Well, so I went to college and Vibe launched Blaze magazine. The editor-in-chief of it had been the managing editor of Vibe and reached out to me, and I was an editorial assistant the next summer.
And then I was a contracted writer for the rest of Blaze‘s existence — at which point I kind of dropped out of college. I wrote for MTV News for a while and then ended up being editor-in-chief of Mass Appeal.
From there I went back to Vibe as a senior editor, and then came to Complex in 2005 as a deputy, and was promoted a couple of years later.
Clearly Complex is a different kind of men’s magazine from classic titles like Esquire, GQ, Details, etc. — and not just because Marc Ecko is behind it. Who’s your ideal reader and how do you think what you do is different from other men’s titles?
The reason I was drawn to Complex and the reason I think I’ve been successful is that I’m very much making the magazine for people like myself.
My generation of people grew up reading The Source, and XXL, and Big Brother and Thrasher and Skateboard. And as we got into our early 20s, you grow beyond being strictly interested in the niche culture that you were into before.
But there’s no real obvious next step for most of those kids. The aim of Complex to me is to create a magazine that is informed by the sensibilities of these adolescent interests but is also there to open your world up and show you new stuff, and acknowledge that you’re becoming a man.
How do you approach putting together an issue?
We have — out of seven issues a year — three or four with themes. With something like “Style and Design,” it’s such a lynchpin for [the magazine’s] culture because Complex‘s aesthetic is so heavily influenced by the worlds of graphic design, graffiti, and the styling of products.
We make that one of our fattest issues of the year, and it’s also a good opportunity to put a stake in the ground for something that’s so uniquely us. But sometimes, for instance, there’s something like nine comic book movies coming out this summer, and we’ll do a package around that.
Then it’s all about what my design director Tim, who is a comic book enthusiast, thinks about it. Or Bradley, my lifestyle editor, who is an authority in sneakers and sneaker culture. Or my senior staff writer Justin, who has a voracious appetite for movies and Hollywood stuff.
Every person on the staff has a very specific world that they are the master and commander of — and so whenever we turn our attention to that thing we have this incredibly informed person with an incredible voice who can give their spin on it and can tell you how these things can be interesting to the very informed person.
If we write about Lil Wayne, we want to write about him to open him up to a reader who doesn’t necessarily know rap that well. But then we’ll have an interview that’s more hard-hitting that most of the music mags that cover him.
What’s the deal with the double-cover? Seems like it would be expensive to do two cover shoots every time you put out an issue.
It is, but we’re seven times a year, so it’s no more costly [than it would be for a monthly]. The magazine started with two covers from the first issue, and it was heavily influenced by Japanese sneaker magazines that influenced the design of Lucky — and they often have two covers.
And if you look at what kinds of covers sell magazines for young men, it’s sexy-looking girls and male celebrities who say bombastic, outrageous things — particularly rappers, but occasionally certain very compelling Hollywood people.
When Marc [Ecko] and the original team were coming up with it, they figured that if they could do two covers they could get the best of both worlds. And there have been times when we’ve nailed that incredibly well, with a girl who is really hot, and someone like Lil Wayne saying “Fuck Jay-Z.”
It also serves to break apart the two sections of the magazine and show that what we’re doing has two very distinct parts that offer different experiences.
With Complex so involved with niche culture, do you think it would ruin things if you got too big, effectively making your “niches” mainstream?
Our intention was never sort of to make the most mainstream magazine. The beauty is the cross-pollination we get between the niche cultures — if you look at what’s going on in mainstream culture, it’s the niche cultures that are driving everything.
So in a certain way, I do feel like we have slightly limited ambition, but what we are trying to do is create real, lasting relationships with our readers. If you go super-pop and mainstream, you’re not making the same connections with consumers as you are when you’re doing something that’s a little bit more grounded and niche.
I want the [consumer’s] experience to be something like “Hey, me and my friends know about a lot of cool shit, that you’ll probably be into too — come hang out with us for two hours.”
I want to be super-credible about the stuff we talk about, but also inclusive, and make it accessible for people that might not be hip to all of it.
You co-authored a biography of 50 Cent. Tell me about that.
He was incredibly forthcoming.
That basically just came together because I had done one the first interviews with him for Blaze in 1998, and I interviewed him about 15 times subsequently. I know him fairly well. So when the book project came up, he had his book company reach out to me.
We sat down over the next six months and did a bunch of interviews, and I whipped it up into one cohesive narrative.
What’s your position on boss Marc Ecko putting an asterisk on Barry Bonds’ home run ball? For or against?
I think baseball is a dreadfully boring sport to watch unless you’re in person, so I don’t really care.
But I think it was really cool that Marc did that — it created a really interesting dialogue.
How involved is he in the day-to-day running of the magazine?
In a lot of ways, I think the magazine is an expression of the aesthetic that he established 15 years ago with the clothing brand. On the day-to-day, he and I sit and chat about pop culture and what’s going on in the world.
I keep him informed of what we’re doing, but he’s not particularly involved on the day-to-day pages and what we do with celebrities.
I’ll bounce ideas off of him because he’s smart as shit, and can often act as a catalyst in my thinking about something. And sometimes he’ll present me with a challenge like “I want you to figure out how to do a green issue that is responsible and forces our consumers to think of the environment — but do it in a credible way, because we are, after all a magazine of consumption.” But he was very hands-off about it.
It’s just like “Here’s your challenge, go to it.”
Tell me a little about what Complex is doing on the Web.
Everywhere else that I’ve worked, the Web has been kind of an afterthought, run by a B-team, kind of a footnote on the brand. We’re looking at it in a much more pro-active way, almost in a New York Times model where it’s like the Web site is the daily paper and the magazine is like the New York Times magazine.
All my editors are producing daily content for the Web, whether it be for the blogs or features, and the art and photo departments are always doing the direction on both.
As a bi-monthly, sometimes it just seems like ages between issues, and this is an opportunity for us to have this daily interaction with our consumers. It’s exciting because I feel like it’s a challenge to me and my staff to find new ways to think about our content and to tell the same stories in different ways.
I’ve got seasoned features editors who are fumbling around trying to do video, and for them it’s awesome — it’s like “I haven’t used my brain this actively in years.” They’re trying to figure out how to produce a video shoot and edit it, and tell the same story that’s going to be on the cover of the next issue — but in video.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Janelle Harris is a multimedia producer, director, and founder of Harris Two Productions with decades of experience in non-fiction storytelling for networks including Bravo, Discovery, and A&E. A Howard University graduate, she specializes in amplifying diverse voices across television, film, and digital media.
8 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Janelle Harris is a multimedia producer, director, and founder of Harris Two Productions with decades of experience in non-fiction storytelling for networks including Bravo, Discovery, and A&E. A Howard University graduate, she specializes in amplifying diverse voices across television, film, and digital media.
8 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Most writers’ love affairs with words usually begin with a pivotal book or a poem, maybe even an especially moving piece in Highlights. Denene Millner‘s blossomed reading the lyrics on the back of a Stevie Wonder album cover when she was a kid. “I don’t remember thinking I could write something like that. I just remember falling in love with the words. What nine-year-old does that?” she told us with a laugh.
Funny as it may seem now, it’s a good thing she did. An award-winning journalist and the author of 21 books and counting, Millner has married her interests in African-Americana, politics and entertainment with her natural curiosity as a journalist. Her latest project: ghostwriting a memoir on a famous black opera singer.
Here, the media triple threat talks about writing for celebs, becoming your own brand and building a business out of necessity.
Name: Denene Millner Position: Journalist, author, ghostwriter, columnist and founder of mybrownbaby.com Resume: Recruited by The Associated Press straight out of college, working as a political reporter in New York and New Jersey. Transitioned to entertainment and political reporter at the New York Daily News. Held executive and features editor positions at Honey before becoming editor at Parenting. Founded mybrownbaby.com, which was named one of Babble.com’s Top 100 Mom Blogs of 2011. Author of 21 books, including ghostwriting Steve Harvey’s New York Times-bestseller Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man and My Brother Charlie with Holly Robinson Peete. Birthdate: October 21, 1968 Hometown: Bay Shore, Long Island Education: B.A. in communications from Hofstra University Marital status: Married to fellow journalist Nick Chiles Media idols: Melissa Harris-Perry and Rachel Maddow Favorite TV shows: Scandal and Melissa Harris-Perry. “And, I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but I really dig Black Ink on VH1.” Guilty pleasure: Reality TV Last book read: And So I Sing by Rosalyn Story and My Lord, What a Morning, the autobiography of Marian Anderson Twitter handle: @mybrownbaby
Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man was a huge success for Steve Harvey. How does ghostwriting or co-authoring a bestselling book of that magnitude help your career if your name isn’t the headliner?
