It was a cold Monday night in Queens, and I was cursing my boots. The ice-laden sprawl of Myrtle Avenue was no place for a cunty little heel, and I feared it was only a matter of time before ass met pavement.
When I finally slid into Peg’s Cavalier, its buttery warmth, holiday lighting, and general air of merriment felt like another realm entirely. The owners were expecting me, but I felt suddenly shy, a wind-whipped outsider disoriented by the inviting intimacy of the bar. Rather than announcing myself, I quickly ordered a mezcal cocktail and settled into an open booth.
It wasn’t just the ice, or the biting temp beyond Peg’s sweet embrace that was affecting my mood. Something else was stirring me, a subtle yet unpleasant blend of irritability and melancholy. While I couldn’t entirely explain it, I admittedly had some understanding of its origin.
It’s no secret that our collective sense of reality has become increasingly fractured, especially over the last five years. The rise of AI is only the latest destabilizing force in a series of destabilizing forces that have foreclosed the illusion that our near future will resemble our recent past. Like so many others, I’ve quietly said my goodbyes to childhood visions of a life that no longer align with reality. My writerly aspirations were no exception.
So, when I read Brittany Spanos’ announcement that she had been laid off from Rolling Stone after a decade of tireless, impassioned dedication to the magazine, those old feelings of mourning flared. Although her rise and tenure at Rolling Stone was notably impressive (with a whopping 16 cover stories to her name), Brittany was all too aware her layoff was not unique, or even especially surprising. Earlier this month, in the inaugural post for the launch of her new Substack, BRIT POP, she wrote: “I don’t know a single person with a media job who doesn’t wake up every day wondering if today’s the day they’re laid off.”
However, a dream realized is not without its disillusionment. Later on in that same post, Brittany writes:
After my first few big features and profiles, I spent a lot of my therapist’s time wondering if that’s all there is…I started to feel the nebulous cloud of emotions form into regret. Did I stick around too long? Is there a version of this story where it ends on my terms and not on someone else’s? Was I ever going to accept that I had outgrown the only dream I ever had?
As someone who has seen dreams calcify into drudgery (and even experienced a bit of it firsthand), this vulnerable admission struck a chord. I knew I wanted to speak with her, but now that I was here, seated in a bar she had so graciously invited me to, I wondered how our exchange would unfold. Would she share my melancholy mood?
READERRRS (if you’re still with me), I’m happy to report she did not.
Brittany arrived outfitted in the sickest cow print faux fur coat (from Anthropologie, she later told me). She laughed easily, spoke openly, and exuded, if anything, a sense of RELIEF. Why? She had conquered and escaped the media mill. And, baby, it’s only the beginning of BRIT POP.
Your story seems so emblematic of this dream that is slowly becoming a relic of history—the fantasy of being a staff writer at a major media outlet, getting flown out for reporting, interviewing influential figures. You’re one of a small percentage of people who actually achieved that, lived that, only to see it get torn out from under you. I know you occupied a few different roles over the years, but what did the average weekday as a Senior Writer at Rolling Stone look like for you?
Brittany Spanos: It changed a lot. Every publication is really stressed out about producing more and getting traffic because the ways that we used to get traffic through Google [is influenced by] AI. AI is a big part of the search engine now. Facebook is no longer a conducive place to share stuff, and Twitter is no longer Twitter. So, you know, things are already really stressful. The constant thing we’re told is to produce more and more, so we’re doing things like news shifts. I was doing a news shift weekly and then doing my features, along with other stuff. It was just this constant, “Okay, you need to produce this many articles this week,” and it’d keep ramping up every couple of months.
A news shift being like…
BS: Like aggregated news.
Basically like repackaging [existing news stories]?
BS: Yeah. You’re just doing that all day, and you’re doing like five or six articles in a day. So that was taking up a lot of time. I think they’re always trying to figure out the directives of our content, especially our music content. Profiles can do well, but not always, depending on the access and what you get from them. Sometimes we’d be doing less artist-y profiles and new artists kind of coverage. So it shifted a lot. I would say, in the last few months, I was definitely doing a lot more news-y sort of posts, quick turnaround type of articles. I had also just wrapped four or five back-to-back long-form features this year. It was a lot more short, quick interviews, or working on the Taylor [Swift] rollout, or things like that.
Right, so day to day it was mostly short-form, and then occasionally you’d travel for longer form stories.
BS: Yeah, I’d be working on the longer form stuff in between.
