In her 20s, Michelle Goodman left her desk job and launched a freelance career with just one client. 15 years later, she’s built a successful business and authored a book on the topic, The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube, along the way. Below, she tells us how to become a homepreneur and offers advice for other women hoping to “flee the cube.”

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You offer up various scenarios for women who want to “flee the cube” in some capacity. Before we get to the “dos,” what are the major “don’t”s or biggest problems you see beginning freelancers make concerning money?

Tricking out their office with the latest gadgets and gizmos before they really need (or can afford) them. Neglecting to save up some sort of nest egg before they quit their day job. Failing to cultivate a fallback skill or secure a part-time job that isn’t necessarily their first choice of work but will keep food on the table while they get their name out there and build up their business. Assuming that they’ll be able to fill their schedule overnight. Not having an escape plan (i.e., “If this doesn’t work, I know I can get a temp job testing software or proofreading legal texts or walking dogs…”). Putting all their eggs in one basket and feeling hurt and surprised and anxious if/when that client dries up. Failing to market themselves or learn their way around running a business at the outset. Thinking they can get by without befriending other freelancers to bounce ideas off of, even ideas about how much to charge or what to do when your dream client suddenly morphs into Clientzilla.

You talk in the book about setting rates and “knowing your bottom line.” I was once offered a rate from a certain magazine, which sounded good to me, and I agreed, only to find that a friend had been offered the same rate, insisted that her usual fee was twice that, and got it on the spot. How early on in your freelance career should you start asking for more money and what’s the best approach to take?

That’s an interesting tale because it sounds like you never would have thought to ask for more had your friend not spilled the beans. I think you should start asking for more money as soon as you find yourself in the position of being offered a rate below what other editors or publications are paying you. Because if publication A is paying you $1/ word and publication B is paying you $.50/ word, you lose 50 percent of your potential earning power each time you write for publication B. That said, you should have an idea of what a publication pays before you do ask for more.

To ask for more money, couch your request in language like, “You know I love writing for you and think your publication rocks, but I’m in the tough position of being offered twice as much money to write for all my other editors [or clients]. Any chance you can come up in price? I’d like to keep working with you, but I have to wear my business hat, too.” Subtext: Eventually, dear editor, you’re going to lose me if you don’t show me the money.

How should a freelance writer go about setting their rates, and how much consideration should be given to the generally accepted going rate of a given publication?

Setting your rates doesn’t come into play quite as much when you’re publishing articles as it does when you’re writing and editing commercial copy. With the former, you start at the highest rung of publication that will have you and you work your way up from there. With the latter, you pore over a guide like The Writer’s Market and talk to other freelancers to see what price someone of your experience level and skill can command. A great book I like to recommend to commercial freelance writers is Laurie Lewis’ What to Charge: Pricing Strategies for Freelancers and Consultants.

Two of the most important skills a homepreneur can have are the ability to crack her own whip and the ability to sell herself.

If you’re new to freelancing and new to a particular publication, you’ll often need to honor that market’s going rate, unless of course it’s well below the rate you’re getting for all your other articles and publications. If you’ve done your time with that publication and it’s paying you well below what your other markets pay, I’d ask for more or move on. You can’t afford to sell yourself short forever. That said, there are times when it’s worthwhile to work at a lower rate than you normally command — for example, when the market or assignment is high profile despite not having quite the budget you’re used to. These gigs can often lead to plum assignments from other (bigger and better) publications, and sometimes, book deals, as has happened to a number of writers I know.

You offer “seven habits of highly effective homepreneurs,” including marking your territory, pimping your virtual office, and pressing the flesh.

Two of the most important skills a homepreneur or home-based freelancer can have are the ability to crack her own whip (stay disciplined and crank through her projects, despite the 879 distractions the home office affords) and the ability to sell herself. A lot of people tell me they “suck at marketing” or they “never have time for marketing.” To that I say marketing is just telling people what you can do and how you can make their life easier. An email introducing yourself to a new editor, a Web page that displays your recent clips so editors can find you online, a little face time at a quarterly networking event — all this falls under the heading of “marketing.” And to those who “don’t have the time” I say make it because marketing will boost your career. Just build researching new markets, pitching new editors, and meeting one new writer you admire every couple of months into your schedule, even if you only allot one hour a week for it. Otherwise, how else are you going to move on up the freelance food chain?

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Four Things To Know Before Embarking On A Freelance Life
1) Your finances will fluctuate
“It’s okay to not make the same amount of money every month, season, or even year,” Goodman says.
2) Split your time between well-paying corporate gigs and less lucrative projects.
“The longer I live this crazy freelance life, the more I become the person who works her ass off for three to six months to stockpile enough money to finance some ‘time off’ so I can then focus on less lucrative writing projects for a significant stretch of time.”
3) Early on, don’t shy away from temp work.

“It’s easier to make more money temping because you eliminate the need for all those unpaid hours spent marketing, invoicing, and generally wheeling and dealing,” says Goodman.
4) If work gets tight, return to past employers.
“I do have a big enough freelance contact base that I can usually scrounge up infinite work if I spend a couple weeks making calls and hustling.”

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Rachel Kramer Bussel is a writer, editor, and blogger.

To celebrate mediabistro.com’s 10th anniversary, we spoke with our Golden Boa honorees about their achievements in media. Check back throughout the week for Hey How’d You Do That features showcasing these media pros.

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As international business and economics correspondent for NPR, Adam Davidson’s work has taken him from southeast Asia to the Middle East. Though he didn’t originally intend to go into radio, he’s become an NPR staple: in addition to NPR’s newscasts, his stories can be heard on Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Day to Day (and he’s gotten to write for some magazines, too).

We got him to describe the behind-the-scenes challenges and rewards of chasing international stories for radio. Like print and television, Davidson says, “at the end of the day, a radio story is only as good as the story.”

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You’ve been an NPR correspondent since 2004 — what got you into radio?

An accident. I was planning to write for magazines in New York. I had a couple internships lined up. I liked listening to the radio, but had no thoughts of working in radio. And then, as a senior in college I met someone who was interning at the local public radio station, WBEZ. She told me the internship was fun. I applied, got it, and was hooked right away.

In what ways do the technical aspects of your job make your work different from what print journalists do?

When I work on a print story, I’m always amazed at how little I have to carry. Just a pen and a reporters’ notebook. For radio, I need a large digital recorder, a big mic, headphones, lots of extra cords and batteries. It’s certainly nothing like the stuff TV guys need, but it’s a lot to keep track of.

Also, I feel like you can fudge things a bit in print. I don’t mean make things up. But if you’re writing the story and you realize you forgot to ask some crucial question, you can call or email the person. But with radio, you pretty much have to have everything on tape that first time. Not always, but most of the time.

So, I find radio reporting requires more attention and focus than print reporting. But I find that actually writing a radio story is much easier than writing a print story. You listen to your tape, identify the cuts you might use, and then you just have to write [tracks] between the cuts. It’s easy — nowhere near as terrifying as staring at a blank screen and needing to structure a whole piece from your handwritten notes.

As international business and economics correspondent, you’ve reported on a wide range of international issues — how do you make far-reaching coverage accessible to a U.S. audience?

It is really hard to make some of the stuff I cover interesting — there are these big macroeconomic issues that can seem so opaque and abstract. Who cares about the current account deficit or the US-Yuan exchange rate? The first thing I try to do is the obvious reporter’s trick: try to find some person or group of people who are actually affected by whatever it is I’m covering. This is easy when traveling to another country, because I can go into the field and find the poor villager or the ambitious entrepreneur running his new factory or whatever. I can usually find someone who is funny or poignant or in some way engaging.

It’s harder when it’s a fast-breaking story. I often only have time for some quick phone interviews, usually with economists or policy analysts. These “talking heads” pieces are rough. It’s hard to get tape that is spontaneous and dramatic or even interesting. I try to solve this, in part, by building a list of experts who I know can be funny or interesting or, at the very least, clear. Also, lately I’ve been trying to do anything I can to surprise the talking head. I want to ask them something unexpected or challenge them aggressively or convince them to tell a funny story: basically to do anything so they don’t sound like a canned expert reciting some long-known piece of expertise. Radio is so boring when the person talking has said what they’re saying a million times before.

“It takes a particularly great print writer to convey an experience of destruction in a way that engages the reader. But the voice of a person, breaking with emotion, is so powerful… I don’t think anything can beat it.”

You’ve done a substantial amount of reporting from disaster zones, such as Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina and filing from Banda Aceh while living in a concrete bunker there after the 2004 tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia. How do you prepare — in both the short and long term — to cover disasters?

It is amazing to suddenly be somewhere without any of the support systems of modern life: no electricity, no medical care, no reliable water or food, nobody who can fix your car or laptop.

I’ve forced myself to learn how computers work, so I can fix problems when I’m far from any computer store. You can’t file without a working computer. I also have learned how to operate a lot of different types of satellite phone. I’ve learned how to power equipment off of car batteries — there are a lot of places where car batteries are the main source of electricity. I’ve learned to understand the basics of identifying clean water and filtering bad water. I’ve learned what to eat and what to avoid in post-disaster, developing countries, where disease is a real issue.

I’d like to learn some basic car repair. I’ve had some scary moments in the field — particularly in post-ground war Iraq — when the car I was driving wasn’t working and I was all alone in the middle of nowhere and had no idea how to fix it. I’d like to know basic first aid — I’ve been with friends when they’ve had minor injuries or illnesses, and I wish I knew better how to handle those things when medical care is nowhere around.

One great thing about covering disasters is you develop friendships with a bunch of other reporters who are likely to be around for the next one. When you get into trouble, you can call them. Whenever I am assigned to go somewhere, I’ll call my friends and see who is heading out and what they know. It’s helpful to find out about the visa situation — are they letting Americans in? Is it good or bad to say you’re a journalist at the border? Which roads are safer? Where can you find a good fixer? Is it just too dangerous to go at all? I can’t imagine going somewhere without that advanced knowledge.