It opened doors for me for other projects, because when other celebrities are considering who should write their book, they’re going to see my representation and my reputation as a writer. You know, New York Times-bestselling writer and top-selling book of 2009 is a hell of a calling card.
In some other ghostwriting projects, my name hasn’t even been on the spine or the title page, but I try my best to negotiate that so that somebody knows I wrote it besides my family. It opens a lot of doors for more work, which is kind of awesome.
It’s all any writer can ask.
What’s the difference between ghostwriting and co-authoring and how did you make such lucrative connections?
Ghostwriting means that a celebrity approaches you and you work with them, sort of dig into their mind about what they want to deliver in book form, and then you’re responsible for writing it.
So I’ll interview the person, get as much information as I can out of them, do research and then write the project, but the other person’s name is on the book, and there’s no indication whatsoever that I wrote it. You might be able to find my name in the acknowledgements if that’s been negotiated in the contract and they lived up to it.
I’ve had a couple of projects where they were supposed to acknowledge me and it didn’t happen, and there’s really nothing you can do because the book’s already been published.
A co-author is someone whose name is included in the book. You do know that that person helped the author to write the book, and so in that instance my name is either on the cover, on the spine, on the title page or in the acknowledgements.
My first co-writing project was a children’s book. I was approached by an editor with whom I’ve worked before. She knew my reputation and my ability to get things done and asked me if I’d be interested in writing a book. I said, “Of course.” That was a ghostwriting project that opened the door for me to do a second book, a co-writing project, with Holly Robinson Peete.
The Steve Harvey co-author partnership came from another editor that I worked for. She was familiar with my work, and they were looking for an Atlanta-based writer to work with him. It needed to be a quick turnaround. We had six weeks to get it done, and I was here in Atlanta. I got asked to go in and speak with him and we hit it off. I got hired to write his book.
That’s basically how it works.
I have the best agent on the planet, Victoria Sanders, who is an expert at pairing me with great celebrities who are looking for projects.
You seem to have the cooperative writing thing down pat. What are some elements to working closely on a writing project with the least amount of drama or creative conflict?
[Laughs] I don’t know what that looks like.
It’s really crucial that the person who’s writing the book trusts me. It’s extremely difficult to walk into a project with someone who doesn’t trust that you can deliver.
There’s nothing worse than working with someone who doesn’t trust you to do your job. And that’s whatever you’re doing. You could be bagging groceries at Kroger. If someone doesn’t trust you not to put the eggs underneath the milk, they’re going to give you a hard time for it.
I also need my co-author to understand and respect the schedule. The one thing I’m a stickler for is deadlines: a) because I get hired because I respect deadlines and b) because I need to finish this project, because I may have two more lined up. So I need to stick to my own deadlines for my edification, for my own work, so my family can eat and I can keep my paychecks coming.
Those two are my biggest things.
What changed about your career once you wrote your first book? How did it use your talent differently than journalism did?
I published my first book in 1997. It was a total fluke. The book was called The Sistahs’ Rules. It was sort of the African-American answer to this book called The Rules.
It was a relationship book by these two women who were on Oprah like every other week, it seemed, and talked about how to go back to Old School Relationship 101 where you bash a guy over his head and convince him that he should marry you by playing all of these little, silly games.
I wrote a feature story for the Daily News about how “the rules” would never work for black women, because black men would never go for them. My editor and the graphic designer created this mock book for the illustration and it said Rules for the Sisters: Can Black Women Find True Love? by Denene Millner.
I got a call from an agent the day that it appeared in the newspaper asking me if I would do the black version of The Rules, and I had a book deal by like, 3:00 that afternoon and permission from Pete Hamill, my editor at the time, to take a month off to “write the hell out of that book.”
MyBrownBaby.com has grown by leaps and bounds since it launched. Why was it important to create an online space specifically for African-American mothers?
My last job inside of an office was working at Parenting. I loved what the magazine did, but I just found that the brand didn’t necessarily speak to black mothers.
When I moved to Atlanta, they gave me a column called “Reality Check,” and every month I would give advice on parenting ethics and etiquette. But during the 2008 election, there was a conversation about Bristol Palin, and I just remember getting the impression from newspapers and websites that we weren’t supposed to talk about her decision to have a baby or her getting pregnant.
I just felt like, you know what? This is not the conversation that my black mom friends and I are having. As a matter of fact, we’re all walking around saying if that was Sasha or Malia who wound up knocked up during the presidential election, they would’ve buried Obama under the bus, under the White House, and the whole discussion would’ve been about the irresponsibility of black women, teenagers, the high rate of single motherhood in our communities.
It would’ve been about irresponsibility or our aversion to protection.
So I said, “Since nobody else is going to say it, I’ll go on ahead and say it. I wrote something basically to that effect and emailed it to all of my friends and said, “I managed to set up a blog on Blogger. You need to read it and leave comments.” It felt good to me.
I got to write from a very specific black mom perspective in a way that you won’t find anywhere else. It was a huge hit right off of the bat, because nobody was talking about what it means to raise black children in America and what it means to constantly be thrown under the bus when we’re talking about black mothers but never being invited to the conversation.
You’re also a social media strategist. How did you market your unique understanding of African-American moms to create those opportunities?
If you want to talk to black moms, My Brown Baby is where you’re going to find that audience.
I did a campaign last year with Goodnights, which is a brand of nighttime training pants. If you’re looking to speak to African-American mothers about teaching their children not to go to the bathroom in their bed, this is where you’ll find them.
So the partnerships are obvious, but they’re not easy to get. There are still those companies that think if they just work with the larger, white bloggers that they’re going to kind of hit some black folks.
And of course, they do, because just because you’re an African-American mom doesn’t mean you’re not going to read a Babble.com or Parents.com or a Parenting.com. But you might not read it as religiously as you would a MyBrownBaby.com, because you know that you’re going to get a very specific, Afrocentric perspective.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Andrea Williams is an author, journalist, and columnist for The Tennessean with over 16 years of experience in journalism and 20 years in copywriting and communications strategy. Her work spans national outlets and high-traffic digital brands.
7 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Andrea Williams is an author, journalist, and columnist for The Tennessean with over 16 years of experience in journalism and 20 years in copywriting and communications strategy. Her work spans national outlets and high-traffic digital brands.
7 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
According to a slew of media reports detailing how the economic crisis has disproportionately affected millennials, most 20-somethings are unemployed or underemployed and bunking on their parents’ sofa, eating Frosted Flakes for dinner and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. Except for Kara Taylor, that is.
At just 25, Taylor is riding high on the success of her young-adult thriller series: Prep School Confidential. Oh, and she recently snagged writer and co-executive producer credits on The Revengers, a new TV pilot created by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and ordered by the CW network.
The temptation to call Taylor an overnight success or credit her good fortune to a well-connected relative in the industry is understandable. But make no mistake, haters: Taylor’s been hustling hard for years.
With Prep School Confidential, your first novel, tell me about the process from completed manuscript to published book. How did you find your agent? How long did it take to sell the book?
So I’ve obviously been writing most of my life, but I finished my first book my freshman year of college.
And I started to read up on the publishing industry [and] how to find an agent. And that book, it was just the cliché, terrible first book. So I eventually set that one aside, and my sophomore year of college I wrote another book. It was a young adult, contemporary novel, and it took me about six months to find an agent.
I did a major revision for the agent I signed with, who’s my agent now, and that book actually spent over a year on submission and it never sold. And during that time I wrote Prep School Confidential, which is the book that eventually sold.
So it was about two years, three completed manuscripts, and it was one book that eventually sold.
Did you always plan to pursue a traditional publishing deal, or did you ever consider self-publishing?
My goal was always just to find an agent and sign with a big publisher because back when I started writing, self-publishing wasn’t this phenomenon that it is now.
It still had the connotation that it was this vanity thing, where you pay somebody to publish your book. So I’d always had it in my mind that I was going to find an agent and find a publisher.
Around the time that I found my agent, self-publishing really had this upswing, and it was like this eBook revolution. [But] I never really considered it because, at that point, I’d worked so hard to find my agent and she’d worked so hard shaping the manuscript with me that we both just wanted to see it land with a traditional publisher.
Speaking of eBooks, you came into the publishing industry fairly recently, in the midst of all of the changes on the digital landscape. How has that affected your approach to your career?
I know with a lot of the [YA] authors, the pressure to churn out a book every year is enormous, and that’s why a lot of authors have turned to releasing short, eBook novellas in between their books.