How did [that schedule] compare to when you were coming up as a staff writer?
BS: I first started in 2015, and my original first job [at Rolling Stone] was like an editing assistant for the website. Then, once I became a staff writer, it also kind of always changed constantly. I was definitely doing a lot more newsy sort of aggregated news writing early on, and then slowly trying to get more feature writing and interviews, creating more print stuff to work my way up. So it was always sort of back and forth, which is sort of the frustrating thing being in media and also at one place for a really long time. It’s this constant shifting of what your job is and what the goalposts are, even when you think you’re getting more senior. It’s still not enough.
Exhausting. Yeah, I’ve seen that with so many writers I know. Their roles just keep expanding. And even as they’re doing more, it’s not as if they’re getting more in return. The expectations are higher, but their rates aren’t higher. Had you reached a point [at Rolling Stone] where you were in a position to select your assignments, or were they still being assigned to you?
BS: Definitely a mix. In terms of the shorter form, quick turnaround stuff, that was definitely always coming down from some of the top editors. Like, “We need this timeline of these two artists’ relationship,” or, “We need an explainer about everything we know about this album coming out.” SEO type of stuff. And then the profiles or features or essays usually came from actual pitches.
Coming up, when you still had the Almost Famous vision of the role, were there any journalists you were looking to for inspiration? Your writing style is very immersive in a way that’s very tactfully removed, which is hard to pull off. I think people underestimate how difficult it is to pull that off as a journalist.
BS: There are so many, even just from the Rolling Stone camp. I grew up reading all those features. I love Cameron Crowe. Vanessa Grigoriadis wrote so many great features. Josh Eells and Brian Hiatt, who’s still there. They all wrote great covers and long-form profiles that I really love. Outside of that, I really like Zach Baron’s writing for GQ. Chuck Klosterman is a huge hero of mine. Rob Sheffield, who’s at Rolling Stone, is also a really huge hero of mine. Those are two writers whose books I read growing up who were really big inspirations. Especially with people like Chuck and Rob, they often get more personal in their writing, but I think they have such a great way of zooming out and having a lens of connecting the past and the present, and being able to make a larger picture out of things. I think that’s what I’m really aspiring to in anything that I write.
I noticed [on X] that several major artists have praised you for your interviewing style, and I feel like that’s a valuable unseen ingredient [in an artist profile]. I think readers take for granted that an artist is opening up, but it isn’t just anyone who can put them in the frame of mind to open up that way. What was your approach to interviewing artists, especially early on, when you were still finding your footing? How has your approach evolved?
BS: I’ve always done a lot of research, and I think it came from being such a huge fangirl of stuff. That came very naturally, so I think it was easy to enter an interview with an artist and just feel like an expert in a lot of ways, and be able to have it be conversational. That’s also kind of always been the thing that I try to do when I’m doing in-person interviews, like I try not to have my notebook out, and have my recording devices visible but very small. I’m not holding them in their face or something. I’m just trying to make it a conversation, so it’s nice being able to come into something and be like, “Okay, I know everything I need to know about this, but I can also talk about it in a very conversational way.” I think that was always kind of the goal, to not make it feel super interview-y.
At what point was Rolling Stone ready to put you out into the field and actually meet artists in person?
BS: I was pitching aggressively, so I was doing a lot early on. Most of them were phoners at that point. I was still getting some bigger people, but I’d be talking about their Hollywood Walk of Fame induction, or a brand deal or whatever. My first cover story was my first long-form profile feature that I had done, and that kind of came by accident. I had already interviewed Cardi B a year before “Bodak Yellow” had blown up, when she was still on Love & Hip Hop. She wasn’t signed yet and it was just a mixtape, so we had done a “New Artist” interview with her. And then around the time that she dropped “Bodak Yellow,” I was pitching for a short, 100-word in-book feature with her, like, “Who’s this artist blowing up right now?” And then the song went number one. [The magazine] used to be [published] every two weeks at that point, so it was easy to maneuver a cover, because we were closing [the new issue] literally right before it hit newsstands. It literally just happened by accident. I don’t know what the conversation behind the scenes was like. I’m sure they were like, “We should get someone more veteran [to write the feature],” but it was kind of too late at that point, because I had already interviewed her. I had already been to her house, and we had done what was supposed to be a longer online interview. I already had a lot of time with her, so it was just too late at that point for them to reassign it. It would have been crazy.
