In this panel, we’ll cover how to make moves into the next stage of your career in journalism, including questions about the job search, how to network effectively, mentoring opportunities and how to hone your craft when the people on top may be too busy to help. We’ll also address how to make a smart move into journalism after starting your career elsewhere.
Moderator: Katie Barnes
Panelists: Raillan Brooks, Michelle Garcia, Kathleen Massara
KATIE BARNES (they/them/their) is an award-winning journalist for ESPN and espnW, covering culture, LGBTQ issues, women’s basketball, collegiate softball and women’s combat sports. Since joining ESPN in August 2015, Barnes has written on myriad topics, such as transgender athletes, campus sexual assault, sports leagues incursion into public policy, racial justice and Hollywood stunt doubles. Their article on two high school transgender athletes earned them a GLAAD Award nomination for Outstanding Magazine Article. Barnes holds a degree in history, Russian studies and American studies from St. Olaf College, and master’s degree in student affairs and higher education from Miami University (Ohio). They were the 2017 NLGJA Journalist of the Year.
RAILLAN BROOKS (he/him) joined The New York Times in 2017, and became the leader of the team that assigns, edits and designs the recently redesigned A2/A3 pages in the print edition. He was previously an assistant editor at Audubon — a nonprofit magazine for bird lovers (of which he is not one). He left for HuffPost, where he became an associate editor and researcher for the Highline project, HuffPost’s home for long, deep-dive enterprise. He is now an editor on The Times’s Culture desk, where he works on the daily culture news report as well as the Weekend and Arts & Leisure sections. Brooks has a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University where he studied sociology, geography and physics. In his first journalism gig, as a reporter for an urban planning trade publication, all three came in handy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his second job, as a news blogger and crime reporter for the late, lamented Village Voice, didn’t make much use of any of them. In his off hours, Raillan is a somewhat overinvested drag enthusiast and writes science fiction stories.
MICHELLE GARCIA is the deputy editor for Vice.com’s News & Issues desk. Garcia has covered major social movements across the U.S., including the fight for marriage equality, #MeToo, and the Movement for Black Lives, to name a few. She was named to Folio’s list of 20 in their 20s, won a GLAAD Media Award with her staff about the advancement of the HIV treatment drug Truvada, taught at CUNY Graduate School Journalism and has coached several writers along the way. Previously, Michelle was an editor at Out, Vox, Mic and The Advocate.
KATHLEEN MASSARA (she/her) is an editor on the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times. She was previously a producer on the home page, where she handled breaking news, mobile updates and push notifications. Before her stint on the news desk, she was heavily involved in the arts: as the managing editor of Artnet News, a digital editor at Christies.com and the Arts & Culture editor at HuffPost. She holds a master’s degree in cultural reporting and criticism from New York University and a political science degree from McGill University. She has written about Margarita Xirgu, the lesbian actress and director; the artist Isamu Noguchi’s time in an internment camp; the musician Phil Collins’ “pop man’s burden” and the weirdness of U.S. Strategic Command (which exists just outside her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska). At the moment, she’s dreaming of creating the first LGBTQ newsletter at The Times.