My publisher is a little different. [At] St. Martin’s Griffin, their trade paperbacks, which Prep School Confidential is, come out every six to eight months, so the second book in the series is actually going to be out in March [2014].
So they stick with that model, and they really haven’t experimented a lot with the short eBooks. It’s not something that I’ve considered for this series, but I do know that to have longevity as a writer, if you’re not doing a book a year, it’s hard to stay in the game.
I know a lot of people are doing these serialized novels in eBook form, so that’s something that I’d definitely like to dabble in, especially since I write for TV, too. Episodic writing comes naturally to me.
OK, let’s talk about the TV writing. How did you land the writing position with the CW’s The Revengers?
My publisher [has] a new division called Macmillan films, [and] my editor, Brendan Deneen, has worked with the Weinstein Company in the past, so he has a lot of experience being a film rights agent. So the projects that he takes on at Macmillan are really focused on things that would translate well to film.
Prep School Confidential, once it was a finished manuscript, before it was even published, was making its way around the Hollywood circuit to producers and talent agents.
And it actually fell in the hands of Dan Dubiecki, who produced Juno and Up in the Air, and he just loved it so much that he called my editor and asked if I would be open to talking to him about other projects because he thought that my voice is really suited for television.
So I had a conversation with Dan, and I went out to California to meet him. I met some film agents; I wound up signing with United Talent Agency, and I had a general meeting with Warner Bros. Television.
They offered me a blind deal, which is basically a script commitment. So I had to write a script for them for this TV development season. I talked to a bunch of producers for a bunch of ideas that Warner Bros. had in house, and one day I got a call, “Hey, would you like to talk to Rashida Jones and Will McCormack? They have a new production deal at Warner Bros. Television. They wrote [the film] Celeste and Jesse Forever together, and now they’re trying to branch out to TV.”
I was like, ‘Of course I want to talk to Rashida Jones!’ So over about three or four months, I worked with Rashida and Will and a bunch of producers, and we came up with a pitch for [the show] and it wound up at the CW. And now I’m writing the pilot for this development season, and we’ll see if it gets picked up in January.
What tips do you have for other writers who want to break into TV?
I think the most important thing, and this is hard advice because it’s not something that you can really learn, [is to] just have a voice and a point of view and focus on branding yourself, whether it’s [with] humor or whatever.
Just be unique and be yourself, and write as much as you can.
I obviously broke into it in a strange way because it was actually the novel writing that helped me break into TV. So I think it’s good to keep in mind that there’s not one clear path or way to break into the industry. You have to put yourself out there in all mediums and all aspects and not write anything off, and [don’t] get discouraged, obviously.
I was writing books for two years before I found an agent, and I heard a lot of nos. I must have been rejected by over a hundred literary agents with my first book. So if you’re expecting instant results, it’s not going to be the career for you.
You just have to be patient and be in it for the long run.
So what is a typical writing day like for you? How do you balance TV and your books?
Well, I wake up around 8, and the first thing I have to do is answer all of my emails. I make sure to set aside a certain amount of time for the things like answering emails from readers, but I try not to get too bogged down by that.
And I’ll spend the first half of my morning working on book stuff because it’s early and the California people haven’t woken up yet. So I’ll work on the books until lunchtime, and I take a break.
And that’s normally when the TV people start their day, and if I’m waiting on notes from them, they’ll probably contact me in the afternoon. Sometimes I actually have to work until 10 [p.m.] my time because in the TV industry, they work till 7:30, 8 at night sometimes, just to churn out things, especially during development season.
So I have to be careful how I split up my day because it’s obviously hard to work on two things at once, a book or a TV show. I usually reserve the morning for books and night for TV.
Where do you see your career in the next five or ten years?
I would love to be writing for TV full time. I mean, as much as I love writing the novels, right now, the book series is a full-time job in itself.
I’d like to gradually transition to TV and then five, 10 years from now, go back and write the book I’ve always wanted to write—at my own pace, not under contract, not with any deadlines—and maybe see that go out into the world at the same time as I’m working on my TV show. In five years, I’d obviously love to be working on The Revengers still, if everything works out and it gets picked up.
But if not, I have a lot of other ideas for TV.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Valerie Berrios is a published author and senior content manager with nearly two decades of experience in digital publishing, including roles at Audible, Disney Streaming, Everyday Health, and Mediabistro. She specializes in content strategy, editorial operations, and international content launches.
8 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Valerie Berrios is a published author and senior content manager with nearly two decades of experience in digital publishing, including roles at Audible, Disney Streaming, Everyday Health, and Mediabistro. She specializes in content strategy, editorial operations, and international content launches.
8 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Between the two of them, Melissa Musen Gerstein and Denise Albert have racked up quite impressive credits as television producers for such highly rated shows as Good Morning America and Anderson Cooper 360.
But after they became mothers, each had a yearning to branch off and start her own company. The result was what is now The Moms lifestyle brand, based on encouraging honest and sometimes-controversial conversations about parenting.
Gerstein and Albert started the Carrie Bradshaw way in October 2009 with a newspaper column called Moms in the City. A year later, thanks to a grassroots email campaign and their TV connections that helped them nab interviews with celebrity parents, they got booked on local news programs and eventually landed a TV show on NBC. These days, Gerstein and Albert have a weekly “MOMmentary” show on Sirius XM Radio; they host star-studded Mamarazzi events and Fashion Week shows, with “real women” walking the runway; and in October 2013 even debuted their own handbag line.
Here’s how these hard-working mamas did it.
How did each of you get started in the TV business?
Albert: My background in television began when I was 14. I actually started interning at MTV and at NBC Sports. And then I went to Boston University, and I worked my way through college at WBZ and another local station. My first job after college was with Inside Edition. I started there as a story coordinator, which is basically a booker, learning the ins and outs of the business.
I had worked my way up to a producer, and also, I did some on-air reports for them. And then I left and went to be a reporter for a television show called New York Central. I was also a feature reporter for the NBA. [Then] I went to Good Morning America as producer, which was awesome. [Around this time] is when I met Melissa.
I stayed at Good Morning America for about four years, and then I left after I had my first son and I went to run David Blaine’s company, so I produced his ABC television specials and ran his company.
Gerstein: I started really in television when I got my SAG card. I was at the University of Arizona on a dance scholarship and, just through the performing arts, wound up in TV. And then I moved to New York and got an internship at MTV while I was at NYU.
My first job out of college was working for the Weinsteins as an assistant, and I realized I loved production. I ended up working in film as an assistant and then moved to theater and worked for the Weisslers during Chicago on Broadway, and then moved to the CBS Weekend News as an assistant producer.
I segued to MSNBC as a breaking-news producer. And then I moved to Toronto and launched and produced Canadian Idol, which was an amazing experience. [My family and I] moved back to New York and I produced for various shows at CNN, [working with] Anderson Cooper, Aaron Brown, Paula Zahn.
And then I wound up at CNBC on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, which really inspired me personally to have my own big idea and led me to Denise Albert and to the birth of our company, The Moms.
And so how did the two of you team up?
Albert: Well, as Melissa said, she was booking entrepreneurs on the Donny Deutsch show. I was at Good Morning America. I was pregnant with my first child, and I felt like there was conversation missing in the parenting world.
I wanted to have very smart conversations, and not talk about being pregnant, and not necessarily talk about how many diapers or poops or bottles my kid was going to have during the day. And so I had this idea to really do what I know and love, which is television and journalism, but in the parenting space.
Melissa and I were connected through another person and we were told, ‘Oh, you guys have the same idea.’ And so that’s how we originally began as Moms in the City. We wanted something where we could have this parenting conversation in a forum that we knew: television. And so we knew also, as television producers, that we should start in print. We got a column in a newspaper called Metro US.
Gerstein: We wrote very like Sex and the City. We also thought, ‘Wow, that column was so successful, let’s launch Moms in the City in print,’ and so, basically, we would write a very bold, provocative column about parenting, and then we would interview a celebrity mom based on that topic, which obviously generated a lot of attention and traction.
And then we started getting booked on local television shows to talk about our columns, and also topical news that affected parents, whether it was how to discuss the images coming out of Haiti with your kids [or] the homeless problem on the streets.
And after our fourth appearance on WNBC, we got offered a TV show, actually a pilot, which then got picked up on a channel called NBC Nonstop, which ran in ten markets across the country.
Albert: This was a calculated plan on our part.
It’s not just that we got a television show. We started an email blast. This was all part of our nontraditional business plan, because we didn’t really have one. What Melissa and I knew was how to create buzz, and we knew if we could create buzz, we could get that end result that we were looking for.