Right, so you were really the one who kind of shepherded that cover story.
BS: Yeah. It was sort of like they had to do it. It’d be crazy if they had this 100-word box on the person with the number one song in the country. It sort of forced their hand, but that was the first time it happened.
That was your first cover story.
BS: Yeah.
One thing that struck me was that you and Cardi were both 25 at the time, right?
BS: I think we’re the same age, yeah.
The thought of being in either one of your shoes at that point is crazy.
BS: The photographer (Justice Apple) was also around our age.
Damn.
BS: It was [Justice’s] first cover of anything. And it also just happened by accident because she already shot photos for the in-book, so they were just like, “Okay, well we already signed this contract with her, so we might as well just have these two kids do this.”
Was the energy high? Was there a feeling that there was a come-up in progress?
BS: Yeah! I remember I was there for the shoot that they did for the in-book feature, and that’s where we did another interview. I remember we did part of the shoot at the [handball] courts on West Third Street and Sixth Ave, and everyone kept coming up to [Cardi]. It was so crazy. It was like right before [“Bodak Yellow”] went number one, so everyone at the courts stopped everything to talk to her. We were so excited. It was really cool to watch her get fully mobbed.
Do you ever reconnect with artists after an interview?
BS: It depends. Some, not all of them. Some artists I’ll interview again or I’ll do events with them, and some are mutuals on social media. It just depends.
As I was reading your profiles, I noticed a lot of artists are willing to get pretty vulnerable. In some cases, you’re catching them at these early points in their career when they’re still navigating this new world of fame, which is terrifying, I imagine. It also gets existential. I’m wondering what that was like for you as a writer while you were moving through your twenties. Did you ever have moments where you saw yourself reflected in any of these artists? Any strange mirrored moments like that?
BS: Yeah, I’m trying to think of specific ones. I don’t know, that’s a good question. I feel like in moments there have definitely been things. I remember I was working on the Lorde [cover story] this year, and I was going through a breakup. It was weird, so much of the [Virgin] album was about a breakup. It was a lot. It was the first time that particular sort of big life thing synced up with an artist who I was talking with in this way, so that was really interesting. What else? I feel like most of them have been almost too young. You know, like Chappell [Roan] and Addison [Rae] and Billie [Eilish]. They were so much younger, so their experiences felt like a mirror in terms of something that I had experienced then, in a way. Talking to Chappell about mid-20s kind of stuff and life-transitioning type of things felt very similar. I think there’s been those moments for sure, but it kind of depends. People like Adele and Miley [Cyrus] have lives that are very far removed. [Laughs.]
Yeah. Respect, but I can’t relate.
BS: We’re not the same, yeah.
One thing you touched on in your Substack post is the unique value of long-form interviews and narratives for contextualizing the work of certain artists. I was hoping you could speak to that. For example, I’ll admit I dismissed Addison Rae as a TikTok star until I read your profile of her. So, there’s clearly a lot of value in these long-form interviews for creating an understanding between artist and audience.
BS: Yeah, I feel like it helps sort of shape a little bit of what an artist experiences in both their career and also in a specific moment. Having someone sort of take an outside lens and thread all of these things is so important. But obviously it comes with the idea of being vulnerable, or being fallible, or being seen as imperfect, or saying something that maybe you don’t want to say. That’s the risk you take with that. I think the artists that I respect the most are the artists that are willing to let that happen, and don’t want to just be seen as perfect, or keep a clean facade of who they are. Someone like Addison was excited about giving herself the opportunity to speak in a very unfiltered way [in that piece], like actually sit down and talk. She put no limits on anything. We talked about so much. We spent two eight-hour days together. There was no highly curated [experience], like your entire team’s here, or we’re going to a restaurant you never go to. We were hanging out, and she brought me into her life a little bit. Like, she brought me into her workout class, and the restaurant that she goes to every day. We ran into a bunch of people that she knew. We went to her favorite beach and a store that she likes, and we just talked the entire time. I think that story allowed people to get to know her in a way that they wouldn’t have if she didn’t let someone get that much of an unfiltered look at who she is, and let herself be seen in that way. I think artists like that are so great because they are very open to letting that sort of thread happen, and letting someone be able to contextualize all of it without being so strict with how they’re viewed by everyone else.
What surprised you most about having that level of access? What was the most unexpected aspect of it?
