Natalie Escobar, Education + family editorial fellow @ The Atlantic

Each year, Atlantic Media hires around 40 recent graduates for its fellowship program. Fellows are placed in editorial or business positions across Atlantic Media’s four brands: The Atlantic, National Journal, Government Executive, and Quartz.

Tell us about what you do.

I am an editorial fellow with TheAtlantic.com on the family and education team. I do a lot of different things — I get to write, produce stories, fact-check stories, copy edit, and produce the head, deck, and lead images of the stories so that people actually read them. One of the things I work on specifically is our Dear Therapist column that goes out every week. I don’t write it, our senior editor Becca is the one who does the first pass on it, but I come up with the sells on it — the head, the deck, what’s going to get people to click on it. And it’s been doing pretty well recently, so that’s been really fun.

And then when I have time, I get to write. I love to write about weddings and mental health and whatever I can think of that fits into family and education.

What is your favorite thing you’ve worked on during the fellowship?

I would say one of the coolest things I’ve worked on was a piece I wrote about the tradition of Christmas tamales and Latino families that went up on Christmas day. I got to talk to a lot of people who make tamales and people who eat them and know a lot about that facet of Latino culture, and it was really rewarding.

I got to talk to this one woman who sells tamales in Texas, and she thanked me for representing our culture, told me it was really important that our stories are out there, and was just like, God bless you. She was just so sweet. She was like I hope you have a good life, basically, and it was just very sweet and humbling to remember that what we do is pretty cool.

What were you working on right before you came up here?

I’m working on two things right now, but the one I’ve been working on more recently a spreadsheet we’re putting together of where people in Congress went to high school. We’ve been doing a lot of research around that, Amal and I have been tag-teaming on this, and it’s basically just a lot of Googling and seeing what information is out there on where people went. You can find out a lot about people on the internet, something I keep reminding myself of every time I work on this project. There are a lot of yearbooks that are available on the internet.

What was your path to the fellowship? What led you here?

I went to journalism school at Northwestern. I had always wanted to work at a magazine, but I also wanted to write and be involved in working on the website. I like quick turnaround reporting and I also like long features, and working on the website you get to do both of that because we publish quick turnaround things and longer projects that other people have worked on. So it’s been cool to have the best of both worlds in that way.

I worked on our student magazine at Northwestern, I had been the editor there for a long time, and then I did an internship with the American Society of Magazine Editors, which was a lot of fun. I was working at The Bump, which is like The Knot, but for babies. It taught me a lot about SEO and all of the sorts of things that websites have to think about in order to have an audience, but it also helped me think more about what I wanted to do and what I didn’t want to do.

So I did that, and then I interned at Smithsonian Magazine. I went to ProPublica Illinois during the school year, and now I am here.

I had really loved and admired The Atlantic for pretty much all of college. I read the Case for Reparations and was like, holy cow, this is a really incredible magazine. Working here has been a dream of mine that has been really cool to be able to achieve.

What’s something you learned in a non-media job that is applicable to your current role?

So much. I’ve worked at a lot of different jobs before this. In high school, I was a camp counselor, I worked really briefly at the lingerie department at Nordstrom as a sales assistant, and I was an intern at two different museums in San Francisco. I worked in the mailroom in college and I also did a bunch of work study.

The thing that I try to remember the most is, I remember I once had a boss in an intern group I was with, she was one of my first bosses, and she told me she had been impressed by how I try to make other people feel at ease in a space — so trying to make them feel welcome, even if I’m not the leader of a group or don’t have any power in a situation.

So that’s something I’ve tried to keep here. I try to really get to know people, especially in social situations at work — include people in conversations, loop people in, invite people to coffees with people I know they would be interested in, and not hoard opportunities for myself. That’s something I try to do and always keep in the back of my head — if I were the person who is on the short end of the stick in this situation, how would I want someone to treat me? That’s something that has just come up over and over again at all my other jobs — how do I wish someone who was my peer would make me feel included.

What is your dream job?

Honestly, I really want to keep doing this. I really want to keep writing about families. I think my dream is to be able to do a little bit of everything in terms of production. Julie Beck kind of has my dream job in that she’s a senior editor but she also gets to write a fair amount. She gets to be on both sides of the process where she’s assigning stories and editing stories and shaping our coverage but also writing a fair amount and getting to write in her own voice, which is something that I’m so envious of. And I get to do that right now in a lot of ways, so I would love to keep doing that.

In another life, I would be a baker and just work with bread and dough all day. But this is a good life and a good world to be in.

What is the best advice that someone’s ever given you?

I have two pieces of advice. One is more practical. I’ve been giving college students a lot of advice on cover letters lately, and I was talking to the editor of California Sunday Magazine, Doug McGray, about advice on cover letters, and he said to show people that you can write — write quickly and sell yourself, don’t sell the fact that you love the publication that you want to be working at. Write well, but write quick. And that’s something I’ve been trying to impart on people. You don’t have to have a long, flowery lead anecdote, but also you should probably tell something interesting about yourself.

I’ll never forget this one conversation I had with my best friend in high school, Sarah, freshman year, where it was kind of the first time that I realized that I didn’t have to do anything that I didn’t want to do. She said that there are times in your life where you have certain obligations you have to fulfill, whether or not they’re making you miserable, but the you get to a point, especially when you’re starting new at a place, or you’re starting out the beginning of your high school career, where you don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to be on the debate team, you don’t have to do x y and z, you don’t have to have perfect grade. It’s just your job to exist in the world and do the best that you can by other people.

So sometimes when I’m really stressed out by work, I realized that all of this is just icing. I try to keep my Sarah voice in the back of my head that reminds me I’m glad to be here.

Do you have any advice for people looking for entry level jobs in media?

Apart from cover letter stuff, I would say to keep in touch with people. Because some of the best opportunities I’ve ever had have come from my relationships.

I’ll say, though, that people can tell when you’re using them and when you’re only trying to get to know them for your own benefit. You have to actually have relationships with people and treat them well and show them the amount of respect and deference that you would for someone you really admire, because they are someone you really admire. Maybe you’re getting coffee with them to network to get a job because that’s what you’ve been told to do, but if you don’t have anything to actually say to that person, you’re just wasting their time.

People know that you’re trying to network. You’re an undergrad, you’re kind of freaked out about your career, but there’s a way to do it that doesn’t feel creepy and gross, and the way to do that is to be someone that other people would speak highly of. Part of that is doing the work — having the clips, knowing how to market yourself, but also not to oversell yourself. You can network all day long, but if you don’t have the stuff to back it up, no one really cares.

Also just don’t be a jerk. Be nice people, do your work, and people will notice.