So we emailed everyone in the country that we knew to say, ‘Hey, we’re doing this column. You should know about it.’ And that’s when we really started getting booked on the shows. But at the same time, it was when we got the television show that it worked out that NBC had a deal with taxis, so they pushed our content out [via backseat TVs].
And that was really how we got our start with this company.
Tell me about your Mamarazzi events.
Gerstein: So there was a segment on our television show called Mamarazzi where we interviewed celebrity moms and dads, wherever we could get them, when they were in New York City promoting [projects]. After I interviewed Sarah Jessica Parker for a film called I Don’t Know How She Does It, based on the working mom’s life and all of her struggles, [we] were engrossed in a conversation.
I have three kids, she has three kids, and we realized there’s a bigger conversation to be had here. We put together, in two weeks, the first-ever working moms’ town hall, which we decided was a Mamarazzi event. And we aggregated mom bloggers and press to screen the film, and then Denise and I moderated a Q&A with Sarah Jessica after the film.
And then we realized, ‘Well, this is pretty cool, we can monetize this. Let’s get a brand involved that wants to reach our core demo of moms, and also get traditional media and social-media exposure.’ And now we have hosted over 50 Mamarazzi live town hall events.
Albert: And what these Mamarazzi events are doing is giving moms access to celebrities, and we’re giving brands access to moms. So we’re bringing moms, influencers, celebrities and brands all together for one purpose, which is really the parenting conversation.
That’s what this is all about.
Let’s talk about your latest venture.
Gerstein: We just signed a deal with SiriusXM Radio for our annual radio show that airs weekly, called The Moms with Denise and Melissa.
I would say, for me personally, the greatest thing about the SiriusXM Radio show is the immediate feedback. It’s that direct contact with that caller. And I’ve always said that there is no mom manual out there.
So when we have this platform; you know, they have 55 million subscribers, and to be able to reach moms all across the country, who have various jobs, children of various ages, and to come together and have this medium, it’s amazing.
Albert: And I want to just add one thing that I think separates everything that we’re doing from some other things out in the media today.
I think we’ve sort of lived the last ten years in a reality show world. But what’s important for us is that Melissa and I have both worked so hard as television producers and journalists, and to be able to continue to do that in the way that we have is really what our goal was.
I mean I remember when I was leaving to go on maternity leave and somebody said to me, ‘Are you going to continue working?’ and it was: to me, like how could you even ask me that question?
I’ve worked so hard, and I’m having a baby, like why can’t I continue working? It was very important for us to create a business and to really be seen as businesswomen, and as journalists and as producers.
And we have been able to do that without doing a reality show.
Tips from The Moms on starting your own multi-platform brand:
1. Never take no for an answer. “People will tell you, ‘You should do this, you shouldn’t do that…'” says Gerstein. “You really need to stick with your gut. My grandfather, my father, they have always said if you don’t love what you do, you will not be successful.”
2. Choose a partner in crime. Explains Gerstein: “Because you will have ups and downs, and that business partner is so crucial for your spirit, for your business, and Denise is in it to win it with me.”
3. Just go for it. “To me, anything is possible,” says Albert.
4. Stay on message. “Do not get off of that track,” says Gerstein. “Stay on the original plan. Consistency is key.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Valerie Berrios is a published author and senior content manager with nearly two decades of experience in digital publishing, including roles at Audible, Disney Streaming, Everyday Health, and Mediabistro. She specializes in content strategy, editorial operations, and international content launches.
7 min read • Originally published October 27, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Valerie Berrios is a published author and senior content manager with nearly two decades of experience in digital publishing, including roles at Audible, Disney Streaming, Everyday Health, and Mediabistro. She specializes in content strategy, editorial operations, and international content launches.
7 min read • Originally published October 27, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Earlier this year, Modern Luxury, the largest publisher of luxury regional magazines in the United States, welcomed Marcy Bloom as its new senior VP and group publisher. Bloom is a publishing veteran who worked her way up the ranks at Condé Nast and while at the helm of Lucky magazine became the media giant’s youngest publisher.
After briefly leaving the magazine biz to volunteer for Orphan Aid in Ghana and become a certified yoga instructor, Bloom was lured back to publishing when given the opportunity to help with the national expansion of the Modern Luxury properties. In the new role, Bloom has reteamed with Michael Wolfe, the newly anointed publisher of national sales, with whom she’d worked at GQ. Here, Bloom talks about her career and how she and Wolfe plan to take Modern Luxury to the next level.
Position: Senior VP and group publisher of Modern Luxury Resume: Began her publishing career as a sales assistant at Condé Nast’s Self magazine. Launched All About You magazine at Petersen Publishing. Served as Midwest director at Time Inc.’s Teen People. Returned to Condé Nast as associate publisher of GQ, where she led the launch of the magazine’s first-ever digital edition. Promoted to VP and publisher of Lucky. In February 2014, appointed senior VP and group publisher of Modern Luxury magazines. Birthday: March 25 Hometown: Dix Hills, New York Education: University of Maryland at College Park; University of Platteville in Seville, Spain; certified yoga instructor Marital status: Single Media mentors: Peter Hunsinger (“He was my publisher at GQ for eight years. Not only is he an unbelievable mentor and teacher and boss, but I’ve learned so many valuable life lessons from him.”) and Roger Farah, former vice chairman/CEO of Ralph Lauren (“I told him that I was going to leave my job at Lucky basically before anyone else, and he could not have been more supportive.”). Best career advice received: “Hire people that are smarter than you and do things that you don’t, and then let them do their thing.” Guilty pleasures: karaoke, ’80s music, and movies like Clueless and True Romance. Last book read:Lead with a Story by Paul Smith Twitter handle:@MRBloom25
How did you end up working in publishing?
Well, I graduated with a communications degree, but I was all about surrounding myself with people that inspired me, and a woman, a family friend, was a publisher of five regional magazines. She mentored me in high school and college. And so learning from her, that’s just where I went naturally.
You eventually became Condé Nast’s youngest publisher (at age 36) while at Lucky. How do you think you got to that top spot so early in your career?
One [reason was] putting a lot of pressure on myself. [Having] a lot of amazing mentors, and quite frankly, Condé was such a great experience for me. We loved what we were doing at GQ. I learned a ton from the brand and my bosses there. And when you’re loving what you’re doing it’s easy to grow and work hard, and so with a lot of support from my management and the corporate management—they really put me [in that position at Lucky]. I think if you work hard and your intentions are great and you know what you’re looking to accomplish, people respond. I believe that.
Tell me about the hiatus you took from publishing after Lucky to do volunteer work.
It was great. I took a year off, actually 13 months. I just felt that I needed a fresh perspective. I’d been doing the same thing, for the most part, for so long and I lost my love for it, and I wanted to see a little bit outside of the world I lived in. So I made plans to go to Ghana to work in an orphanage. I planned on it being a short time off and when I got back from Ghana, I really got inspired by what I wanted to do next, [but] I didn’t know what that was.
I was trying a bunch of different things. And I became a certified yoga instructor. I worked with two dear friends on their startups, so I was getting the opportunity to dabble in different businesses. And I loved it. And then, you know, reality comes back and you say, ‘Okay, you’ve got to get a regular working schedule now.’
You’ve been in magazine advertising for a while, so how do you think it’s changed with the arrival of digital media?
Such a good question. You know, I believe that one of the key things that digital has done is it’s allowed you to be more targeted. And that is from a national magazine perspective, which is where I spent 17 years, you can’t get as close as you can in a digital sense. And that’s actually why I’m beyond inspired by what we’re doing here [at Modern Luxury] because we have a closeness and an intimacy. We have editors, sales staff and marketers in each market. Our brands reflect those markets. So we’re getting as close as you can via print, and that feels extremely relevant, especially because of what digital can offer.
How do you create a national advertising platform for a company that’s comprised of very niche, regional publications?
First and foremost, [it’s about] organizing, hiring and really making clear our mission, our program. Modern Luxury has basically been built by and from several different brands, so the national story is just now being told because we really have scale now. So step one for Michael [Wolfe] and for me is to simplify and organize our messaging to the advertising and marketing community based on what we know about our consumers and what they love and get from Modern Luxury. We have so much content on the local level, and so many editors, that we are harnessing all this information to be able to create a powerhouse brand.
And what’s interesting is that our national editorial director and our national creative and fashion directors, they look at the brand from one lens, and then each editor-in-chief, with the knowledge of their market, they get to look at it from that lens. So the direction is set from a national perspective. For example, Macy’s pioneered with the concept of ‘My Macy’s.’ They shifted their whole strategy to ‘your stores,’ the store you go to, wherever you are, in New York or in Atlanta. That product reflects the sensibility of the people in it.