BS: I think it just humanized a lot of people. I was such a fangirl of everything, and I still am. I still have such a fangirl mentality about stuff, but I think that level of, like, okay, you’re sitting across from Adele, who’s been famous forever and is almost like something else at this point. And then seeing her cry or talk about her divorce, and you’re like, “Oh, you’re just a person sitting across from me. You’re not wearing makeup, and we’re just hanging out on your couch.” That’s such a different thing. Being able to strip away a lot of the excess of it was really cool. I think that did a lot for my confidence, realizing that they’re human beings, normal people. It took away a lot of that [feeling], like, “Oh, you need to be a certain way.” Like, yeah, it just is what it is.
Was that a slow learning process, too? I can speak from some level of experience, doing Zoom interviews with artists in my twenties. It was definitely intimidating, and I wasn’t talking to Adele. [Laughs.]
BS: By the time I was talking to people who were super famous, I had done so many interviews with people who were on the precipice of huge fame, so I had already seen versions of it before they reached that high pedestal. I think that kind of helped, leading into it. But there were still obviously moments of being super starstruck, and I’m sure there’s going to still be people that I’m going to be super starstruck by when I interview them. I think, at the end of the day, it just kind of reminds me, like, “Oh, yeah, this is just like…”
Real shit. People going through real shit.
BS: Yeah.
There’s a balance to be struck between the fangirl and the journalist.
BS: Yeah, I try not to be overly fawning to people. I use [the fangirl aspect] more as being an expert in something versus not doing my due diligence as a journalist. Like, if there’s a quote that’s a little controversial, I’m going to be mindful of context. Like, why do they say this? How do I contextualize something that I know is going to be picked up and be sort of ridiculous?
Yeah, that’s another delicate side of it because you are, in some cases, chronicling artists on the verge. I imagine you probably felt some responsibility for introducing them [to the world]. How did you handle that?
BS: Yeah, I think Chapell’s a good example of that. She’s super young and unfiltered. I interviewed her quite a few times already, so I kind of knew the way that she spoke. I understand her sense of humor, too, because it’s a very specific type of online Gen Z humor. So, I understood that to a level. There are certain things that if I didn’t understand and I quoted them in a weird way, it would have come across really fucked up. But I’m like, “Okay, I’m not going to decontextualize something that I know is kind of a funny thing to put in here.” Like, I’m going to let it exist as it is, but also make sure that it makes sense with context. Knowing the difference between, “I found this funny in the moment: Will this translate to a story or will it be taken the wrong way?” Because she’s being so raw and unfiltered in those moments. You want to find the balance of, like, “Okay, she’s offering up a lot right now, but I also don’t want to take advantage of the moments where she’s saying things in a very lighthearted way that I understand is meant to be humorous in a very specific way…”
But in cold print…
BS: In cold print it’s not going to come across that way.
I feel like that’s a new demand of anyone covering pop culture. You have to be internet culture-literate to a degree to keep up.
BS: Especially if you’re interviewing someone pretty young, you kind of have to have a certain level of understanding of where their sense of humor is and where it’s coming from. There’s going to be certain references and certain ways that they talk that’s just not going to make sense if you have no context for it.
Totally. Knowing that you’ve been covering the music industry for over a decade, and we’re now in the age of TikTok, Spotify Wrapped, and algorithmic music recommendations, what have you observed in terms of how these new developments have changed the game for what’s being covered and talked about?
BS: I think there’s a demand for a certain level of virality, something reaching a certain amount of people or having real momentum in that way. But it’s obviously not always an accurate way of understanding a song that’s actually going to translate to the charts or streaming in a bigger way. It depends. So many artists that have a viral moment don’t necessarily have a big album afterwards. I think people have gotten a little bit better with it. There was definitely a period of time where any viral pop song [would be cause for us to] jump on it immediately and cover it to death. And it’s like, “Okay, but I don’t think this artist has much more than this one song or has a plan beyond this one song, you know?” Sometimes it just exists as it is. Even in the industry, on the label side, they see that and then they push an artist to release something that maybe they’re not ready to release. Like, maybe they haven’t had time to marinate in being an artist, or who they are outside of this 30-second viral clip going everywhere. I think that’s happened so much. For the press, I think that’s an issue that’ll maybe get better, because in the last few years there have been a lot of artists who have had slow burn come-ups, like a Sabrina [Carpenter] or a Chappell, or even Charli [XCX]. I mean, Charli’s always been pretty famous, but having an even bigger moment so far into her career. I think there’s a lot more investment in that in this moment, which is great because those artists already know who they are, and have been working towards it for a long time.
