‘Learn the fundamentals, the basics. Learn how to do them in your sleep’ AJC reporter tells young journalists

Mitch Jaugstetter
The BearFaced Truth
4 min readMar 30, 2019
Willoughby Mariano has worked at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 2010. She has been on the investigative watchdog team for 6 years. Photo courtesy of Willoughby Mariano.

Willoughby Mariano is a reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She’s on the watchdog investigative team and reports on everything from housing issues to criminal justice.

Her career journey to the AJC had many twists and turns that have led her to where she is today.

Mariano grew up in Barrington, Illinois, a town outside of Chicago. She attended Yale University and graduated in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. While at Yale, she was the editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News Magazine.

“When I was at Yale, for fun, I worked at the tabloids, but I felt too guilty. You know, that the kind of bombastic coverage. So, I joined the magazine and ran that,” Mariano said.

Soon after, Mariano had an internship at CBS News, but she didn’t like it. The next summer, she worked for the Lawyer’s Committee for Human Rights. She said that wasn’t quite right for her either.

“A friend of mine was going to a job fair. So I went along and gave him a ride and also brought my resume and clips. Then I got an internship there at Newsday, which is my first daily news internship, and I really enjoyed it. I also have snagged a slot at the Los Angeles Times Metpro diversity program,” Mariano said.

She went on to work to at The Orlando Sentinel and then to the AJC, where she has been working since 2010.

“Right now, I definitely do have a lot of fun with my current job. Overall, it’s a really nice opportunity to do coverage that can change the metro area,” Mariano said.

Mariano is also very involved with other ventures outside of work. She is the president of the Atlanta chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association.

“I find myself being sucked into advocating for my profession or for diversity, especially because that’s fallen by the wayside in the past, you know, couple of decades,” Mariano said.

Understanding how people look at her in the newsroom and how that differs from reality is something Mariano wish she knew when she started her career as a journalist.

“What I wish I knew when I was new to the profession was how my race and gender would play such a large factor in my career. Not in a way that was positive,” Mariano said.

Recent changes in the newspaper industry have changed the way newsrooms and reporters work. Mariano and the AJC have been no exception to this.

“We have fewer resources now, so I have to turn stories more quickly. I want to make sure the types of stories that have to do with poverty and inequality and investigating aspects of that get proper coverage,” Mariano said.

Mariano said she is inspired by the work of New York Times reporter Walt Bogdanich. Mariano takes pride in the reporting she does and is especially proud of a 2014 investigation into an investor who was buying up homes in an Atlanta neighborhood.

“I did micro-local stories about a neighborhood that was being overrun by a speculator, a very poor neighborhood on the west side here,” she said. “It got a lot of traction in the mayor’s office. The Feds did stuff in that neighborhood as a result of the story.”

Mariano would not be able to conduct an investigation like this without her fundamental reporting skills.

“If I didn’t have the skills, I could not do an investigation. I’m a very strong writer, but I don’t care how strong of a writer you are. You can’t be a good reporter if you can’t do the fundamentals,” she said.

With entry-level reporting positions and responsibilities shifting, the fundamentals are not being taught like they used to be.

“I don’t mean taught in the journalism school context. I mean taught in the work context. A lot of the early jobs have shifted from cops reporting jobs or municipal reporting jobs to sitting at your desk and making phone calls to do breaking news and creating a lot of content. That’s not a great way to become a reporter,” Mariano said.

Knocking on doors, knowing how to talk to strangers, knowing how to manage chaos and being able to think fast on your feet are all skills Mariano considers essential to a journalist.

“Learn the fundamentals, the basics. Learn how to do them in your sleep,” she said.

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Mitch Jaugstetter
The BearFaced Truth

Journalism student at Mercer University’s Center for Collaborative Journalism