So you walk into your Macy’s and you say, ‘This is for me.’ I look at our media content the exact same way. And that’s what we’re talking to clients about: we’re able to get closer because we’re actually speaking to you where it’s most important, which is your restaurant, your home, your neighborhood, your luxury. And because we have so much staff and so many editors, we actually can credit national fashion stories in Chicago, in Atlanta, in Dallas, in Houston. And that is a gift to the consumer, and then clearly to the advertiser.
What initiatives are you working on now for Modern Luxury?
We just finished conducting a research study that looked at our top 15 markets, the habits of the affluent and the luxury consumer and what drives them to do things. And the biggest driver is philanthropy. So that’s one thing we’re working on. Because our November issue is our philanthropy issue, in every market, we have built and are going to roll out shortly a philanthropy program surrounding what we’ve learned.
Really the concept is, how do we celebrate local charities and give them national voices? We want to create a large network of small regional-based charities and launch them into being bigger brands, and tying in clients where we can. [The goal is to] become, to the consumer and to our reader, a place to go to help strengthen and grow an important issue or important initiative in their city.
What words of advice do you have to people just starting out in their careers?
I think you have to trust your instincts. Say when you’re on an interview, you have to stay true to yourself. You have to be balanced in everything you do. And if you bring passion to it, then you’re golden. I believe if you stay true to who you are, then you show confidence. And people want to work around confident people and you add value when you are.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
3 min read • Originally published October 27, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
The 3 Percent Conference has a new plan for promoting gender equality at America’s advertising agencies: It’s introducing a certification program. The advocacy group announced the initiative at its New York conference today, equipped with data from a study that details what 328 women working in agencies really want.
The seal of approval—introduced by twtw Companies president Erin Carpenter and Accelerating Women founder and CEOLisen Stromberg—is called “3 Percent Certified.” The program will certify agencies that not only set out to promote equality, but make real changes to their organization along the way.
“We are going to go out and talk to the talent, find out what the talent is experiencing, look at the individual agency’s programs, cultures and community and go beyond that to see what’s the benchmark, not just in the industry but outside the industry,” Stromberg said. “You can find out, how is your agency doing and what can your agency do to make changes?”
When an agency applies for certification, an independent auditing committee will collect information on salaries, the breakdown of men and women in leadership positions, and more. Then, the group will suggest benchmarks along with ways to reach a more balanced agency. If the shop can successfully hit those goals, it will be certified.
“We’re not going to be unrealistic and say to an agency that’s 8 percent women to be 50 percent in a year, but we will have reasonable, attainable goals that will move that needle,” Carpenter said.
“By earning that [certification], you’re sending the message out that says, ‘Hey, this is an agency that really honors and respects diversity, honors and respects respects women,’ and that is a talent-acquisition tool like there is none,” Stromberg added.
While 3 Percent Conference founder Kat Gordon had the idea awhile ago, Carpenter said the organization had to prove that placing more women in leadership roles leads to happier employees and better work cultures. Once the study on what ad women want was complete, it provided the necessary data to kick the certification program off.
The 3 Percent Conference study showed that while 56 percent of women reported they were making an adequate salary ($100,000 a year or more) and 78 percent stated they were satisfied with their current roles, 30 percent have no female leaders to look up to. An additional 60 percent reported that their agency was below the new standard of 11 percent of females holding creative director roles.
At agencies where women make up at least a quarter of the creative leadership, women reported higher levels of job satisfaction, better pay and fewer instances of discrimination than other agencies. For instance, 64 percent said they earn over $100,000, compared with 54 percent of their counterparts at more male-dominated agencies.
“Integration of data and the importance of having analytics to drive what we are talking about just became much more important. It became less abstract and more concrete. We were able to track what happens when the leadership ratio goes up a bit, and we’re seeing a real impact,” Carpenter said.
This article was originally published on Adweek.com on Oct. 26, 2015.
Gabriel Beltrone is a freelance writer based in New York City.
16 min read • Originally published November 6, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
A career in advertising can be a notorious slog, especially at the beginning. Working grueling hours on dog’s-breakfast accounts, watching 99 percent of your ideas—often the best ones—die on the vine, then swallowing your rage when clients insist on mangling the few gems that actually survived the meeting. But for the creatives who have the talent and ambition—or maybe just the stomach—to stick it out for long enough, there can also be great opportunities, running campaigns for brands that are big enough, and brave enough, to influence pop culture, maybe even make the world a better place. Here, a handful of jobs a driven young creative might wish he or she could someday have, and how the people who actually got them did it.
Ryan O’Rourke
As a kid, Ryan O’Rourke would draw his own ads for California Raisins and Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory while watching Saturday morning cartoons. Fast-forward to 2003, when, following stints at TBWA\Chiat\Day and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, he landed at Wieden + Kennedy as an art director on Nike. He was the most junior creative in the department. “At the time, it felt like Murderers’ Row to me,” he recalls. “Everyone was so advanced.” He worked on the NFL piece of the business for some eight years, during which time he rose to a senior creative position and took on other categories for Nike before being named global creative director in 2010. Along with partner Alberto Ponte, O’Rourke oversees all global creative work on the Nike brand within the W+K network, from Portland, Ore., to Amsterdam, Tokyo, Sao Pãolo and beyond. He is particularly proud of the NFL “Fate” ad from 2008 and the Olympics “Jogger” spot from 2012. O’Rourke’s most recent work: “Last,” a fun follow-up to the 2012 ad, this time featuring a low-key athlete trying to make it through a marathon.
Schooling: Penn State, for advertising and graphic design
How He Keeps Nike Fresh: “There’s a huge advantage to working on sports. Even if your brief doesn’t change from year to year, the athletes and the situations in sports often do. So, the real world is constantly refreshing you and bringing new emotion to the brand.”
Key Advice for Young Creatives: “You don’t need to wait for permission to be creative and share your work. And if you are at an agency that respects creative ideas, they will welcome those ideas coming from anywhere. [Also,] don’t try to create work that you think the agency will buy. Create the kind of work that you really want to make. The more personal you can make your work in the beginning, the more quickly you find a creative director who shares your interests and tastes and will help you grow.”
From left: Peter Kain and Gianfranco Arena
Everyone knows being hungry means being cranky, too. Snickers has built an iconic slogan on that simple truth. It started in 2009, when Gianfranco Arena and Peter Kain were one of several BBDO teams to get a choice jump-ball: the chance to develop a campaign for the agency’s newly re-won assignment on the candy bar to launch in the 2010 Super Bowl. They wrote the first “You’re not you when you’re hungry” scripts for spots featuring Betty White and Aretha Franklin—and have run the account ever since. Both studied advertising at Syracuse University but didn’t meet until their first jobs at Hill, Holliday/Altschiller in New York. “They would give us a month to do a print ad, and then we would need an extension,” says Arena. More opportunity came in the early aughts at then-startup BBH, New York, where the pair got to work on brands like Axe, Johnnie Walker and Levi’s. In 2004, they joined BBDO, where they also run the agency’s work on FedEx and Twix. Their latest innovation for Snickers: a newly designed wrapper that replaces the brand name with “various symptoms of hunger,” as Kain puts it, “so people can call out their hungry friends with names like Curmudgeon and Drama Mama.”
How They Keep Snickers Fresh: “Bringing it to life in places where consumers don’t expect it,” says Arena. “And with TV, our goal is to bring something different to the execution of each new spot while maintaining what’s made them work, like unexpected celebrities and characters.”
Key Advice for Young Creatives: “The best creatives have skills that go beyond their traditional roles,” says Kain. “They can develop insights like a planner, understand and relate to clients as good as an account director, and figure out how to get things done like a producer. If you can start to develop those skills, you will increase your chances of surviving and succeeding.”
Randy Hughes
A veteran car marketer, Randy Hughes has worked at Carmichael Lynch for 17 years, leading the agency’s Porsche business for nine of those. In 2007, he helped the firm land Subaru and has run it ever since. In the role, he has forged relationships with Tom Doll, the brand’s president and chief operating officer for the U.S., and Alan Bethke, its vp, marketing, overseeing classics like 2011’s “Baby Driver” and more recently, father-daughter stories like this year’s “Making Memories.” He has also directed Subaru’s zero landfill initiative with the National Parks Service. Hughes’ first crack at auto ads was in the ’80s, on the Southern California Oldsmobile Dealers Group at J.R. Navarro & Associates, Los Angeles. But his very first advertising job was at a local shop in Sioux City, Iowa, while still in college. “There weren’t portfolio schools that I knew of back then, so my path was a methodical one,” he says. “I worked in every department and volunteered for everything. I’d go pick up paint samples, get sandwiches, whatever. I ended up with a great understanding of how the business worked and how all the departments worked together.”