Absolutely. You’ve proven yourself to have a pretty good sense of what may or may not blow up. When you were advocating for covering artists like Chappell or Cardi B early on in their careers, what were you sensing or taking note of, exactly? What suggested they were headed towards fame?
BS: A certain level of fan culture existing around them was a big deal. And also having more than one great song, you know? I did one of Shawn Mendes’ first features that he ever got, early in his career. He was obviously big on Vine. He was like 16 or something when I interviewed him. He had his first big single “Stitches” blowing up, but he had a couple other songs out that very clearly were pretty great songs that were on the same level as a song that was charting. He was someone who clearly needed something more in-depth to be written about him, and was very clearly building a big fan culture around him. I remember when I interviewed him, “Stitches” was just starting to blow up and he was already playing Radio City. He already had all these things and was being weirdly ignored by a lot of media. I was just, like, “Okay, this is a cute kid who’s blowing up right now.” Kind of ideal. Lizzo was also someone early on who I covered. I remember the first time I interviewed her was around the time [she released] her EP Coconut Oil, and it was like a few years before those songs actually blew up. She had just gotten signed to Atlantic at that point and she had a huge catalog of songs already. She had been a backing vocalist for Prince, and had been in a bunch of bands in Minnesota and had all this stuff. So that was something where I was like, “Okay, there’s already a lot here that’s proof that she’s been doing this for a minute and has been making really great pop music. It’s bound to get attention.”
Yeah, so you’re looking at it from multiple angles.
BS: Yeah, same with Chappell, too. When I first heard “Pink Pony Club,” I was like, “Okay, there are a lot of songs already here. This isn’t a one-off great thing that just happened.”
Reading your piece on Chapell was really interesting, especially the bit about Atlantic [Records] discouraging her from releasing “Pink Pony Club.” I swear to God, I hear it every time I go out now.
BS: I know. Five years later it’s everywhere.
I also think it’s really smart to tap into pop culture as a writer and thinker because it’s obviously such a big part of culture at large, and what actually moves the needle. It bleeds into so many other industries. There are so many recent examples of this, from Brat to Sabrina Carpenter breaking the internet [with her controversial album cover]. I’d be interested to hear your perspective as someone who probably came up passionately as a fan, and then started seeing more of the business side of the music industry. I’m curious about how your thoughts on pop culture have evolved.
BS: It definitely has made me a little bit more nihilistic about some stuff. Like, “Oh, why isn’t this artist being invested in, or why did this person fall off, or why doesn’t it seem like they have support?” All that kind of stuff definitely comes up a lot more than it did before. Seeing someone who had really great potential, and then it’s clear that they’re kind of given up on at a certain point. That sucks. Stuff like that has made me a little bit more of a nihilist with some things, but I also think that there’s so many avenues now for people to create and own their shit and have agency over who they are in the industry. I think there’s a really great moment right now where there is a very big demand for more authentic voices and artists. Again, that goes back to the artists who clearly have taken a while to blow up, but have cultivated a fandom, or an identity, or something more than just a one-off hit or something. I think there’s a demand for that more than ever, and I think that’s great. I’m hopeful about that for sure.
Is that something you think you’d be interested in covering now that you have your own channel to do so?
BS: Definitely. I’m obviously still figuring out what the Substack is. I mean, I know what it is, but I do need to figure out an actual kind of cadence. Like, essays versus freelance writing. I need to find out the balance of what that looks like for me, but I think I’ll probably write a lot of cultural critique essays and reviews and things like that.
Yeah, I’ve talked to other writers who have moved from legacy outlets to Substack, and there’s certainly comfort in constraints. Substack is incredible, but it’s completely open. Endless possibilities.
BS: I definitely have been thinking about it for a while, which is why I felt so inclined to launch it right away, in terms of just being like, “I already have a name I want, I already know what I want to do, and I already have a general sense of what I want to make of a newsletter.” But I think it’ll be nice once some of the dust settles [and I have a chance to think about] what I want to really turn this into.
Also, good timing with the end of the year. You’re teeing yourself up for next year. Now they fucking know. They’re subscribed, they’re aware.
BS: Yeah, it’s an easy prompt for content right now. I’m really excited to get into it. I think it’ll allow me to be a little voicier and a little more experimental in what I write.