People ask about preparing emotionally. I don’t find the emotion hits when you’re in the field, usually. I’m doing a job, covering a story, and I’m pretty focused. If it’s a really upsetting assignment — like the post-tsunami Banda Aceh, or Iraq — I find the emotions hit after I leave. There’s usually a week or so where I’m pretty out of it and kind of depressed. But it passes.

Since radio doesn’t give its audience visual images to accompany a story, how do you convey the direness of those events through your reportage?

Oh, I think radio is the best at conveying dire events. When you see TV images of some disaster, I think, you’re struck by the exotic, foreign, and remote nature of the image. It seems so far away and unlike your own experience. It’s impossible to feel connected to it. It takes a particularly great print writer to convey an experience of destruction in a way that engages the reader. But the voice of a person, breaking with emotion, is so powerful. It sneaks in under your defenses. You’re not distracted by what the person looks like or how other-worldly the surroundings are. You’re just hearing this human being’s emotions coming right at you. I don’t think anything can beat it.

In addition to the reporting practices shared between radio and print or TV correspondents (gathering information, sources, quotes, etc.) what else must you think about as you pursue stories, (e.g. collecting ambient noise to weave into your coverage later, keeping an eye on sound levels while interviewing, etc.)? How do you put it together (e.g. editing/using sound in a creative way to enhance your stories, etc.)?

At the end of the day, a radio story is only as good as the story. Just like print or TV or any other narrative form, you want a compelling narrative and some decent characters. So, some of the best radio does not use the most exciting sound. It’s just one voice or a few voices narrating something gripping. It can be on a lousy phone line and, if the story is good enough, it works.

But, of course, it’s ideal to have good audio. Not just for professional pride. Good audio engages the listener more and can make the narrative more complete. When I record an interview for radio, I’m paying attention in a very different way from a print interview. I’m listening not only to the content, but to the way the person says what they’re saying and to all the other sounds around: Is it lively tape? Do they sound like a real person or some automaton? Is there a loud bus driving by? Is there some better audio environment in which to conduct the interview? Sometimes people say really interesting things in a boring way that just won’t grab a listener’s attention; or they say something great, but there’s a loud and distracting air conditioner right next to them. You could use the quote in print, no matter how hostile the sound environment is, but you’d probably have to reject it for radio. Watching levels is an important skill — getting the sound not too loud or too soft. For some reason, it took me a really long time to learn how to do that well. Although with a lot of modern digital equipment you don’t have to worry about it too much.

The typical radio story has what we call “acts,” “trax” and an “ambi bed.” That means there are actualities — the cuts of tape of someone talking. Trax are the reporter reading the script. And an ambi bed is that natural sound stuff that most people notice on NPR stories — the background sound of chickens squawking or someone banging a hammer. Some highly produced shows — like This American Life or Radio Lab — use many other elements, including musical scoring. But most NPR stories have ax/trax/ambi or just ax/trax if it’s a breaking news story.

Is there anything about radio that makes it particularly well-suited to covering business/economics?

It is a real challenge covering economics on the radio. Radio is typically a lousy place to get across abstract ideas or to use a lot of numbers. It’s much easier for an audience to follow economic information if they can see something like a graph or if they can go back and review the concepts they had trouble with. I don’t know how many people can drive to work, pay attention to traffic, and truly grasp a radio story about how the Fed is concerned about growing inflation after they lowered the Fed Funds Rate by 50 basis points.

But it’s radio’s limitations that can help a reporter keep things straightforward and simple. I think radio demands directness. It’s not a great medium for dense information or obscurity or digression. I try — and don’t always succeed — to have one main point in any given story. Not two points, certainly not three. Just one main point, told as simply and clearly as possible. I try not to keep things too abstract. I try to come up with concrete examples that can give the listener something to hook on to, something to look at in their minds, to better grasp the concept. And, whenever possible, I try to tell a story, preferably a classic kind of tale of someone confronting a problem and needing a solution. So, instead of talking about the Feds Fund Rate in the abstract, I can tell the story of Ben Bernanke, Fed chairman, who has a problem: He needs to calm markets by lowering rates but he’s terrified that he’ll just spur out-of-control inflation. Admittedly, it’s not the most compelling story and won’t be getting me any movie deals. But at least there’s a person with motivation and stakes and all the things that make a narrative work.

You’ve written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, GQ, and Rolling Stone. How does the outlet where your work will appear affect how you report? Do you tend to write in a different style or emphasize different elements within your stories as a result of your radio experience?

I’d love to think that I have my own style that carries across mediums and different outlets. But, of course, a Harper’s story is very different from an NPR story which is different from GQ. Harper’s, generally, allows for a more writerly voice. I don’t have to worry as much about grabbing and holding on to every reader with super-dynamic prose. When I’ve written for more popular magazines, I’ve been more aware of writing shorter sentences with punchier language.

I often find that print editors — even at the more casual places — say my writing is too conversational. With radio, you really want to keep things informal and breezy. Short, simple ideas. You don’t even need full sentences. That’s gotten me into trouble at some places.

If someone’s interested in doing work like yours, what are the most important things for them to know/keep in mind?

Public radio is remarkably easy to enter. Just about every local public radio station has lots of openings for eager folks happy to work hard for little or no money. When I started, I spent two years working full-time before I made anything approaching a sad, little living wage. I just went more and more in debt. But it was a wonderful time, because at a young age I was able to do so much: fresh out of college and I was picking who and what would go out on the radio. It was thrilling.

So, step one is to just get in the door. It’s much easier to go to a local station than to NPR directly. When you get to a station, you see that there are lots of different jobs you might not have known about. There are audio engineers, show producers, hosts, newscasters, field reporters, and then all the folks in fundraising and audience outreach. Some people just want to be on air, others like making the shows run from behind the scenes.

Step two would be developing the right skills. If you want to report, you should learn how to handle the equipment and get good levels, how to edit audio on a computer. It’s a great idea to just force yourself to put together little radio stories. I recommend starting small: three-, four-minute pieces. They can be newsy or a profile of some weird person.

These days, there are so many great resources for aspiring radio people. Transom.org is great. There are a lot of resources at airmedia.org or prx.org. And, of course, mediabistro.com.

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Tips on Breaking Into Radio
1) Learn the technology.
“If you want to report, you should learn how to handle the equipment and get good levels, how to edit audio on a computer. It’s a great idea to just force yourself to put together little radio stories,” Davidson says.
2) Keep it simple.
“It’s not a great medium for dense information or obscurity or digression. I try — and don’t always succeed — to have one main point in any given story. Not two points, certainly not three. Just one main point, told as simply and clearly as possible.”
3) Get good ears.

“When I record an interview for radio, I’m paying attention in a very different way from a print interview. I’m listening not only to the content, but to the way the person says what they’re saying and to all the other sounds around: Is it lively tape? Do they sound like a real person or some automaton? Is there a loud bus driving by? Is there some better audio environment in which to conduct the interview? Sometimes people say really interesting things in a boring way that just won’t grab a listener’s attention; or they say something great, but there’s a loud and distracting air conditioner right next to them,” says Davidson.
4) Get your foot in the door.
“It’s much easier to go to a local station than to NPR directly. When you get to a station, you see that there are lots of different jobs you might not have known about.”

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Tracy Bratten is a graduate student in journalism at New York University and an intern at mediabistro.com. She has previously interned with the CBS Evening News and OK!. She lives in Manhattan and can be reached at tracy DOT bratten AT gmail.com.

To celebrate mediabistro.com’s 10th anniversary, we spoke with our Golden Boa honorees about their achievements in media. Check back throughout the week for Hey How’d You Do That features showcasing these media pros.

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In 1995 Craig Newmark began sending an email newsletter to his friends and acquaintances featuring technology events in the San Francisco area. After a few months, the newsletter expanded to include jobs and products. Soon, the list grew too large, and he moved the venture online. A dozen years later, Craigslist exists in almost 500 cities, receives billion of page views a month, and has been blamed for the decline of the newspaper classified business.

Newmark’s focus on customer service is at the center of Craigslist. He continues to help the network’s faithful “at least six hours per day, every day,” although he hopes to soon work in customer service on a part-time basis. We spoke with Newmark about his forays into the net, the success of Libertarian Internet entrepreneurs, and his role as “customer service representative.”

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How would you say you’ve gotten to where you are?

A happy accident.

What are the key elements of your success?

Useful social dysfunction, including following through with commitments.

Did you think about the community aspect of Craigslist when you began? Did you anticipate that a robust community of craigslisters would emerge?

I didn’t have a clue, just did what felt right.

It seems sometimes that everyone on the Web who’s achieved some success is a Libertarian. Is there something about that philosophy that is encouraged by Web business?

There are different flavors of libertarianism, but my take is that its
core values are “treat people like you want to be treated” and “live
and let live”, which works for most humans.

Craigslist seems like an ideal Libertarian community. Your thoughts?

I don’t think we’re an ideal anything, but we do a pretty good job regarding the values I just cited.

How much time do you devote to Craigslist on a daily basis?

I probably average at least six hours per day, every day. I’m trying to get below full time customer service.

What’s a typical day like for you?

Get up, customer service. Coffee at Reverie, maybe see friends. Customer service at the office. Customer service at home. Dinner, might go out, see friends, TV, read, music.

What do you do to relax? What excites your legendarily “dry” sense of humor?

What is “relax”? (I enjoy) smart comedy, like Stewart/Colbert, or shows like Simpsons, 30 Rock, and Dilbert. A little snark now and then is very good.

Tell our readers a little about the Craig Newmark memorial latrine in Jericho.

I figure that people of good will gotta give others a break. Microfinance and efforts like my own, that’s just a little bit, but helps. In this case, ANERA.org got the high school done, then Hamas won elections and funding was cut. We’ve all recently been encouraged by both Israeli and US governments to do this kind of stuff.