Schooling: Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, for art, minor in communications
Chose Advertising When: “My mom co-owned a hair salon when I was in the fourth grade. She needed a program ad and basically wanted a cartoon of a hippy getting a haircut, so I made the illustration and they used it. When I saw my work in print, I think that did it for me.”
Key Advice for Young Creatives: “Understand your client. Their business. What keeps them up at night. What their day is like. Their pressures. What their bosses think. And listen to them. Really listen. If you’ve got a good client, they know things. Then do what you think is right. It’s easy to just give clients what they ask for but it’s better to hear them, understand why they are asking what they are asking, then give them what they really need based on all this understanding. And sometimes when they push back, listen. They are often right.”
Scott Bell
Scott Bell helped the agency win the Heineken-owned beer brand in 2012 before taking a quick detour to Barton F. Graf 9000 the same year. He returned to Droga in 2013 to run Newcastle, overseeing the brand’s popular mock-Super Bowl spots and, more recently, “Misconceptions,” which, in a novel approach, is all about how Newcastle isn’t as bad as people think it is. Bell first joined Droga5 in 2009, which he describes as a defining career moment. “I was probably the 30th person hired here, so I’ve been able to watch it grow to the 500-plus agency it is today,” he says. He interned at ESPN and W+K, New York, while still in school but caught his first big break in 2004. After struggling to get interviews at agencies while working construction with his uncle in Kentucky, he decided to animate various creative directors’ critiques of his portfolio using random characters (a karate instructor, a female bodybuilder). Within an hour of sending one of these, he landed a meeting the next day in Portland. He didn’t get that job, but soon enough, opportunity knocked again. “I got an offer to work for Ty Montague at JWT New York,” he says. “I stayed there for [four] years before moving over to Droga5.”
Schooling: University of Kentucky, for creative advertising; Miami Ad School for copywriting
Chose Advertising When: “I was majoring in art studio in college, mostly doing nude figure drawings, when I suddenly realized it would be impossible to make a living. I went and talked to my counselor, and she mentioned they’d just started a creative advertising program.”
How He Keeps Newcastle Fresh: “I think it’s important to have fun working on Newcastle. It’s beer. And I think we also try to have a healthy lack of respect for, more or less, everything. We try not to take anything too seriously.”
Key Advice for Young Creatives: “Try to be a good person. Advertising is all about relationships—and not just relationships with other creatives. It’s important to have good relationships with account directors, planners and clients. And try to work with good people. If you find people you like, make an effort to stick with them.”
Frank Hahn
To some, being top gun on 72andSunny’s Activision business might seem like more play than work. Frank Hahn gets paid to oversee big-budget productions for popular franchises like Destiny and Guitar Hero, not to mention perennial smash Call of Duty. Originally from Germany, Hahn has been a career globe-trotter with a string of choice creative gigs—including atW+K in Tokyo and Amsterdam, where he met 72andSunny co-founder and CEO John Boiler. He relocated to Los Angeles in 2012 and a year later took charge of 72andSunny’s Activision work, where his projects included Destiny’s 2014 release. But the career moment Hahn describes as his most pivotal actually came many years earlier, when he got the opportunity to run an office for the first time—W+K Shanghai—and work on Nike China in the run-up to the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. “It was a jump into cold water for me and a complete life makeover,” he remembers. “But there was an electric vibe in Shanghai. The country opened up. There was a can-do mentality. … People were curious for new influences.” Now, Hahn also oversees global work for the speaker brand Sonos.
Schooling: Academy Of Fine Arts (HBK) in Braunschweig, Germany, for graphic design
Chose Advertising When: “I never planned to be in advertising. I happened to land deeper and deeper in ad land—and it was awesome.”
How He Keeps Activision Fresh: “Casting. We have an amazing team with great creative explorers that are always pushing the pop culture button. And we have highly creative clients that are personally invested in doing outstanding and category-leading work.”
Key Advice for Young Creatives: “Learn. Travel. Work hard. Take risks. Be unique. Fuck it up (Thanks, Susan [Hoffman, ecd at W+K Portland]). Make it cooler. Start all over.”
From left: Brett Craig and Tom Pettus
Brett Craig has been leading Deutsch’s sharp creative for Taco Bell—including this year’s three-minute ad painting Ronald McDonald as a totalitarian breakfast despot—since helping to pitch and win the business in 2012, the same year he joined the agency. But it is not his first go-round with the brand. Craig spent 12 years at TBWA\Chiat\Day, where he got his first taste of the fast-food chain early on before climbing the creative ranks to leading roles on Sony PlayStation and Pepsi—a trajectory actually defined by another account. “Pitching, winning and then executing the launch of SiriusXM Satellite Radio as a junior copywriter was a pivotal moment for me,” recalls Craig. “It put me on the radar at TBWA\Chiat\Day and got [TBWA\ Worldwide chairman] Lee [Clow’s] attention at the time, which, looking back, was the fast track to all kinds of opportunity.” Tom Pettus, for his part, grew up in the agency world, the son of a copywriter father and art director mother, before cutting his teeth on Nike at R/GA in the early 2000s. He joined Deutsch from Innocean to work on another Yum Brands account, Pizza Hut, in 2014, shifting this past January to help Craig run the newly expanded Taco Bell digital and social assignments.
Schooling (Craig): Community college, then two years at the University of Idaho; (Pettus): Kenyon College, for English and creative writing
How They Keep Taco Bell Fresh: “Our Taco Bell clients… They challenge us to bring new approaches to the table to reach these consumers via online/social video, and use newer platforms like Snapchat, Twitch, etc.,” says Pettus. “So we meet with platform partners regularly to make sure we’re ahead of the game.”
Key Advice for Young Creatives: “It’s all in a book I’m about to release entitled, ‘Collaborate or Die,’ which is about how other people can make you (and your ideas) better,” says Craig. “Advertising is a team sport. Believe that and you will go farther than 90% of the creatives out there.” Adds Pettus: “Pretty simple. Be endlessly curious. Read blogs daily. Use new platforms that are gaining traction. There are probably eight to 12 different platforms that brands operate on now (TV, Facebook, Xbox, Twitter, Tumblr, etc). The VMAs Snapchat Livestory just registered 12 million views—more than the TV broadcast. Understand how people use each of these.”
From left: Steve Bassett and Wade Alger
At least since the time of the caveman (2004) and lizard (1999), Geico has served up some of the most consistently funny ads in the business. The insurance company has been a client at the agency since 1994; Steve Bassett has run it since 2000, when former agency president and creative leader Mike Hughes brought him back from a hiatus at DDB, Dallas, where Bassett and Wade Alger first worked together. Eight years later, Alger joined the agency (after stints at GSD&M on BMW and TM Advertising on Nationwide Insurance). He has worked on Geico ever since, moving up to handle the account alongside Bassett two years ago. Recent highlights include “Unskippable” as well as “Whisper” (featuring a kraken monster) and “Countdown” (with the band Europe). As for how they keep the work fresh, Bassett credits three factors, in this order: “[vp, marketing] Ted Ward at Geico and his team are smart as hell, Geico’s basic brand promise hasn’t changed in 20 years, [and] the last thing people want to see is just another car insurance ad, so we don’t give them one.”
Schooling (Bassett): University of Georgia, “I switched my major from Psychology to Advertising to avoid flunking out.” (Alger): Southern Methodist University for communications
Chose Advertising When: “Junior year in high school in my psychology class,” says Alger. “We studied the effects of advertising. I was intrigued how 30- and 60-second stories could impact people.” For Bassett, “When I read the Lemon ad for Volkswagen.”
Key Advice for Young Creatives: “Always remember this, somewhere in this world, there’s a doctor who has his/her hand in someone’s chest, massaging their heart to keep them alive,” says Alger. “Who cares if the talent is wearing a red or blue shirt, it really doesn’t matter.” Adds Bassett, “if your boss asks if you want to work on a direct marketing account with almost no brand awareness or money, say yes.”