I’m excited, too. It was honestly really encouraging as someone who can get kind of cynical about people’s investment in writers and journalists to see that so many people noted your name and followed you over to a new media channel.
BS: Yeah, even just in the last week it’s been so heartening, especially given that profiles are maybe the majority of what people have known me for. Like, I’ve written a lot more than profiles over the years, but when you write a profile and it does really well, you’re kind of like, “It’s the artist that’s really big, you know?” You’re like, “Yeah, people love Dua Lipa. Of course they’re going to read a piece on Dua Lipa.” So it’s cool that there are people who have these sorts of relationships with these articles because of my writing, on top of their relationship with the artists themselves. People don’t always read the byline, or, you know, artists are also really bad at crediting writers on Instagram. So it was very nice that people were like, “I enjoy your writing in a real way, and I want to support you in your next endeavor.”
Well, one thing I can definitely relate to as a writer and publicist is this necessary de-centering of yourself in your work. What was it like to write that first Substack post that was strictly about your experience?
BS: Even prior to the layoff, I spent a lot of time trying to separate my identity from being a Rolling Stone writer. I think it was important for me at some point to be like, “Okay, I need to be firmer in both my identity and my opinions, my taste, so my writing style isn’t just that of a Rolling Stone writer.” Being able to write something more personal and write in a way that I don’t usually write for Rolling Stone was very easy and came out very quickly. I used to do some personal essay writing when I was at Rookie Mag in my early twenties.
Wait, when were you writing for Rookie Mag? I used to read a lot of Rookie Mag.
BS: Yeah, I was there from 2012 or 2013 to 2014 or 2015. I was still kind of writing for them sometimes when I was at Rolling Stone early on, but then it became harder to do freelance stuff on top of it.
How did you get into Rookie? How did that happen?
BS: The music editor at the time was a columnist at The Village Voice. I was an intern at The Village Voice and then became a contributor and full-time staffer. I met her through that, and she was kind of a mentor and really supportive. When we started talking, she lived in Chicago the entire time, and we started to become friends on Twitter and email back and forth while I was an intern. She was like, “You should be part of Rookie Mag.”
As someone who was very aware of the Rookie sphere in high school, I remember feeling like there was a trajectory open [for young writers] if you were willing to work for it and set yourself apart. I guess there are new literary magazines popping up now, but it feels more like a luxury to write for them, rather than an opportunity to build a career.
BS: I know. It’s hard because when I first started interning and writing professionally in 2012, everyone was like, “There’s nothing.” But there was, comparatively, a lot of stuff. There were alt-weeklies then. There were a lot of blogs. There were smaller websites, independent magazines. There were way more music publications, generally. There were a lot more of the mid-level tier [outlets for writing]. An alt-weekly was a lot easier for a younger writer with not a lot of clips to get published in than a Rolling Stone. Pitchfork was sort of becoming more upper tier around that point that I was trying to write. They still had some new younger writers come in who were doing interviews. There were a lot more mid-tier freelance places at that point, but now the mid-tier is gone. There are newer places, and obviously there’s a lot of people doing independent writing, but there is no more mid-tier. I remember there was this blog, “Wondering Sound.” There were so many great people who worked there. It was a really cool, popular music blog that had excellent music writers and freelancers and editors. That was such a peak mid-tier [outlet], like you wanted to be on this website, but it wasn’t as much of an ordeal as a print publication. I wish there was more of a mid-tier. We need the mid-tier back because it’s so important when you’re a young writer to have opportunities and feel like you’re trying to take that ladder up a little bit. Like it was so special to work at The Village Voice and have that experience. It was such an iconic name, but it was still a scrappy publication, so that was such a big part of my career to get to write for them.
If you were coming out of college now, what do you think you would be angling towards [as a writer]?
BS: I probably would be doing Substack, to be honest. Because all of us were [once] doing Tumblr writing. I have so many friends who only started getting professional bylines because of their Tumblrs. I was in a fortunate position where I got The Village Voice my junior year of college, so I had that. But I had so many friends who weren’t going to school in New York and weren’t in the thick of everything in the same way, where they couldn’t intern at publications, and they were literally just writing their Tumblrs and editors were finding them through that. I think that’s honestly what I would end up doing to start, running some sort of blog to write and create internet clips. The way Substack feels right now feels very similar to Tumblr in its heyday. Except you can make money off of it, which is nice. I wish I could have made money off my Tumblr. [Laughs.]
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