Your First Byline

Articles

My First Byline: Dani Anguiano

5 days ago | yourfirstbyline.substack.com | Ryan Teague Beckwith

What is your current job? I am a breaking news reporter for the West Coast bureau of the Guardian US where I've covered everything under the sun, including far-right politics in far Northern California, the trial of Alec Baldwin, and wildfires in California and Hawaii. Since 2018 much of my work has focused on wildfires and their aftermath, and in 2020 I co-authored the book Fire in Paradise: An American Tragedy.
Journalists' Bookshelf: 'The Art and Craft of Feature Writing'

1 week ago | yourfirstbyline.substack.com | Ryan Teague Beckwith

Honestly, someone should write a guide to writer’s guides. There are so many out there that an aspiring journalist might be overwhelmed. Every writer has their favorites, and most of the books have some good advice, but I’ve found a handful that are good for learning very specific lessons.
My First Byline: Liz Shannon Miller

1 week ago | yourfirstbyline.substack.com | Ryan Teague Beckwith

What is your current job? I'm senior entertainment editor at Consequence, an independent pop culture publication with a focus on music. (My beat is primarily film and TV, though.)What was your first byline? While I'd been writing in various formats online since my early teens, in 2002 I got my first regular writing gig as a columnist for Bookslut, a monthly webzine (that's what we called them then) focused on literature and book culture.
My First Byline: Laura Joyce Robertson

1 week ago | yourfirstbyline.substack.com | Ryan Teague Beckwith

What is your current job? I'm a general assignment reporter for The Nome Nugget, a local paper that covers the Bering Strait region of Western Alaska. I regularly write about melting permafrost, gold miners, subsistence hunting, Arctic science, high school basketball, and more. What was your first byline? My first professional byline was an investigative piece for New York Focus called "Death and Profit in New York's Jail Infirmaries." I started working on it in a college journalism class.
How to Review a Movie

1 week ago | yourfirstbyline.substack.com | Ryan Teague Beckwith

Avoid trailers. Don’t summarize the plot. And make every sentence count. That’s the advice from Alissa Wilkinson, movie critic for the New York Times since 2023, longtime Vox correspondent, author and former English professor. She’ll be teaching a course this summer at the Center for Fiction on how to write a review and regularly teaches at places such as New York University’s interdisciplinary master’s program in experimental humanities. She talked with us about how to review a movie.
The Legendary Molly Ivins on How Reporters Can Get the Truth Out

2 weeks ago | yourfirstbyline.substack.com | Ryan Teague Beckwith

Legendary Texas journalist Molly Ivins was once asked to share her beliefs about being a reporter. Below is a short excerpt of the essay she wrote:In-ism has become so acute that a reporter can be generally defined as a person who knows, but doesn’t tell. You can find more about what’s going on at the state capitol by spending one night drinking with the capitol press corps that you can in months of reading the papers those reporters write for.
My First Byline: Sam Thielman

2 weeks ago | yourfirstbyline.substack.com | Ryan Teague Beckwith

Editor’s note: On Wednesday we hit 2,000 followers on LinkedIn. This is the only social media platform where we’ve set up shop since this is a site aimed at helping you get a job in journalism. If you haven’t joined us there, click the link below. Thanks!What is your current job?
My First Byline: Caitlin Wolper Phillips

2 weeks ago | yourfirstbyline.substack.com | Ryan Teague Beckwith

What is your current job? I’m a copywriter for storyarb, a very cool new content marketing firm. Basically, I spend my day writing in different voices for different clients in different formats — a fun amount of variety. I also still freelance: primarily in music journalism, when I have ideas and time, but also as a copy editor for Central Park, Juilliard, and others. What was your first byline?
My First Byline: Phoebe Maltz Bovy

2 weeks ago | yourfirstbyline.substack.com | Ryan Teague Beckwith

What is your current job? I'm the Opinion Editor at The Canadian Jewish News, where I write a weekly opinion column and host a new podcast called The Jewish Angle. I'm also a contributor columnist at The Globe and Mail, in the Opinion section, and, since 2018, co-host of the Feminine Chaospodcast. I also have my own newsletter, Close-reading the reruns, and am writing a book about straight women (working title: The Last Straight Woman) for Penguin Random House Canada. What was your first byline?
My First Byline: Seamus Hughes

2 weeks ago | yourfirstbyline.substack.com | Ryan Teague Beckwith

What is your current job? I am the editor of Court Watch, a news site covering all the most interesting federal court filings, from search warrants to indictments to everything in between. The goal is to report on overlooked court records and give readers direct access to primary source documents. I am also a terrorism scholar at the University of Nebraska Omaha’s NCITE, researching Americans who are drawn to a variety of forms of extremism in the United States.