Nancy Hannon
Judy John, CEO, CCO of Leo Burnett, Toronto, and A.J. Hassan, creative director at Leo Burnett, Chicago, played key roles in creating last year’s blockbuster “Like a Girl” campaign, and its sequel, “Unstoppable,” this past July. But on the latter, Nancy Hannon helped and she’ll be instrumental going forward since becoming John’s lieutenant on the Always account in April. It is “a beautiful convergence of a mission I believe in, and smart creative thinking,” Hannon says of the assignment. “I get up every day thrilled to be a part of it.” Hannon’s current tenure at the shop began last December, when she came aboard to work on the Kraft business. Her first job in the ad business was at Burnett, typing scripts and handling secretarial duties before landing an art director’s job across town at DDB—all before she was old enough to legally drink. Hannon’s career led her back to the agency a second time for a decade-long stint on brands including Reebok and Secret, then on to roles at Y&R, Chicago, on Sears, and at The Martin Agency, where she worked on Walmart and Hanes. Now home again, she also oversees Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Crystal Light.
Schooling: Random portfolio classes
Chose Advertising When: “In high school I realized that I kept taking creative license and drawing my journalism projects instead of doing the writing. I was telling my stories visually and getting rewarded. I was hooked.”
Remembers: “Working on Reebok with a very young Venus Williams and her little sister Serena. As I recall, they were not allowed to eat candy from the craft service table and I really wanted to slip them a Twizzler.”
Key Advice for Young Creatives: “Quit. Jump around. Gets loads of experience in creating and making things.”
Maureen Shirreff
After graduating from Northwestern University in 1975, Maureen Shirreff worked various odd jobs—cheese-store manager, bank teller, telephone operator—while her friends pursued careers in medicine and law. “I felt really badly that I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she relates. But Shirreff’s aptitude for art—evidenced by a steady stream of freelance illustration work—ultimately led to a job putting together storyboards at Foote Cone & Belding in 1980, where she began to learn the industry ropes. Now a 23-year veteran of Ogilvy, she started overseeing Dove in 1998, when Rick Boyko, the agency’s North American CCO at the time, moved the business to Chicago from the New York office in hopes of finding talent able to put a fresh face on the then-dusty brand. Shirreff took the chance, leading to a key role on the global Dove team that shaped “Campaign for Real Beauty” in the mid-aughts. Her work includes the provocative “Beauty Has No Age Limit” campaign for Dove’s Pro-Age in 2007. After a stint also running S.C. Johnson’s Glade at Ogilvy in Chicago, she spent the past 18 months in London as a global leader, again devoted to Dove.
How She Keeps Dove Fresh: “Always looking at our briefs, and trying to keep them razor sharp… [Also,] you’ve got your tried and true teams, they’re going to do great work for you. But I think it’s very important to get fresh blood on this brand. I’m the first person to tell you. It’s been very important to me I learn so much from these younger teams, about how women their age are talking and sharing things.”
Key Advice for Young Creatives: “It’s really important to have the mental ability to really kind of calm down and really read a brief. Really interrogate it and question it. It’s very important to listen to other creatives. Creatives whose work you admire. Really listen to them—how do they do it? Listen to what they’re saying. Watch how they present… Don’t ever stop observing in a real race to get your stuff out there. I think we’re so keen on proving ourselves—especially young creatives. This is what they’ve worked for. They want to be taken seriously. They will be eventually… [But] when you quiet your thinking down that’s going to help you. It’s going to inspire you.”
From left: Brent Anderson and Renato Fernandez
At the ripe age of 11, Brent Anderson declared he wanted to be a “commercial artist” so he could be “super creative” and still support a family. He worked on Gatorade some years later, first as a senior creative at TBWA in 2008, just as the brand arrived at the agency. When Jimmy Smith, the exec running the brand—and one of Anderson’s mentors—left in 2011 to launch an agency, Anderson took the helm. Recent highlights include “Made in New York” with Derek Jeter, “Sweat It to Get It” with the Manning brothers and others, and “Unmatched” with Serena Williams. Renato Fernandez, also a leader on that work, started his career in his hometown of Curitiba, Brazil, by attempting to launch an agency in his parents’ garage with his twin brother Roberto, now a group creative director at BBH, London. When an actual agency offered the two men one job, they split the salary and remained together. Renato ultimately found his way to TBWA in 2011, thanks in part to his oddball Volkswagen “Dogfish” commercial for Almap BBDO, São Paolo. Like Anderson, he climbed the ranks on Gatorade, assuming his current role overseeing North American and global work as Anderson rose to the executive creative director’s job, in which he also guides advertising for Airbnb and Buffalo Wild Wings.
Schooling (Anderson): Brigham Young University for communications, minor in Japanese and fine art (Fernandez): UFPR in Curitiba, Brazil, for advertising
Keep Gatorade Fresh By: “Two main mottos,” says Fernandez. “‘Good is the enemy of great’ and ‘Do the undone.’ There’s so many brands doing advertising for sports today that is hard to stand out. So we raise the bar [for] ourselves everyday.”
Key Advice for Young Creatives: “We meet with Brian Chesky (CEO, AirBnB) regularly,” says Anderson. “I love what he says: ‘I say that whatever career you’re in, assume it’s going to be a massive failure. That way, you’re not making decisions based on success, money and career. You’re only making it based on doing what you love.’” Adds Fernandez, “If you want a job, surprise your interviewer. Don’t bring what he expects. He has teams that already do that.”
This article was originally published on Adweek.com.
Janelle Harris is a multimedia producer, director, and founder of Harris Two Productions with decades of experience in non-fiction storytelling for networks including Bravo, Discovery, and A&E. A Howard University graduate, she specializes in amplifying diverse voices across television, film, and digital media.
6 min read • Originally published November 18, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Janelle Harris is a multimedia producer, director, and founder of Harris Two Productions with decades of experience in non-fiction storytelling for networks including Bravo, Discovery, and A&E. A Howard University graduate, she specializes in amplifying diverse voices across television, film, and digital media.
6 min read • Originally published November 18, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
When gossip is about you, it’s generally a bad thing. When gossip produces the spoils of a million dollar brand, it’s a good thing. That’s the end Natasha Eubanks doesn’t mind being on. The blogstress and entrepreneur launched The YBF (that stands for The Young, Black and Fabulous) back in 2005 when she noticed major online outlets weren’t discussing the who’s dating who and who’s dissing who in African-American celebrity-dom.
Now her site is pulling in some 15 million hits a month. “Just today, I had an hour-long meeting because we’re growing more than we thought. And when Whitney Houston passed, our site totally crashed,” says Eubanks. The 29-year-old has developed a formula for blogging success: keep readers abreast of what’s going on in Black Hollywood, inject a personal opinion, and use a chatty style that makes folks feel like they’re talking to a close friend rather than a red carpet prowler. This isn’t your high school locker room gossip; it’s Hollywood buzz. And Eubanks is proof positive that it’s big business.
Name: Natasha Eubanks Position: Founder, The YBF.com Resume: Worked as a hostess at Olive Garden while waiting to start law school at Loyola University. Made the YBF her full-time job just one year later. Birthday: May 1 Hometown: New Orleans Education: Bachelor’s in political science and English from Texas A&M and one year of law school at Loyola Marital status: Single Media Idol: Tyler Perry and Cathy Hughes Favorite TV shows:Say Yes to the Dress and The Game Guilty pleasure: Anything luxe (especially Chanel) and laid-back, do-nothing days that consist of snacks, her boyfriend and a movie marathon Last book read:The Tanning of America by Steve Stoute Twitter handle:@TheYBF
How long did it take you to realize that you were sitting on more than a hobby, and when and how did you incorporate advertising?
I think I incorporated advertising from day one. I started with Blogger. They were bought out by Google and Google controls AdSense, and that’s probably the easiest ad platform. It was pretty much presented like, “Check this box if you want to do Google AdSense.” I didn’t make a penny off of anything because I didn’t have any readers. I didn’t see any money until two years, and I only saw a few dollars even then.
But I saw that and I think that kind of sparked it in me. I was like, wait a minute. There’s an ad platform? What does that mean? You can make money just by writing what you think? That’s insanity. I’m just some ol’ girl off the street who talks about celebrities. The fact that I didn’t make anything, I didn’t think it was really real.
You know those “make money working from home” type things? You know, filling out surveys type of things? But then I saw that it was even a possibility, so that’s when I started looking for other ad platforms. When people started approaching me, I thought, ‘well, maybe I’m reaching more people than I think.’ I still don’t feel like I’m sitting on a goldmine just waiting to happen. I don’t think I’ll ever feel like that.
Print magazines have beefed up their online presence and other entertainment sites have cropped up. Do you see them as competitors or do you appreciate them for fleshing out an underserved field in African-American entertainment?
