Q&A: Sean Lambert, Defense & Cybersecurity fellow @ National Journal Presentation Center
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 your role and what you do.
I was hired as a copy editing fellow for the Presentation Center team at National Journal. The goal of the team is to create PowerPoint presentations that visualize policy and news stories for clients, and also do custom projects on whatever topics they’re interested in. Although I was originally hired because I have copy editing experience, and I was supposed to be polishing everything up and making it nice and clean for people, the way that our team has changed since I’ve been hired, now everybody on the team is doing that kind of copy editing, so now that’s no longer a unique skill. So now I’m mostly contributing defense and cybersecurity. My role has changed a lot. I get to learn a lot about defense and cybersecurity, which I didn’t know anything about before I got here, and now I’m the team expert on that subject. I run that vertical, which publishes a newsletter every two weeks, and I also make custom content for clients.
What were you working on right before this?
I was researching what happened in the news in the last week. I put together a weekly newsletter that rounds up the biggest stories of the past week.
Tell us what brought you here.
I was hooked by the copy editing tagline. I would really like to work in media or publishing. I actually studied German and French literature and creative writing as an undergraduate, so I applied to this position because I wanted to get a start in media. I was interested in doing policy research and creating original content for our website.
What is the best advice that someone has ever given you?
When I was leaving college, I still didn’t know what career I wanted to do. I’m still not totally sure what career I want to do forever. For people our age, that’s not our life. We’re not going to do one career for the rest of our lives. We’re going to do a lot of different things. When I was applying for my first few jobs, I just had a set of values in mind. I wanted to do a job that was challenging and fun. I knew I wanted to work in an office, and use my writing and research skills every day. Thinking about your career in terms of what you want to be doing on a daily basis, and what kind of quality you want your work to have can be an easier way for people with really wide ranging interests or interests that don’t line up perfectly in a particular job to go about applying and talking about themselves. Sometimes it can be a little abstract.
What is something that you learned in a non-media job that’s applicable to what you do now?
The most important thing is just learning how to be a thorough reader. So much of what we do is reading huge quantities of information and then synthesizing them really quickly for people. Since we’re all editing each other’s content all the time, being able to quickly understand what we’re talking about and then make the necessary edits so that we can send it to clients. Probably the most valuable skill that I learned was just being in college and having to do hundreds of pages of readings a day, for all these different literature classes. You don’t think that it’s happening as you’re doing it, but you learn how to speed read, synthesize information and that skill has been indispensable. I wasn’t working in media before this, but it was helpful then as well.
Do you have a dream job?
I really don’t know if I have a dream job. I really liked that show Weeds in high school, but that show runner also created Orange Is The New Black and Glow, and she just seems to have so much creative control over everything she does. When I was in high school I thought I really wanted my own TV show one day. Now I don’t know if that’s my dream job, but it’s most recent one.
What is your advice for people seeking entry level jobs in media?
Have one particular skill that you’re really good at, and target something that they’re hiring for that uses that particular skill. I had a lot of experience doing developmental and copy editing, and there just happened to be an opening at this job. And even though none of my other past job experience or the stuff I studied in college really prepared me to do that work, because they were looking for that particular skill, I just fit in.