Newspaper print ads have been on decline for some time now. You’ve said that newspapers should focus on better Web sites, and not be publicly traded with Wall Street pressure of 10 or 20 percent profit margins. Any other advice you could give to print newspapers? They really need the help.

This needs a long essay, which I’m not qualified to give. In short: Speak truth to power, and hire more investigative reporters, and do better fact checking.

What was it like being on [The Daily Show with] Jon Stewart? Both of you, in a way, derive your success from the business and ethical failures of the mainstream media.

It was fun, since I admire his sense of humor and intelligence. My girlfriend and I watch every episode.

Speed is a big part of your success. Craigslist operates in real time, while newspapers — which, arguably, are the competition — lag behind. “Fast,” I’ve noticed, is a virtue to you. How important is speed to Craigslist, and to you?

Sometimes, you gotta be fast so you don’t waste the time of others.

You have said “My exit strategy for customer service is death.” How much serious customer service do you do at Craigslist?

Still doing customer service full-time, but I really, really want to
bring that down to half-time in the foreseeable future.

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Tips for creating a vibrant, trustworthy online community:
1) Be prepared to spend a lot of time dealing with customers
Newmark still spends at least six hours a day on craigslist-related customer service issues
2) Stay true to your roots
If it ran ads or charged for more than a few categories of postings, Craigslist could make millions of dollars a year. Newmark has chosen not to, ensuring independence and keeping with his site’s original philosophy of openness and community.
3) Don’t be afraid to laugh at yourself
As Newmark says, “A little snark now and then is very good.”

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Ron Mwangaguhunga is a FishbowlNY blogger.

Welcome to our new series, “Hey, How’d You Do That?” walking you through how those in the media industry navigated key professional junctures, achieved career-making coups, tackled spur-of-the-moment scenarios and made the decisions that furthered their work. In this first installment, we asked novelist Lynn Harris: How did you self-publish a book, then use it to land a deal with a major publisher for your second title?

Miss Media, my first novel, was set in 1999 during the dot-com gold rush and all the concomitant millennial angst. In the book, our heroine (Lola Somerville) pursued her hunch that women’s media giant Ovum, Inc. (and Ovum.com, complete with 24-hour juice bar, free sushi, and co-ed Ally McBathrooms) was controlled by forces far more powerful than even incompetence. Here’s the thing: I (my devoted agent) tried to sell it in 2002, when the gold rush was over. So publishers didn’t want it — though they did say lots of nice things — because, they said, it felt “dated.” The dot-com frenzy was over, but not over enough to be nostalgic or “retro” as subject matter. So ironically, it was “dated” because it was too early. (A handful of books set at the same time have just come out.)

Sometimes the noble thing to do is to put a well-done, but done, project in a drawer and never look back. But sometimes the noble thing to do is to not give up, even if that involves moving to Plan B. Or Plan R. I really, REALLY believed in the book, and not just because, you know, I wrote it. I truly did think the book had commercial potential beyond any ax-grinding of my own; I’d worked hard to make sure of that in the writing process.

And so I turned to Plan R, which was self-publishing. I was impressed with iUniverse’s presentation on their Web site. It was very thorough and professional and respectable, not hokey or, like, “Writers-to-be! Publish poetry about your cat here and receive a free box of stationery with a typewriter graphic!” Totally the opposite. So I went with them, and — despite the fact that it was Plan R — felt very good about the experience in and of itself.

The book did fine. Of course, I had to do all and any PR myself. This was a LOT of work. They say that any author winds up doing most of her own PR, but this was really ALL my own; writing the press release, mailing review copies. And I did manage to get some good [press]. But I did not have one of those stories you hear about authors driving cross-country selling books out of their hatchback and finally hitting the big-time. I do not have a hatchback: I hit the medium-time. I also ran into snobbery about self-publishing, which made me feel pretty bad… but also redoubled my resolve to make the next [book publishing experience] different.

After Miss Media, I wanted to get a fresh start with a new agent. I basically asked all my friends, my friends with good book deals, if they’d mind referring me to theirs. This also gave me incentive to focus on finishing a partial manuscript for the book, because agents don’t necessarily take you on as, like, a person — they are more likely to take you on for a particular project.

So I was thisclose to working with Agent A when Agent B called out of the blue after seeing a piece I’d written [for] Nerve and asked if I was looking for representation. I met with her and felt we clicked. Plus, it was sort of the literary version of The Rules: I was impressed that she sought me out — obviously, she liked my writing, which is an important start — and, in the bigger picture, that she was the kind of agent who was aggressive and charge-taking and on the lookout. (Of course, she was also probably looking to expand her roster, but who isn’t? Point is, I liked the way she did it.) And, fortunately, I did have a partial manuscript to show her; double fortunately, she liked it. So we agreed to work together.

Then I set about finishing — as she suggested — half of my novel manuscript and outlining, chapter by chapter, the rest of it. When she sent it out to publishers, I did not realize my dream of inciting a bidding war. But Berkely/Penguin came through with an okay deal and a lot of enthusiasm, so there it was.

Lynn Harris is an author, essayist, commentator, and award-winning journalist. Her brand-new book is the satirical novel Death By Chick Lit, whose prequel, Miss Media, was hailed by New York magazine as a “sharp, smart satire.” She is also co-creator, with Chris Kalb, of award-winning Web site BreakupGirl.net.

Rebecca L. Fox is mediabistro.com’s managing features editor. She can be reached at: rebecca AT mediabistro DOT com

Welcome to our new series, “Hey, How’d You Do That?” walking you through how those in the media industry navigated key professional junctures, achieved career-making coups, tackled spur-of-the-moment scenarios and made the decisions that furthered their work. This time, the coup belongs to Meredith Peters, who’s made speedy headway in her music industry career. By the time she graduated from Syracuse University with a communications degree, she had five music industry internships under her belt, countless business contacts and multiple mentors. She was thrilled when The Agency Group — a full-service booking agency that handles bands including The White Stripes, as well as comedians and more — offered her a full-time position fresh out of school, but was disappointed when she learned the job was for a receptionist. Here’s how she gunned for and got a promotion mere months later.

You took a job with a company that you loved, but the position wasn’t exactly what you were hoping for. What did you love about the company so much?
I’d interned at The Agency Group the summer before my senior year of college and saw that the company is very much based on team work, communication and integrity. Those things can be rare in the music business. For example, the agents at The Agency Group have their own roster of bands. [The agent] is responsible for those bands nationally and worldwide, meaning they handle all of the tours and shows. It gives them the ability to pay much more attention to their individual roster. At other companies, agents can be organized in many ways — often regionally. This means one agent may handle a band’s tour in the Northeast, while another agent handles it in the Midwest or Southwest. A third agent might handle their college shows.

Another thing that’s different about The Agency Group is that each agent designs their own roster, which allows them specialize in a specific genre. That being said, some agents have eclectic tastes and they work with a wide range of bands. For example, my boss’ roster has some hip-hop groups, some indie rock and some punk. I love that the company gives agents the freedom to work with bands they love.

I had to make a very quick decision, but I knew this was something I couldn’t pass up. It was my chance to show the company I could shine in the role I told them I wanted.

After so much experience, I’m sure you didn’t see yourself as a receptionist! Why did you decide to accept the offer?
It can definitely be tough to get a job in the music industry — I think a lot of it depends on your contacts, the connections through your school and internships you’ve had in the past. It’s also a lot about luck. We’ve had interns at our company who have stayed for months or even close to a year, hoping for a job. I saw the offer as an opportunity to get my foot in the door, impress the bosses and show them I had great attitude and could work hard. I loved the company so much I was willing to take a chance.

After two weeks on the job, the person who assisted one of the top agents at the company left. The agent needed someone to step up immediately and he asked me to fill in. Even though it was a temporary gig, I knew it would be a lot of responsibility. I’d be working much longer hours, handling contracts, dealing with band payment, promoters and band managers.

I was nervous. If I didn’t do a good job, or he didn’t like me, nobody else would want me to be their assistant! I had to make a very quick decision, but I knew this was something I couldn’t pass up. It was my chance to show the company I could shine in the role I told them I wanted. Within two weeks I was asked to continue working as an assistant permanently. I was absolutely ecstatic!

Were you worried it would be difficult to transition from receptionist to the role of an agent’s assistant?
To be honest, not that much. I think the fact that I started as the receptionist was more of a surprise to them than when I became an assistant! I’d gotten a lot of good feedback from [my coworkers] during my internship, and after I went back to school, I did a pretty good job of keeping in touch with a lot of them. I believed people liked me and knew what I was capable of.

I’d also made it clear in my [initial] interview that I wasn’t taking the receptionist position at with the intent of being a career receptionist. I told the vice president, as well as the office manager, that I had every intent and confidence that I could thrive in an assistant position.

When I accept the initial temporary assistants’ position, I put a lot of time and effort into the work, not only do what he needed in to order for him to do his job efficiently, but to impress him. I was working 11-hour days, asking questions, really focusing on internalizing everything I was learning from him and one of his former assistants. In those first two weeks, I learned more about time management and efficiency than I did in college. It was worth it because within a month of being made a permanent assistant, I’d helped sign [a new band] to the company.

Ways to parlay the job you’re offered into the one you really want:

1) Don’t be afraid to try out a job that isn’t 100 percent what you had in mind. As Peters puts it, “You never know how things will turn out.”

2) Be upfront about your goals. “During the interview I said, ‘If I take this job, I’m taking it with the hope that I’m going to move on and do other things with the company,'” Peters recalls.” The people I spoke with were encouraging about making that happen.”

3.) Don’t get overly comfortable in any one role. “Never stop trying to learn new things within and above your current role. When I was hired as the receptionist, I asked about taking on more responsibility. I still do that now as an assistant,” says Peters. “I want to learn and do as much as possible, and I always try to maintain a hardworking attitude.”

