Q&A: Olivia Paschal, Politics 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 a fellow on the politics team, which entails doing many different things. I write the politics newsletter, I produce stories, update a politics calendar, help with research on stories, keep track of freelancers and pitches, and pretty much whatever else we are asked to do. Also sometimes I write. About farms, usually.

What were you working on right before this?

I was reading the PDF of this book I’m trying to read in order to start a bigger, more longer-term piece. The book is called Just Giving by Rob Reich (the professor, not the former labor secretary), and it’s about how megaphilanthropy conflicts with a democratic system. I’m trying to make my way through it, slowly but surely.

What’s something you’ve learned in a non-media job that’s applicable to what you do now?

I worked at a bookstore in high school, which, to this day, is one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever had. In a customer service role, and I think especially in a bookstore, you learn how to deal with people who are not always nice to you, which I think was good preparation for being a journalist.

You also learn that some of your best customers or folks who come in might be people who you wouldn’t expect to be super interested in certain thought-provoking books. I sort of learned not to take people at face value or… judge a book by its cover.

What are you most proud of having worked on since the fellowship started?

There was a time at the beginning of the fellowship where the desk was a lot smaller than it is now, and Maddie and I were getting a lot of things on assignment from our editor and pitching a lot of things. I’m really proud of a couple of stories from that time.

One of them was when the trade war had sort of just started, and everyone was talking about tariffs and China and the United States, but I wanted to know about the people. So I literally just got on the phone and called a bunch of farmers and was like hey, how do you feel about these tariffs on your export products? (They were very mad about them.)

It was a really fun piece to do and elevated voices that I think are often lost in policy discussions.

What is the best advice someone has ever given you?

Since I was a kid, my dad has told me to just work really hard, and that even if you don’t think people are noticing you, they’re probably noticing you. Which I think is true. But something I’ve also learned in this job, that women and mentors in this company have told me, is to work really hard, but also don’t be afraid to draw attention to yourself. Which has been a very valuable skill too.

What’s your dream job?

I would love to work at the intersection of journalism, history, and politics in the south. And live somewhere in the mountains. So it’s not so much a job as it is a life concept.

What brought you to the fellowship?

This is actually a funny story. Maddie, who is also on the politics desk, and I edited the same magazine in undergrad before we knew that we had this job together. We were walking back from a massive layout weekend and I remember turning to her and being like, Maddie, I just realized that people do journalism for a career. I could just write and that could be my whole job. And she was like, duh.

That just hadn’t really registered with me. I had been thinking something along the lines of policy or going back to school or something like that, or law, and that was a revelation. I had it senior year.

So I just applied to some media fellowships. I had worked in a more advocacy journalism organization and done an internship there. So that was sort of how that happened. I realized I just loved writing and this is more of what I saw myself doing post-college.

What was your childhood dream job?

Really briefly, when I was five, we visited the Chicago Field Museum as a family and saw Sue, the big T-rex. For several months I wanted to be a paleontologist. Which didn’t pan out because I don’t really like science.

My other childhood dream job was to be an author, like a fiction author. Which I never pursued ever, but still think would be cool, even though I’ve never written any fiction in my life.

What advice do you have for people seeking entry level jobs in media?

Don’t be discouraged if your first job or your career, even, isn’t at a big national publication. Some of the best experiences and best training I’ve had came from working with local and regional publications and editors.

I think it’ll make your stories better, and it’s also a great way to get your clips out there. So bigger isn’t always necessarily better. This job has obviously been great, but it’s not the end-all-be-all if you don’t start big.