I was featured in the Atlantic twice this year

Here's how you could be, too

I first read Stephanie Murray’s writing in The Atlantic after I got a Google Alert on the topic of “body image.” I often write about this subject, so I have a Google Alert on the phrase.

Each day, I receive an email that summarizes various stories on the internet that mention this topic. I usually give this email a quick skim – many of the links are uninteresting to me or are put out by outlets whose content I would not gravitate toward.

But when I see stories highlighted in places like The Atlantic, I always click.

One day, I was directed to Stephanie Murray’s beautiful piece, “Raising a Daughter With a Body Like Mine.” In this essay, she describes how falling in love with her daughter’s body (which looked so similar to her own) allowed her to re-see herself.

It was gorgeous. After reading the essay, I immediately followed Murray on Twitter and Instagram.

(This is something I always do. When I read pieces that move me on topics I am interested in, I find the writer and follow them on social media).

Several days later, I logged into Twitter and saw that Stephanie Murray posted the following tweet:

I did have a story about this topic. In fact, I’d begun an essay about an experience where I’d allowed my son to go on a walk alone one Christmas day, and it failed miserably. I’d stopped writing the essay, though, because I couldn’t really find my larger point. It was more of an interesting anecdote than an essay.

So, after reading this tweet, I thought it may be better to share with her.

You’ll notice she doesn’t list the outlet that she is writing for in the #journorequest. But I knew she had a list of beautiful publications in various esteemed outlets. This motivated me to respond to her. I emailed her right away, and within a day, we’d set up a time for an interview.

To prepare for the interview, I did two things: I refamiliarized myself with the story I planned to tell, and I tried to develop interesting sound bites on the topic of giving children independence.

1)      Tell a good story

I ended up being included in the lede paragraph of Murray’s piece. I think this is because I went into the interview with the intent of telling a story. A story is not just a summary of events. It is not a collection of feelings surrounding an issue. It has a narrative arc: a beginning, middle, and end. There is tension. Something happens. Something changes. You should, usually, be able to visualize a specific scene.

Here’s my story in Murray’s “The Gravitational Pull of Supervising Kids All the Time”:

You’ll notice there is setting (Christmas, a quiet neighborhood). There are characters (me, my son, and once you click, an elderly couple). There is dialogue. And there is tension. In fact, the tension (my briefly missing son) made for a great, click worthy cliffhanger in The Atlantic’s email newsletter.

Murray wrote these beautiful paragraphs – but I tried to give her enough detail to craft this scene.

This is what you should do, too, if you are interviewed. Try to envision having to write the essay yourself. Try to give the journalist as much to work with as possible.

2)      Give a good sound bite

A sound bite is a short statement that can stand alone. It is often provocative. It is not an obvious observation, but it should resonate with people’s lived experiences. A sound bite is someone saying out loud what many people think in their heads.

Here is the sound bite I tried to give Murray:

When I read comments on The Atlantic’s social media (which, honestly, I rarely do because I don’t like to destroy my confidence by pouring over the comments section), people often quoted that phrase in the piece as resonant. This made me feel gratified because this was a statement I thought about prior to our interview together.

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This was not my first time to be featured in The Atlantic. At the end of 2022, I was fortunate enough to say yes to a journalism request by Annie Midori Atherton in a private Facebook writers’ group.

Again, I did not know she was writing for The Atlantic (though I knew she had published in great outlets). In our interview, I told a specific story with (political) tension. I believe that’s what made my interview stand out. My anecdote was featured as the lede of the piece, “An Alternative to Overspending on Presents.”

This was around the time that I began saying yes to many #journorequests. Though I knew that saying yes could build my writer platform through media mentions, I primarily began agreeing to interviews because I was interested in doing more reported writing myself (more on that in a future post). I figured the best way to learn how to do reported writing would be to see how other, more experienced journalists interviewed me (I was right – I’ve learned a ton!).

Since I began saying yes, I’ve gotten to connect with writers and journalists I admire, and I’ve been featured in a variety of media outlets. To build my own platform, when journalists ask for my profession, I tell them I’m a writer (even though my day job is actually teaching), and I have begun to ask that they link to my writing website. This is something you should consider as you agree to media interviews, too.

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Thanks for reading my tips for building writer platform by saying yes to #journorequests

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