4) Network to create opportunities for yourself. “Intern as much as possible and stay in touch with everyone and anyone you meet along the way,” Peters advises others new to the workforce. “The trick to getting a job is forming and cultivating relationships.”

Stephanie Burton is a New York-based freelance writer.

While she may make near-hourly appearances on the Food Network these days, there was once a point when the nascent network aiming to reach home cooks didn’t have the ebullient E.V.O.O. slinger-cum-magazine editor on their radar. Back in 2001, then-publicist Jennifer Pullinger was charged with getting Ray TV and radio appearances to promote the cookbook she’d just released. With an aggressively strategic approach and lots of videotapes, Pullinger scored Ray a coveted Today Show segment and a meeting with a Food Network programming exec. She tells us just how she did it, and shares her key tips for crafting publicity campaigns to catapult promising unknowns to stardom.

In 2001, as a publicist at National Book Network, you were assigned to work on two early Rachael Ray cookbooks, Comfort Foods: Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals and Veggie Meals: Rachael Ray’s 30-Minute Meals. How much publicity work had you done prior to that assignment? Did these books/Rachael Ray represent any special opportunity for you?

At that time, I was new to book publicity. Before I was hired to be a book publicist at National Book Network (NBN), my professional experience in the media consisted of working as a volunteer media and marketing director for a small film festival in Orlando, and as a radio news reporter at WINA-AM in Charlottesville. Both, however, prepared me for the fast pace of book publicity. The “foodie” craze then wasn’t what it is now, but it was gaining popularity.

I had been with NBN for less than six months when I was assigned to work on Lake Isle Press’ Comfort Foods and Veggie Meals. Since the publication date for Veggie Meals was pushed back, I was primarily publicizing Comfort Foods.

To start off, NBN’s publicity director and I met with Rachael and her publisher in New York City (we were based in Lanham, MD) to discuss the publicity plan. I think everyone in the room, including the NBN sales rep who attended the meeting, knew that Rachael had the innate talent and personality for TV, so it was a great opportunity for me to develop a publicity plan that had lots of potential.

Describe the publicity plan you crafted for Rachael and the two books she was releasing at this time. What kind of resources did you get from Lake Isle Press to do this?

The publicity plan involved equal parts strategy, a talented, charismatic author, and luck. The publicity plan was about being in the right place at the right time, and hitting the right synergistic notes. I like Woody Allen’s quote: “80 percent of success is showing up,” and I think that applies here. It wasn’t quite that simple, but the plan was successful in part because I got the information about who Rachael was into the hands of the right people. Rachael took it from there by just by being herself.

The cookbook itself was the kind that wouldn’t daunt your average cook. That’s part of the reason why people like Rachael—her style of cooking is fairly easy and doesn’t intimidate. My pitch focused on Rachael’s personality and likeability, and how compelling she was on camera and in person.

My assignment was to secure Rachael radio and television interviews and appearances—no print. I also set up some book signings for her in upstate New York, where she was from, because they loved her there. At the time, she was a local television personality with WRGB-TV in Albany where she hosted a weekly cooking segment. So she was known regionally. I was given roughly 25 to 30 video cassettes as a demo to send to television producers. I sent about 20 of them to the Food Network. I just blanketed the place as much as I could, and started with follow-up. I sent them to shows that I thought would be open to a guest host or guest cooking segment. I also sent the tapes to the three major network morning shows, among others. For radio, I used the contacts that Rachael provided me, and also researched other topical radio shows that I thought might be interested in having a cookbook author on to talk about such.

What exactly did it take to land Rachael an NBC appearance? Walk us through the back-and-forth between you and the network, as our understanding is that nabbing a publicity opportunity like this is no small feat.

As any good book publicist does, they send their titles to the book producers at the major morning news outlets—The Today Show,Good Morning America, and The Early Show. I did that, but the book producer at The Today Show turned Comfort Foods down at first. She must have passed it on to a colleague, because shortly thereafter, a special projects producer from the show called me to see if Rachael was available to do a cooking segment. It was winter, so it was the right time for Comfort Foods. It’s just the kind of stuff people crave when it’s cold outside. I don’t mean to make it sound that simple, but the back-and-forth kind of was. Because it wasn’t that long before the book producer passed and the special projects producer called me to book her, at that point it was just a matter of nailing down the date and time, and then Rachael getting to the Today Show studios. Seeing Rachael on tape was likely what cinched it for the producer, as well as the timeliness of the release of Comfort Foods. Any time you have good video that shows how well your author presents themselves, make sure to include that in the press materials you send out.

Even before her Today Show appearance, I thought she had national TV potential… I always got positive feedback from the booksellers who wanted her at their store for a signing—nothing like I had experienced with the authors I had worked with up until then.

At the time, how did you and Rachael think her first TV appearance went? Did it seem to either of you that she had great TV potential? Why?

Within days of her Today Show appearance, Comfort Foods shot to the top five in Amazon.com sales, so I think it went really well! As a publicist just starting out, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. You could tell Matt [Lauer], Katie [Couric], and Al [Roker] liked her a lot too. She came across as real and approachable and full of energy. But as I said, even before her Today Show appearance, I thought she had national TV potential. She was a natural before the camera as demonstrated by her WRGB tapes and I always got positive feedback from the booksellers who wanted her at their store for a signing—nothing like I had experienced with the authors I had worked with up until then.

How did the NBC spot lead to a meeting between Rachael and the Food Network? Back in 2001, the Food Network had a far more minor media presence than it does now—how did Rachael, in that stage of her career, and the network complement one another? What was the original thinking on what a collaboration between Rachael and the Food Network might look like?

It was synergy. As mentioned, I sent as many demo tapes as I could to the Food Network, so if they hadn‘t heard about her by then, then they would by the time I started follow-up. That “blanket” strategy paid off, I believe, because a day or two after her Today Show appearance, I scheduled her to be on WAMC Public Radio’s “Vox Pop” in Albany. This was a contact of Rachael’s. Someone associated with the Food Network was listening to the WAMC interview, liked what they heard, and called some other folks at the Food Network, who, fortunately, had already heard about her because I had sent them the tapes and press materials. So her appearance on The Today Show, coupled with her next-day WAMC Public Radio segment, led to her first meeting with Food Network executives. Right place, right time. Right around that time I also got her an interview on WHYY radio in Philadelphia, and I’m sure that didn’t hurt either.

It was a day or two after her Today Show segment that I got a call from Bob Tuschman, vice president of programming and production at the Food Network, inquiring about scheduling a meeting with Rachael. This meeting would involve discussion beyond the scope of publicity—it was to talk about a possible opportunity for Rachael to host her own show. So I had accomplished my goal for Rachael, the cookbook, and more. The 2001 publicity plan for Comfort Foods was what got her foot solidly in the door at the Food Network, and she took it from there.

What’s the nature of your relationship with Rachael Ray, currently? Do you keep in touch? Does she acknowledge that you were instrumental in connecting her with the Food Network? What is your title/affiliation now, and how did it evolve from what you were doing at National Book Network back in 2001?

A few months after the Comfort Foods campaign, I moved to Atlanta to attend graduate school at Georgia State University, where I studied communications. I didn’t keep up with Rachael, other than what I saw or read in the media myself. In her book, Rachael Ray: 30 Minute Meals 2, which came out in 2003, she does thank me. As to what I do now, not long ago I was a freelance writer and book/film publicist, but soon I will join the staff of a publisher in Washington, D.C.

Are there any other clients you’ve seen since Ray whom you believe has the same kind of star power, and is poised to break out as significantly as she has? What are the qualities or elements that lead you to believe someone has this kind of potential?

I have worked with some authors who have a great story to tell, but may not be as compelling as an in-person interview. And there are others who have something unique to say, but beyond the release of their book, will only be of value to the media as news warrants. Some of the recent breakthroughs for me professionally have come from the publicity campaigns I contributed to in the indie film arena when I was a full-time freelance publicist.

I think the most important quality in an author or potential media personality is to know what you are talking about inside and out, because people can tell when you are full of hot air. Having a certain presence is important. It doesn’t hurt to be likable on some level too. Then again, there are a lot of unpleasant personalities in the media today that people are drawn to, so maybe it’s not always critical to be likable. But overall, it’s hard to list specific “star power” qualities, because I imagine it’s the same instinct that casting agents have when they see talent. They just know.

Five Tips on Launching Successful PR Plans

1) Trust your gut. To me, the words “media savvy” mean the same thing as having an “instinct” or “second sense” about what‘s going to catch not only the media’s attention, but also, that of the public or the specific audience you are trying to reach. That may sound obvious, but it’s up to you as the publicist to convince the reporter, editor, or producer that their audience needs to know about your book. As such, any media professional should trust that they have a handle on what’s current or popular in the marketplace. During our first meeting with Rachael, I think everyone in the room [myself, the publicity director, the editor/ publisher, and the sales rep] knew she was a natural fit for the Food Network. It wasn’t said out loud, but we knew. It was just a matter of letting [the Food Network] know that.

2) Use your author’s contacts. The WAMC Public Radio contact was integral to the success of Rachael’s campaign. Don’t thumb your nose at the smaller, regional radio and television stations, because you never know who’s going to be listening.

3) Maximize your resources. Make sure your media list is tight. When you have few resources, you have to make sure you are sending your press materials to the best and most appropriate people. But then again, don’t be afraid to take some risks. If the Food Network hadn’t responded, I could easily have been questioned about why I sent so many tapes to one place. But that strategy worked.

4) Stay on top of emerging trends. You have to keep yourself plugged in culturally—the so-called “finger on the pulse” analogy applies here. Cultivate your ability to see emerging trends and how to connect your authors with the media who cover those areas. That means you’ll be doing a lot of reading and monitoring of the media. While cooking shows weren’t as wildly popular to the mass audience as they are now, people recognized that the Food Network had the right idea about programming then, and clearly, they do now as well.