I definitely appreciate them because most of them are magazines I grew up reading, though I wish they would’ve done it earlier. We don’t see them as competition at all; we actually work with several different magazines. They’ll give us their covers first or send us excerpts of the people they interview. They can add a different aspect to our blogging. I’m a huge proponent of staying in your lane.
We’re reporters in a way, but we’re not hardcore journalists, you know? We do the most research we can do, we get the most facts we can get, but at the same time we’re not supposed to be this strict, by-the-book journalistic entity. That’s not what the blog is here for.
It’s here for our subjective view, not an objective view like they have to have. We talk about random things; we don’t have to make sense; our stories don’t have to flow. Magazines are held to a different standard and they should be. Sometimes it’s good to have Essence or Vibe give us information, but we’re just as much of an asset to them as they are to us.
Celebrities are some of the world’s most sensitive creatures. What are some of the challenges or fallouts legally or professionally from covering that industry?
I think we’ve run into fewer legal problems, because we’re not one of those sites that just writes everything we hear with no regard. We don’t just make things up out of the air like some sites, and when we talk about certain things we have learned how to word them so that we’re not necessarily held accountable.
There are just some things we won’t run on the site, even if it’s true, and I think that’s kind of saved us from massive legal trouble. But there have been instances where people got upset because we aired them out. We’ve gone through lawsuits and legal threats. It’s just part of the game.
What type of brand extensions do you have planned, and what are you looking to accomplish? Does that mean expanding out of Black entertainment?
I don’t like to talk about things until they’re done but, generally speaking, I want to make us that one-stop-shop household name. I know some people think we already are maybe with certain groups and people, but I want people to ask, ‘where can I turn on my TV and go on the net and turn on the radio and physically go that the YBF brand will give me what I need?’
I don’t think I need to expand out of Black entertainment. I think Black entertainment is such a broad topic. Some people try to make it narrow, but I never want to get away from the reason why I started the site. I do want people to think of us first when they’re trying to figure anything out that has to do with celebrity entertainment.
If you could tell an aspiring blogger to invest in just one part of his or her site, what would it be and why?
I started on a zero budget and made no money for two years. It can be done. I would say if you’re just starting out it depends on how hard you want to work, if it’s something you’re really going to give 120 percent to. I did everything by myself, so it was my priority. I used a free [blogging] service so I didn’t put any money into that.
It’s just you and your computer, so you can just save your money. Try to find people, maybe interns or people who are just starting out, who you can barter your services. They can build you a website; you can put their name all over the website.
Just try to do things in the cheapest, most legal way possible. I think the biggest thing is realizing when you need to step it up. Don’t just stay cheap forever. When I realized that it’s all great and good to not pay to do certain things, I noticed that it ends up being wrong; it ends up costing me money in the long run.
That’s why I say ‘the cheapest labor is the most expensive labor.’ Don’t do this whole Field of Dreams, “I’m going to have this big, huge website, and I’m going to throw $50,000 into it, and if I build it, they’ll come.”
Don’t even go there.
Do what you’re going to do as streamlined as possible and, as they come, that’s when you build. Don’t do it the other way around.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
6 min read • Originally published November 18, 2015 / Updated March 19, 2026
Shot on location in Ireland, History Channel’s Vikings looks and sounds a lot like the 2000 film Gladiator, right down to the shifty clan leader Earl Haraldson and tormented protagonist Ragnar Lothbrok. And thanks to writer and executive producer Michael Hirst—the man who brought you the Cate Blanchett film Elizabeth and Showtime’s The Tudors—the series also has the same potential for critical and commercial success.
“My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way,” Hollywood’s go-to guy for historical fiction told us. “Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples’ ideas of what character should be.”
Name: Michael Hirst Position: Screenwriter and producer Birthdate: September 21, 1952 Hometown: Bradford, Yorkshire Education: London School of Economics; University of Nottingham; Trinity College, Oxford Resume: Film credits include Elizabeth, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Fools of Fortune. Created, executive produced and wrote every episode of Showtime’s award-winning series The Tudors and Vikings, which airs March 3 on History Marital status: Happily married with nine children Media Idol: “I only have one idol: John Lennon.” Favorite TV show: Cheers Guilty Pleasure: “Watching my son not just playing soccer games, but training” Last Book Read: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway Twitter handle: None
How did you first break into the business?
I’d always been a writer, but I was really an academic. I had been in university for years and years and was going to be an academic, but then I met the film director, Nicolas Roeg—great guy, he did The Man Who Fell to Earth—and he read one of my short stories. He asked me to write scripts for him, and I replied that I had no idea how to do a screenplay, and Roeg said, “That’s perfect.”
He showed me a couple of films by Bunuel and Cocteau that had nothing to do with the project. And also, at the time, they were shooting the first Superman movie in England, and Roeg was working at the studio, so we walked down “Fifth Avenue.” And he said, “This is the movie business. This is where we kneel down. It’s absolute magic.” So he inspired me in these ways. I then wrote a couple of rather complex scenes. Nic read them, opened the window and threw them out into the street. “This is not interesting,” he said. “It has to be something that excites me.”
What advice would you give to a journalist interested in writing historical drama?
The key for me with historical characters is they’re interesting because they’re human beings.
A little bit of Hemingway goes a long way here, but journalists and writers should honestly look at their material and have a real interest, a real passion in what they want to write, and they should also have a lot of knowledge, as well. You don’t write police procedural stuff unless you really know that beat, but it’s ultimately not the procedure that makes the show work—it’s the people. The more real they are, the better.
I advise people to even look at their own family and people they know. Get to be a spy and always be looking out for peculiarities in individuals. I hate the idea of going the other way and adhering to some supposedly tried, true format.
I still have no idea how to write a screenplay. I know I can do it now, and I know that each of my episodes has got to have something in it that is exciting and, ultimately, impress Nic Roeg. That’s the key thing: if I showed it to Nic, would he be excited?
Other than that, just try to write so you get people engaged. I learned a big lesson once from Indian director Shekhar Kapur. He said: “You English, you’re so constricted. You don’t really show your emotions much. Melodrama is actually what everything is about. You should be melodramatic; you should just leave a little bit out there, a little emotion.”
What was your research process like for Vikings?
For a project like this, I try to get hold of everything I can and have an open mind, at least at the beginning of the process. As far as what I’m going to do, and who are going to be the main characters, where I’m going to take it, and so on. The creativity comes from all these ideas and thoughts tumbling over each other in the darkness.
There is also great value, on previous projects and for Vikings, in all these little footnotes and anecdotes, little things, human details that often don’t interest historians but interest me. There isn’t, of course, a huge amount of material about this era. The Vikings certainly didn’t write anything about themselves; it was not a literate, but rather a pagan culture. So what we get was written later by Christian monks. But there were occasional reportings and recordings of people who had traded usually with the Vikings.
One of the most important sources for me was an Arab trader. There were a couple of things that he reported, which occasionally kind of staggered him. One of them is the scene in episode two, on the jetty, when the Vikings all share this bowl of water—they comb their hair, they spit into it, they clear their throat into it.
Although it seems rather unpleasant, the Arab trader described that it was very strange to him, because on the one hand they were being very clean by combing their hair and yet they were also spitting into the same bowl. And for me, that stuff is golden, because I’m always looking for that sort of ballast to put into a show. These are real details, and I don’t really have to make sense of them to use them. This is what someone saw; this is what the Vikings actually did.
How involved were you with the casting process?
Decisively and as much as possible. I don’t watch enough TV and film to have a comprehensive knowledge of actors working today, but, once the casting people narrow it down for a role, they’ll come to me and say, “Have a look at these people. What do you think?” and so on.
But I’ll tell you one story. We did have huge trouble, and go to great pains, casting our lead male Viking character, Ragnar. I knew I wanted someone that was different than the usual hero. We saw lots of different actors, lots of Scandinavians and also an enormous amount of very pretty English actors. There was no one who sang to us, but there was a guy who was very good and who got the OK from the director after final reading.
This actor didn’t sort of set my heart on fire, but I said yes. These things come under time pressures and if you don’t have your lead actors by a certain point, obviously, then you can’t do the show. Just before we had to have our minds set, my wife said, “Just show me this guy’s reel again.” So we watched the footage again together, and she said, as a woman, that she wouldn’t want to see this guy every day on Vikings. My wife said, ‘He’s not my idea of a hero; he has too many mannerisms; he’s learned a lot of that; he’s inauthentic.”
So, for once in my life, I exercised the little power that I have and said we can’t do the show with this actor and, I think, two days later, Travis [Fimmel] sent in his reel. And he was the only guy who didn’t try and “act.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