5) Don’t give up If your book publicity campaign is rough going at first, but you believe strongly in your author and what they have to say, then continue pushing and keeping the momentum moving forward. You never know when your hard work will pay off and someone will say “yes.” While it doesn’t always happen for other authors like it did for Rachael, it just takes one good media placement to start the domino effect of getting other media interested and on board.

Jennifer Pullinger holds a BS degree in marketing from Virginia Tech and a MA degree in communications from Georgia State University. She has been a media professional for over 10 years.

Rebecca L. Fox is mediabistro.com’s managing editor, service and features. She can be reached at rebecca AT mediabistro DOT com.

After 20 years of work in some of the biggest, glitziest, star-studded restaurants in New York City, Abbe Diaz never imagined she’d one day pen a tell-all book, contribute to the New York Post, and host an exclusive, members-only Web forum for restaurant insiders. Below the former hostess, maitre-d, and self-proclaimed “potted plant” explains how she landed in the throes of New York media.

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In May 2004, you published PX This: The Diary of a Potted Plant, a personal narrative chronicling your years working at Mercer Kitchen, The Park, Smith, Lotus, Theo, 66 and several others. How did this all come about and what does the term “PX this” mean?
The literal translation for “PX” is in French: personne extraordinaire. In the restaurant industry it means just that: a VIP. When an important person comes into a restaurant, a celebrity, an editor, a political person, whoever, it’s the maitre d’s job to recognize this person. At most restaurants there’s a special slip of paper that the maitre d’ will quickly fill out, noting the name of the person, what table they’re sitting at, and why they’re a “PX.” Then they’ll slip it to the waiter as quickly as possible.

The term “PX this” is sort of a little stab, almost like an industry curse word. If you’re a server and it’s the end of a long night, the last thing you want to deal with is a PX. You’ve been on your feet for hours, dealing with everyone’s requests all night and now you’re going to have to be extra careful and alert. In your mind you’re thinking, “F*ck having to deal with this PX!” which becomes, “PX this!”

Publishing a book was not planned. I didn’t go to journalism school. [Diaz graduated from Rutgers with a B.A. in economics.] I was out to dinner one night with a group of friends and we were gossiping about one thing or the other. It seemed like every celebrity or VIP that was mentioned, I’d had some kind of experience or interaction with. I’d spent 20 years working for some big-name restaurateurs, especially Jean-Georges [Vongerichten], and there was always a lot going on in his restaurants.

Someone said, “You should write a book about all of this!” I’d been keeping a journal on my computer [in Word documents] for years, but I’d never thought about it before. This whole conversation took place around the same time Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada was published [early 2003]. The idea of a New York City restaurant roman á clef seemed very possible. A few days after that dinner, a friend of mine called to say she had contacts at Ballantine [Publishing Group] and if I was willing to let her act as my independent agent, she was very confident she could push the book through to the right people. [Diaz asked not to name this particular friend as they are no longer on speaking terms]. Within days, I sent her over 30 or 40 pages from my journal.

Since this was your private journal, weren’t you worried about revealing things that were excessively personal? Did you change any names or details before sending everything over?
Not really. There were some parts where I thought, “Well, I don’t love the fact that everyone might read about this, but I can live with it.” As far as names and details, I’d already given a number of the “worst” characters pseudonyms because I didn’t want to look at their names in my own journal. Just dealing with them in real life was enough.

Your friend was confident she could put your book in the hands of the right people, but she wasn’t a publisher or author. Why did you decide to take her up on her offer?
First of all, this woman wasn’t blowing smoke around when she said she could help me. She did have very influential friends and she’d helped people before, so her suggestion wasn’t far-fetched. There was no real promise of money — more a suggestion that a book could lead to bigger things like a movie or publicity. The writing was already done, so I didn’t see a risk in taking a chance.

The thing that was truly important to me was the chance to expose the injustices going on at Jean-Georges’ restaurants. More times than I can remember, I saw servers lose hard-earned tips because management was taking a share of it. The people who should have been encouraging morale could not have been less interested in the staff.

The subtitle of my book, “The Diary of a Potted Plant,” is in reference to how I felt when I was working as a hostess for Jean-George. I was as invisible as a potted plant. I thought if a book could publicize any of the wrongdoings, I was more than willing to put my name on it.

Within a few days your friend came back to you with changes and suggestions from the editors she knew. What was the biggest challenge in meeting their requests?
There were grammar and spelling issues, but the main thing they wanted was to bold-face all of the celebrity names in the book. They wanted it to be very Page Six-esque. I made three pages worth of changes before I had to stop.

My writing had a totally different look and feel. It wasn’t the same voice — it wasn’t me. I sounded pompous and vain. I tried to explain to [my friend], “It’s not the same book. It’s not me!” but she wouldn’t listen. Her feeling was, “If you want this to be commercially viable, you have to get over it.” My opinion as the author was completely irrelevant.

When did you finally decide you couldn’t get over it?
The publishing house put me in touch with a lawyer to help protect me any against libel charges. Obviously, he saw I wasn’t making the edits. One afternoon, I broke down crying. I told him flat out, “I can’t go through with this.”

At that point, I feel like he stopped being my lawyer and started being my friend. He asked me what I was hoping to accomplish by publishing my work. He asked me the questions that no one else had.

He explained that even though I wasn’t expecting to make much money from the book, I should consider the profits. After the publishing house and my friend took the fees, taxes, and all the other royalties, I wasn’t looking at much of a payday.

I asked myself, “Why would I make myself look like an asshole, even for $10,000? Is it worth it?” I didn’t think so. That’s when this lawyer explained to me I had other options. He gave me information about smaller, independent publishing companies that would give me a lot more freedom to publish the book the way I wanted to.

Were you worried what your friend would think when you decided to go your own route with a lesser-known publisher?
At the time I wasn’t scared at all. I never in a million years thought she would take it as a slap in the face, but that’s exactly how she took it. She thought I was ungrateful, that I was going behind her back to set up my own deal. I never thought she would see it that way. I was naïve. She was furious. To this day, we don’t speak.

This July, former employees at eight of Vongerichte’s restaurants filed a lawsuit claiming they were paid sub-minimum wages, cheated out of overtime, and forced to share tips with their bosses. How does that feel?
It’s great, although I’m sure they’ll settle before it ever reaches court. I have documented proof that, yes, those things were going on. I wouldn’t hesitate to testify.

The book also affected your personal life. Lois Freedman, widely regarded as Jean-Georges’s “right-hand woman” had you thrown out of Mercer Kitchen when you went in for drinks one night. If you were going to do it all over again, would you still make the same decisions?
I have no regrets. When I decided to publish the book, I knew there was no way in hell I was going back [to work] for Jean-George. Despite any criticism or backlash, I’m happy. The best thing about PX This is that it’s my own and it’s the truth. People can say I created rumors or tried to pump out a salacious novel, but the simple reality is everything I wrote is dated. There’s no question about my motives. For that, I always will always be grateful.

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Five Things To Know Before Publishing a Tell-All
1) Take a closer look.
You might have a book on your hands and not even know it.
“It wasn’t until my friend mentioned the idea that I realized I had hundreds of stories sitting around doing nothing,” Diaz says.

2) Your idea of a “memoir” might be vastly different from the people who are considering publishing it.
“The [traditional publishing] system is structured to give the author very little control,” Diaz says. “You’re going to have to play by their rules and make their changes. It’s a losing battle to fight what they want. Your work won’t be commercially viable to them.”

3) The stigma is lifting: Don’t be afraid to consider self-publishing.
“There’s an inherent integrity in self-publishing that doesn’t exist when you take a more traditional route,” Diaz says. “You can exercise much great control over your work. Basically, self-publishing is putting your money and reputation where your mouth is. I believe there will be a day when self-publishing is even more respected than the traditional route.”

4) If it’s a memoir with your name on it, you better be able to stand by the content.
“After you publish, there’s no going back,” Diaz warns. “There are going to be critics, but no one can touch you if you write the truth.”

5) Fight for a product that is true to you.
“Maintain your integrity,” Diaz says. “The final product must be true to what I was going through at that time. No one can take that away from me.”

The continuing “sequel” to PX This can be found on Diaz’s weblog.

Stephanie Burton is a New York-based freelancer.

Despite an around-the-clock work schedule and a standard daily reading diet of at least 26 Web sites, Fashionista.com editor Faran Krentcil swears she’s “not on crack.” Trading fashion reporting for The Daily for blogging Fashionista.com into existence early this year, her editorial focus now requires her to reach a younger audience that “care[s] more about Jessica Stam than Jessica Simpson.” Prior to her second New York Fashion Week at the helm of Fashionista — one in which she’ll lead a “fashion army” rather than cover the endless cycle of shows and parties solo — Krentcil told us about the intimacy she curries with readers, even while covering an aspirational industry that keeps so many at arm’s length, marveled at fashion mags’ many missed opportunities, and revealed her own fashion media crush.

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Name: Faran Krentcil
Position: Editor, Fashionista.com
Education: Duke ’03
Hometown: Andover, MA
First job: From ages 10-18, I was a working actress. Mostly theater.
Last three jobs: Editor, Fashionista.com; senior writer, The Daily; fashion

contributor, New York (Web site, still going…)
Birthdate: August 8
Marital/relationship status: Not today
First section of the Sunday Times: Styles
Favorite TV show: WKRP in Cincinnati
Last book read: Summer’s Crossing, by Truman Capote
Guilty pleasure: Flats with pants

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It’s your second New York Fashion Week as editor of Fashionista.com. What will you be doing differently this time around?

Fashionista.com was two weeks old during the last Fashion Week. Everything was very seat-of-our-pants, and I wrote the entire site from 4 a.m. – 8 a.m. Plus, I felt like I had to be at every show, because our brand was new, and I was its only representative.

This time, we have a “fashion army” covering the shows with me. That’s fun for me — more breathing room — and fun for you — more points of view. We have stronger brand recognition, but the seat-of-our-pants vibe will stay, because it’s our signature.

I’m also guest blogging for Teen Vogue this season. They’ll link back to Fashionista and we’ll link back to them. I’m so excited!

You were a reporter at Fashion Week Daily, prior to being hired by Elizabeth Spiers as Fashionista.com’s inaugural editor. How did you and Elizabeth initially connect, and what were your early conversations about Fashionista like?

I got a text from a friend — nobody in fashion, just a guy who’s good with his liquor. It said, “Elizabeth Spiers is looking for you.” And I texted back, “So what?” I was exhausted — I just wanted to write a book and a few plays, and breathe.

But I met her anyway, because I was curious. Our initial conversations were about voids in the Internet fashion world; what people wanted to read that didn’t exist yet.

How close is today’s blog to that original vision?

Well I think in the very beginning, Elizabeth expected the site to be little more caustic, but I never gave into that expectation because it seemed too obvious, and also very far from my own style.

For me, looking at our January archive now is like seeing a baby picture. You recognize small bits of who we are, and understand how we’ve grown. But we didn’t have an editorial goal in the beginning, except to reach the girls and become part of their routines. And that’s happened.

Which are your closest competitors, and what sets Fashionista.com apart?

In advertiser meetings, we’re put against magazine Web sites a lot. But we’re obviously quite different from those outlets, and I don’t consider them to be editorial competition. We have a rougher feel, so our connection to readers is more intimate — and certainly more volatile. They take things very personally with us — or I should say, with me! It’s as if we’re a favorite indie band that everyone thinks they’ve discovered on their own…

How do you think the fashion print media is handling the Web? Which outlets are getting it right, and which have a ways to go?

I talk about this every day. Print media has so much access and they don’t take advantage of it! Magazines take hundreds of photos that never get used. Letting all that beautiful information disappear — it’s like the Internet answer to wasting gourmet food.

When Elle put Lindsay Lohan cover outtakes on their Web site, I was like, “Finally!” And TeenVogue.com does a nice job of behind-the-scenes slideshows from cover shoots. But there can be even more. Also, the Web could acknowledge a simple fashion truth — magazines exist to sell things.

When I see a fashion spread online, I want to click on the shoes, click on the dress, and go buy them. ShopVogue allows you to do this, but only with ads — I don’t want the ads! I want the shoes that Lily Cole is wearing on page 243! You know?

“Our contributors are really just the girls we wanted at our lunch table, so to speak.”

Elizabeth left Fashionista.com’s parent network, Dead Horse Media (which she co-founded) in mid-April. How has that affected your day-to-day?

Elizabeth wasn’t very involved in Fashionista’s day-to-day, so there hasn’t been a big blip in our routine.

You’ve run more international coverage in the past few months, as well as gotten more people filing to the blog in general. How do you find and vet contributors who complement Fashionista?

We want to keep Fashionista a very social experience — but not in a MySpace way. Our site is based on the idea of girls passing notes under the table. But instead of notes about boys and teachers, they’re notes about clothes, designers, models…

Everyone remembers that initial feeling of getting a note. It meant you instantly belonged to a clique, and to a conspiracy. So our contributors are really just the girls we wanted at our lunch table, so to speak. They were all readers of the site before they became part of our group, and when they contacted me, it was very clear they understood how they fit into Fashionista’s world. Right now, that’s more important than a resumé.

As for the tone of the site, it’s very easy: We write the way we talk.

What’s coming up for the site?

Near future: Redesign. The content won’t change, but the site is going to look incredible. This happens within the next two months.

Far future: Look for more TV, more visual components, and more personal parts of the site that you can only access by invitation.

Walk us through a typical non-Fashion Week day, starting with the first things you read each morning…

Well, the fun/sad thing is, I’m always working. Whenever I read, shop, party, watch TV, walk to Whole Foods, whatever, I’m always thinking how it could fit into our site. I don’t start or end my working day; the work winds through my life.

At some point every day, I will read all of the following for work:

Style.com, Vogue.com, WWD.com, Elle.com, Nymag.com, Runway.blogs.nytimes.com, Teenvogue.com, Nylon.com, Fashionweekdaily.com, Vogue.co.uk, Vogue.fr, Style.it, TheFashionSpot.com, Fabsugar.com, Dazeddigital.com, Vmagazine.com, Showstudio.com, Myspace.com/fashionistadotcom, Technorati.com, Gawker.com, Jezebel.com, Netaporter.com, Bluefly.com, Topshop.com, Forever21.com, and Flickr.com.

I swear I am not on crack.

Back in 2005, you told us about your crazy Fashion Week production schedule at the Daily. How does blogging the shows and related events for Fashionista compare?

Fashionista lives for its readers, and our readers are younger than The Daily‘s. We build our stories around what they want to know, and so our Fashion Week coverage begins with a question:

“If you’re 26, if you’re obsessed with fashion but also have a life beyond it; if you care more about Jessica Stam than Jessica Simpson; what do you want to know?”

So we chase the younger designers, the messier celebrities, the 5 a.m. models… and we show everyone our experience through smeared eyeliner, because it’s how our girls already frame their lives.

My job now is to get that experience, over and over again, during Fashion Week — and then to imagine 50 different ways to share it online.

Another difference between my work at The Daily and Fashionista is that now, I don’t have a boss. Imagine the difference…

To go all Daily on you: What are your personal Fashion Week survival tips?

Be really polite, remember to eat, realize your seating assignment and your self-worth aren’t connected, and go to at least one party just for fun.

Best and worst experiences covering Fashion Week?

Best: This is so expected, but I always think Marc shows are best because they remind me of great theater — a group of people coming together to experience communal beauty. You leave thinking you’ve seen the world change. It’s a rush.

And I’d be lying if I didn’t say that meeting celebrities is hysterical. Once, Hilary Duff gave me a ride in her car. It was a really fun drive, though I never wrote about it — I just told my mom.

Worst: Last year, I asked Ashley Olsen if I could interview her for The Daily. She said no. Actually, she gave me this HUGE smile, and said, “But I hope you have a nice day!” You know, in her Olsen voice? I was SO mortified. And she SO didn’t want me to have a nice day. I’m still haunted.

Which big fashion media name is as intimidating as the grapevine would have us believe, and who’s actually a big teddy bear, contrary to his/her reputation?

Cathy Horyn is so funny and so cool. I wouldn’t call her a “teddy bear” — in fact, I think you wrote this question specifically to discuss André Leon Talley (Not consciously. -Ed.) — but she just crackles. She’s like the conversational equivalent of Pop Rocks candy. I have a huge fashion crush on her.

Conversely, I find Carine Roitfeld to be the only fashion editor who can freeze you. Her clothes are so incredibly die-hard that she can invoke the “I’m-not-good-enough” feeling if you’re in a casual outfit. But you have to get over it, because you’ll never dress like Carine.

How do you handle hanging with fashion editors whose clothing budgets are the size of some bloggers’ annual salaries?

My father is the inventor of toaster strudel.

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Rebecca L. Fox is mediabistro.com’s managing editor. She can be reached at Rebecca AT mediabistro DOT com.

Say what you will about San Francisco Chronicle executive editor Phil Bronstein (and many people do), but the man has some serious mettle. With a background as a war correspondent in revolution-era Philippines and El Salvador among other places, not to mention one highly publicized marriage and divorce to actress Sharon Stone, he has tangled with the best of them.

Bronstein started his journalism career doing movie reviews for a local paper in Davis, Ca., (where he made the seemingly inexcusable error of omitting the movie’s title in his first review). He started at the San Francisco Examiner in 1980 as a beat reporter and then did investigations before becoming their foreign correspondent, where his work covering the fall of the Ferdinand Marcos regime earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1986. After nine years overseas, he returned to a desk job and swiftly moved up the ladder, ultimately landing at the Chronicle when, in an anti-trust maneuver, Hearst sold the Examiner and bought the Chronicle.

He’s managed to stay atop the Chronicle‘s masthead in times that could only be described as punishing. Current economic realities have not been kind to Northern California’s largest paper, with dropping circulation rates, ever-shrinking budgets and recent buyouts that saw the 400-person staff reduced by 25 percent.

Despite the gloom, doom and downsizing, the 142-year old paper is looking to the future; Bronstein points to recent innovations that marry service, advocacy and interactivity, like the popular outing-public-officials feature “ChronicleWatch.” Now the buzzword around the newsroom is “journalism of action,” a Hearst-era phrase that casts the newspaper as activist-cum-solution-generator. Here, Bronstein talks about the paper, the profession and his detractors.

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Name: Phil Bronstein
Position: Executive vice president and editor, San Francisco Chronicle
Education: “Virtually none. I was thrown out of at least two schools before I even got to college. And I dropped out of college.”
Hometown: Born in Atlanta, grew up in a variety of places
First job: Reporter for a TV station (First “real” job)
Last 3 jobs: Managing editor, San Francisco Examiner; executive editor, San Francisco Examiner; executive editor, San Francisco Chronicle
Birthdate: October 4, 1950
Marital status: Married
Favorite TV show: Curb Your Enthusiasm
Last book read: God Lives in St. Petersburg by Tom Bissell
Most interesting media story right now: “For us the most interesting media story is the killing of this editor in Oakland [Chauncey Bailey] — fascinating. There are some cultural aspects that I definitely want us to get out of there.”
Guilty pleasure: “I would say relaxation, but I don’t remember the last time I really relaxed. Guilty pleasure is probably reading the tabloids, though not nearly as fun since News of the World went out of business.”

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What is a typical day like for you? How much actual editing do you do on a day-to-day basis?

We just went through staff cuts — pretty significant — so I’m doing a lot more. We have a continuous news desk, which is in charge of getting stories that are breaking and getting them on sfgate.com. So I talk to [the editor] — she gets in at 7 am., [and] usually by then I will have looked at the stories in the Chronicle; I get a couple other papers at home and I will have looked at them and some blogs and other Web sites. The next major thing that happens, other than informal conversations, is we have a 10 o’clock executive committee meeting with all of the company, so I represent the newsroom. 10:30 is our first formal news meeting. And then there’s another meeting at 3 that kind of formalizes what’s going to happen the next day, and I’ll usually look at the pages either here or I can do it from home later on in the evening. And everything that goes on in between could involve the editing of stories, particularly Page One stories or special projects, investigative pieces. I’m always the last set of eyeballs on those.

You have an impressive history as an investigative reporter. Do you ever miss being out in the trenches?
Every day. Every day. Foreign reporting too…

Right. You were in El Salvador and the Philippines…
And a few other places… Peru, the Middle East. All the interesting places at the time.

When you came back to the US, did you immediately go into being an editor or did you spend more time being a reporter based here?
No, no, it was like windsheer. I immediately went into being an editor.

I’ve always thought not all reporters make good editors.
That’s very true. And I think you’d have to ask the people I work with if that has to do with my case or not.

Do you feel like you had certain skills or tendencies that enabled you to make the jump?

Well, I think certainly think being a war correspondent doesn’t hurt. You certainly learn how to deal with crises and [have to] attempt to remain calm in difficult circumstances. That’s very helpful, especially these days in the newspaper world. I think what I brought with me from reporting, which I think all journalists and particularly all reporters ought to have, is two basic traits — one is an abiding curiosity, like really, almost an obsessive curiosity, and the other is an open mind. There’s a tendency in journalism to want to make things black and white — this person’s a bad guy, this person’s a good guy. It just makes for more of a great Walt Disney tale, but life is not like that and people are not like that. And I think that’s a valuable piece of information to have absorbed.

You seem to take a very practical approach from what I’ve read, like “People just don’t tell the truth sometimes.”
Well, especially, public officials. I think one of the key things that’s made [Jon Stewart and] The Daily Show popular is that he seems to have an overarching principle, which is, if I’m reading it right, never take a public official at their word. I think that’s not a bad way to go. Because people in a position of power and authority and institutions that are powerful and authoritative, their job is to create some mythology. And so one of the things we exist to do is to try to pull back the curtain on the mythology and see if it’s just a little guy cranking up the wheel.

It’s interesting you say that because I read — you did that interview with SFist.com — and I read all the responses from the people…
You enter the blog world today, especially as an editor and probably particularly me because I have a slightly more unusual history than some, and you’re just asking for it. And I knew that.

Some people were just so angry in response to your interview, talking about how they felt the Chronicle was very aligned with local politicians and government and sympathetic to the Bush Administration.

Boy, I tell you, I think if you ask any of those people you would not at all get that same reaction. We have had very contentious — appropriately contentious — relationships with a string of San Francisco mayors. If you ask [San Francisco Mayor] Gavin Newsome today if he felt the Chronicle was helpful to him, you would get an answer very different than what these folks think.

It’s sort of like a no-win situation. You don’t get love from any angle.

I think the expectation of love professionally is something that an editor should just not aspire to. I think it’s an unrealistic expectation.

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We do things like we sent Sean Penn to Iraq and Iran. We want to have some fun, and that’s a good thing. Newspapers have taken themselves very seriously, this kind of “higher calling disease.”

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You recently told SF Weekly that you thought you’d negotiated enough buyouts with the staff to avoid any more forced layoffs. So you think it’s good news for the foreseeable future?
Yeah, I think the foreseeable future is all we can talk about.

How do you think all these cuts — almost 100 of 400 staffers — affect morale?
Any kind of cut that size isn’t going to make people happy. [But] I think people were not shocked — maybe with the size of it, but we had put off cuts for quite some time when they were going on at a lot of other newspapers. It’s always really difficult for people, you know, when it’s their lives, their families, their livelihood involved. So we said in this meeting “It’s over” and these are buyouts, not layoffs… But I do think, in discussing last week what kind of things [are in store for] the future, people actually clapped, which is pretty rare in the newspaper world.

Shortly after you joined the paper, you said you wanted it to lose its unserious or “goofy” reputation. Do you feel like you’ve done some things to succeed in that direction?

I hope I haven’t succeeded completely. There’s a question of credibility, which is more what I was trying to address. We’ve got a guy named Don Assmussen who does a cartoon called “Bad Reporter.” He’s so out there, in the great tradition of San Francisco satirists. And we do things like we sent Sean Penn to Iraq and Iran. We want to have some fun, and that’s a good thing. Newspapers have taken themselves very seriously, this kind of “higher calling disease.” Higher calling disease often [means] newspapers completely losing touch with the people they’re supposed to be serving. The example I use, which may or may not have ever happened, is a reporter who says “I have a reader on the line, but I just don’t have time to talk to them because I’m writing my story.” I think there’s been this piety in journalism that evolved I don’t know where that has a lot of rituals that go along with it that people take very seriously, and I think there’s been too much of that. So we’ve done some fun things. We took some people’s calls, voicemails — in essence audio letters to the editor — and we put them in a podcast we call “Correct Me If I’m Wrong.” One of them, this guy called up, ranting about how we used the phrase “unmanned drone” and whether it was redundant. [Ed Note: The actual offending phrase was “pilotless drone.”] He just started yelling — really interesting phone call. It was the first one we had and it went crazy all over the Web, people made ring tones out of it and t-shirts. So we like to have some fun, but that’s a little bit different than credibility.

That leads me to my next question about your online presence and your recent promotion of former SFist.com blogger Eve Batey [for the new position of managing editor of online]. Where do you see that going?

I think Ben Bradlee said not too long ago that “It’s still about telling stories,” and he’s right. Only now we have all these useful technological tools that help us provide those narratives in a variety of ways, both in the telling and in the presentation — on the screen, phones, Blackberries. So you combine our expertise at sussing out the story — understanding what its essence is, vetting it — with the wide variety of multimedia options and you get something that’s much more interesting and much closer to the truth.

Are there plans to ramp up or expand what you’re doing?
What we’re doing is ramping up. Let me give you an example. A guy falls off Half Dome [in Yosemite National Park], and we sent a reporter to interview the rangers, report on the scene, come back, and do a very nice story about it. We also had Tom Stienstra, who is a very well-known outdoors writer, [do] a blog, and the blog got hundreds of responses, including from eyewitnesses. So suddenly you have, if you verify these, much more than just the ranger talking about what he understood happened, you’ve got people who were actually on the Half Dome — above the guy who fell, below the guy who fell — and you can create a much broader picture, a much bigger story of what actually happened. You also had people talking about what was wrong, why such a thing could have happened.

The next step is: Here are the problems and suggested solutions so then we can use the editorial page and whatever other means are appropriate and push for those changes. William Randolph Hearst created this thing called “journalism of action.” Journalism of action is really about — it’s not about advocacy, which people particularly in the priesthood say you can’t do in newspapers — but journalism of action was described as connecting people to solutions. You don’t just say, “Here’s the information, good luck, see you later.” Journalism of action is, in Hearst’s case, they talked about his newspapers injecting themselves routinely and conspicuously correcting ills in public life. But in our own way, journalism of action is “How does this story affect me?” But the second important question is, “What can they do about it?” So we started this thing a couple years ago called ChronicleWatch. It’s this little graphic box on the front of the local section. Basically people send us in problems — pothole on my street, graffiti on the mural, light switch in my kid’s classroom won’t work — and we have a little picture of the problem and then we find out who the public official is who’s supposed to get paid to fix it, and we put his or her picture there along with phone number and email. And we run it until they fix it.

And how’s the success rate on that?
Like 90 percent. It’s huge — and, by the way, the most popular feature in the paper. So people want that, and what’s interesting, in a nice convergence, is that the Bay Area has probably the highest volunteerism rates of any place in the country. People want to get involved here. So this journalism of action, we sort of adopted the phrase, we can do it obviously in a contemporary way with all these other tools — these technological tools. You don’t have to just do the reporting; you can find out what the problems are, get a sense what the solutions are, and then, if you want to, push for the solutions.

It’s like your readers are giving you your next angles.
Right, but then we in turn are giving them the information so they can go fix it. It’s not like we’re going to go fix it. It doesn’t hurt that we have leverage as a major metropolitan newspaper and you don’t want your picture in there next to a problem day in and day out if you’re a public official. But it’s really just a pass-through — it’s like we’re saying to readers, “Here is the guy responsible. Go get him. Go make him fix it.”

And they do.
And they do.

And that was another thing in the SFist.com article. A lot of people felt you weren’t doing enough local coverage.

Well, I did see that, and I think to some extent that’s true because I think we were trying too hard, like a lot of major metropolitan papers, to be “buffet journalism” — give you a little bit of everything. So we would have reporters in Iraq, the Middle East, in China, or Mexico. And I think there’s so much that needs to be done here in the way of reporting and in the way of this journalism of action idea that we’re going to be concentrating much more on that. And I think we’re going to pick, with the staff’s input, what we call “master narratives” — major topics that are of significance here. Technology would certainly be one of them, green living is huge here. That doesn’t mean we’re only going to do those, but those are going to be areas where we’re going to concentrate resources and time.

And does that mean more investigative journalism?
Investigative journalism is absolutely essential. You want to take some of the aspects of investigative journalism and use them every day. Certainly ChronicleWatch does. But we have a very good team — you know the BALCO story came out of two reporters here. We will continue to have a strong investigative team, there’s no question about it.

What’s your response to [San Francisco Bay Guardian publisher] Bruce Bruggman’s blog entry about the PG&E story and your consumer reporter David Lazarus — he said the Chronicle totally avoided the biggest consumer story in San Francisco history?

That’s been Bruce’s line for 30 years, and I love him for it. Maybe one of these days he’ll find another topic to complain about. I think he’s single-handedly almost maintained this sort of curmudgeonly alternative weekly in San Francisco, and I think it’s a great thing.

Which stories excite you the most?

I’m big on cultural stories, and I don’t mean arts. I mean the culture of the place — what is the underlying culture? When I was in the Philippines, I tried very hard not to just talk to the usual suspects — the politicians, the clergy, the people who were directly involved in the battles over there — but also the artists, the playwrights, the filmmakers and so on to get a real sense [of the place]. The Philippines was such a unique kind of culture — it was a colony of Spain for 400 years and I think it was the only colony the United States ever had. And it was in the middle of Southeast Asia, so you had this strange interwoven tapestry. So understanding what that was about, and I think that’s true of any story anywhere, you have got to understand the culture. News events are like pin balls — boing-ing around, and to understand why they happened you have to have some sense of the underlying cultural story. So I love it when we’re able to capture that.

To me I’d think having a diverse staff would then be very important.
Its’ very important, and we’re like a lot of newspapers — we’re really, really struggling with that. It’s not just recruiting journalists from different communities but retaining them. And it’s very difficult when you get talented minority journalists, and any paper that’s not The New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post — those three publications are going to come and scoop them up. Now that’s not an excuse; that’s just a fact. I think that’s very critical, and we’re a city that’s 30 percent Asian, so I think if you don’t have people on your staff — and we do — but if you don’t have people on your staff who are a part of that community who understand or speak whatever languages are spoken, then I think you’re going to miss something.

What will the Chronicle be like in 5 years, 20 years?
If I knew that I would be retired now doing consultant work when I felt like it. I have no idea. I do know that this paper is going to be much more of an activist, much more of an aggressive paper in the way that I described. And we’ll use all the multi-media tools that we can get our hands on and use the web in whatever ways we can.

Do you see yourself with the Chronicle for the short and long term? Or that’s not up to you?
A) It’s not up to me, and B) I think it remains interesting to me. And I think as long as it’s interesting, I’ll have an interest in doing it.

I also wanted to ask you what your reaction is to Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of the Wall Street Journal?
I think people have a big investment in puffing up their chests and offering opinions. And again, people like to see things in black and white. And Rupert Murdoch in some instances [has] been a bad guy, particularly if you’re a fan of in-depth journalism. I read something today that said the head of the editorial pages is going to maintain some autonomy, but the editorial pages of the Journal are pretty conservative anyway. I’m not sure that that would be a big switch. It’s a great, wonderful, raucous debate. Anybody who says they know for sure what the Journal will look like and be like in five years is blowing smoke. So I’m not going to sit here and be one more person offering a useless opinion.

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Julie Haire is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.

Young adult author Kerry Madden says her gift for storytelling grew out of her distaste for housework — as a kid, she’d make up tales while doing the dishes or cleaning the kitchen. Growing up as daughter of a football coach, Madden moved around quite a bit, continued her roaming ways as an adult (she and her husband taught in China), but has settled down in the Silverlake section of Los Angeles. Louisana’s Song, the second book in her Smoky Mountain trilogy has just been released, with the third scheduled to be published in 2008.

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Name:
Kerry Madden
Position:
Children’s author, teacher of fiction writing workshops of all ages
Resumé:
Offsides, Writing Smarts, and the Smokey Mountain trilogy: Gentle’s Holler, Louisiana’s Song, and Jessie’s Mountain
Company:
I teach at Vroman’s and the UCLA Writers Program … that’s as close to a “company” as I get. Does it count if Jim Henson Productions optioned my football novel, Offsides, a million years ago? [1997].
Hometown:
Ten states, and England & China. I grew up on the gridiron in football towns — my father is NOT John Madden. Now, I’d say my hometown is Silverlake where we’ve raised our kids — all our friends are here — but I’ve got this pull to go back to the South one day. That’s where all my fiction is set.
Education:
BA from the University of Tennessee with a junior year at Manchester University in England. MFA in Playwriting from the University of Tennessee.
Family:
Married to husband Kiffen for 20 years, with three kids: Flannery, 18, Lucy, 16, and Norah, 8
Favorite TV show:
Life on Mars. Every year, one of my best friends from England, Mike Tait, brings us must-see DVD seasons centered around Manchester, so I won’t forget. I love the show. And I love watching Gray’s Anatomy with my daughter, Lucy.
Last book read:
To Kill A Mockingbird…again.
Guilty pleasure:
Pie. I love pie: lemon meringue, cherry, blueberry. My son makes a mean pie from the Elvis Cookbook, Are You Hungry Tonight?

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What is your average media day like?

If I’m on a book tour, it still ain’t much. I did Alive at Five in Chattanooga at the crack of dawn, and I was on after the “cornbread segment” in Knoxville on Channel Ten last year during the Dogwood Arts Festival. My kids’ novels are set in the Smoky Mountains of Appalachia, so it’s regional media.

How do you carve out time to write?

I write everyday or try to…but the best is when I can go away to a cabin and write (no wireless), and I get so much done without the distraction of home, chaos, kids, email. But this happens so rarely that I just have to be disciplined and not answer the phone or check email. The house here, sadly, is often a wreck.

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mediabistro.com: How did you arrive at your audience — YA, middle school, kids? Madden: Desperation.

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Describe your writing ‘area’ — any rules for yourself? Schedule you try to adhere to? Special pens, paper, pets? Strange routines we would delight in hearing?

When I begin a book, I surround myself with the maps, pictures, books of the region. I have a wall covered with old photographs of bookmobiles from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. I have Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams photos on the wall from Ernest Tubbs Record Shop in Nashville. I try to collect things my characters love — I even have some old comic books with “Saturn Girl” from the “Legion of Superheroes” because in my book, one of the boys is crazy for Saturn Girl. I have some old dolls and fairy rocks, mostly for our youngest, Norah, to play with when she comes in while I’m working. The Synonym Finder is a must book. It’s also a comfort to have Eudora Welty and Flannery O’Connor stories nearby. I write downstairs or sometimes at the kitchen table — a big teakwood table where I can spread out and use my laptop. The light is better in the kitchen. Sometimes, I play old Carter family tunes [on] a running loop until it’s time to come back to the 21st Century and pick up kids at school or go watch Lucy throw the shotput. She’s discovered shotput and she loves it — it’s a word and an activity that never even entered my realm of consciousness until a month ago. Our oldest, Flannery, is a freshman at UCSB, and it’s been on odd year with him gone, but he comes home plenty for his rock band, The Flypaper Cartel.

How did you arrive at your audience — YA, middle school, kids?

Desperation. My first novel for adults, Offsides, came out in 1996 and went through the Hollywood mill for years, but died eventually, both in print and pilot. I wrote a book for American Girl, called Writing Smarts, which was fun and easy to write. But I was also writing such dreck to stay afloat — my husband is a teacher, and we have three kids. My stories included: “How To Stay Healthy if You Sell Insurance” and “How to Stay Healthy if You’re an Agent.” I basically wrote a series of health stories. The lifeguards and camera operators were interesting, as were the coalminers and stonecutters, but those stories didn’t make the cut. Then, I was writing “What’s Hot and What’s Not for 2000” for a fashion thing online discussing plasma TVs and crap. It was so boring — and then I got desperate and began ghostwriting to make money — worst decision of all! But it turned out to be the best because I was writing for such crazy people that when it all blew up, I vowed never to write anything again that I didn’t love and care about.

How did you come to this story?

I thought about how Kiffen, my husband, grew up one of thirteen children. I thought about his father struggling with all those kids — playing fiddle on the Grand Ole Opry but mostly at honky-tonks and even with gospel singers. (My father-in-law said the gospel singers could cuss the best of all). I thought of Kiffen’s mother trying to hold it all together and I figured I could write some novels about a big family growing up in the Smoky Mountains, because I miss Tennessee and North Carolina. I picked one of the kids to be the storyteller and songwriter of the family. She writes songs about everyday life from “Daddy’s Roasted Peanut” and “Mama’s Biscuits” to “Grandma’s Glass Eye.” And that’s how I came to write Gentle’s Holler, the first in the trilogy. Louisiana’s Song comes out in a few weeks, and Jessie’s Mountain comes out next year. My own kids were editors and inspirations. Kiffen’s great uncle, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, was a songcatcher and banjo player in the mountains, so I thought about him too.

What are you working on now or next?

I am writing the YA biography of Harper Lee for Viking/Penguin’s Up Close Series for Teens to be published in 2009. Now I’ll be making several trips to Alabama. I am just back from one.

Who’s the biggest influence on your work?

I really love Flannery O’Connor. I discovered her in college after England when I had to face life in Knoxville again. After her, I began to read southern writers all the time. I even went to Milledgeville, GA a few times to see where she lived. Anyway, Flannery O’Connor said she was seated at her typewriter every morning whether she felt like it or not — and she also didn’t outline. She said, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” I’m like that. It’s messy and plotless for a longtime, but story begins to emerge.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you do?

I don’t know. I love reading work aloud. I read Gentle’s Holler on tape for the Braille Institute. I also wish I could play guitar or banjo — maybe be a musician? Or work in the Special Collections of the New York Public Library. There is something mystical about that place.

As a follow — what would you love to do?

I’d like write a book the requires a passport. I haven’t traveled out of this country in so long, and I’d love to do that again. I’ve been on the road to Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina, but I sure would love to go to Paris or Rome or Istanbul. I’d love to travel for months too.

Work’s over, kitchen’s clean, kid is occupied — how do you kick back? Music, book, DVD? What’s your relaxation preference? (And please don’t tell me you go for a nice 5 mile run.)

A glass of wine and Life on Mars, or if I’m ambitious, I’ll go to the movies and eat Junior Mints. Thank God for Laemelle and Arclight! When I’m in the mountains, I love driving the back roads listening to Lucinda Williams. My sister and I came upon the Cross Garden outside of Prattville, Alabama last week, which was like walking into a Flannery O’Connor story of the Southern Grotesque.

This interview has been excerpted for length and clarity.

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Kate Coe is a blogger at FishbowlLA