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This essay is the third in our Push For Parity essay series, featuring stories about women in leadership in journalism. For more on our series and details about how you can contribute, see Kelly McBride’s essay introducing the project. Poynter and ONA have also announced a tuition-free women’s leadership academy.
In one way, my road to becoming the female journalist I am today has been unusual. But in many aspects, it is typical of many of the women I know who have successfully navigated today’s journalism landscape. First, the unlikely part. I was born and raised male. I didn’t figure out until college that I was transgender. In 2003, after several years in the workforce, I transitioned on the job from male to female. That shift, though far from common, has had little impact on my journalism, but nonetheless makes my story rather different from those of other women who have spent their entire careers battling through a male-dominated industry.
I went through childhood and school with the privilege that comes with being raised male and being told I could do anything I put my mind to. Transitioning in the workplace has given me an interesting view of the role gender plays in the newsroom, both with colleagues and with sources. First of all, I found coming out was a bonding moment with both my co-workers and those at the companies I write about. I was taught that the role of a journalist is to avoid being part of the story, so my big fear about transitioning wasn’t that I would just get fired, but rather that I would find it impossible to keep the conversation about others. But sharing a piece of myself helped connect me with others, even though transitioning isn’t an experience everyone can relate to.
It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, though. One of the hardest parts was that for the first couple of years after I transitioned, I found myself exerting a lot of energy worrying about how I was perceived. My emotions would soar or crash based on whether someone would use the right name or pronoun. That particular issue may not be something all female journalists face, but I think that as a group, as female journalists, we do spend more time worrying about fitting in and dealing with society’s expectations than do our male counterparts.
While my story is unique, I think there is something aspiring female journalists can learn from the choices and decisions I’ve made that have contributed to my success. In my first internships and jobs I did a number of things that set me up for success in this industry. First and foremost, I learned my craft—I worked hard. I had internships at newspapers big and small. I learned a ton from people with years of experience. I figured out what I was naturally good at (writing quickly, being accurate, doing my homework) and what areas came harder for me (writing features and other fluffier stories.)
I also tried different beats to see which ones interested me. I had one editor at the Plain Dealer in Cleveland — still not sure whether to call him a sadist, a mentor or both — who would send me back to the family of a murder victim to get one more detail or one last photo. He sent me to the worst places and made me ask the toughest questions. As I drove the ancient, big-as-a-boat newsroom sedan to these terrible crime scenes, I cursed the editor and his demands. But I learned from him. I learned to get all the details. I learned to be both humane and aggressive.
I didn’t stop there. I also analyzed the industry and where it was heading. For several generations before mine, a journalist’s path was pretty straightforward. Start at a small paper, work hard, move to a mid-size one, then eventually, find a destination where you could spend your career writing or editing in the subject of your choice. Those days are largely gone. Today, a journalist must be prepared to compete throughout her career, fighting to master new skills and stay relevant or risk being rendered obsolete in a world where the economics of our beloved industry are brutal and unforgiving. While I find all kinds of stories fascinating and worth telling, I saw that what had once been the lifeblood of our field, beats like cops, courts and city hall, were no longer valued. I knew that working those beats would leave me one among many fighting just to eke out a living. I looked for what was growing — online journalism, business journalism and technology — and decided to focus at the intersection of all three.
With each job move — and I have only really changed jobs twice in the last 15 years — I focused on going to the place I felt was doing the best job at what they did. Today I find myself with a job I love. At Re/code I work with some of the best journalists in the business. I am also fortunate to be led by a pair of journalists — Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg — who are also good entrepreneurs and business people. Doing good journalism is a costly endeavor and we need not only people that understand journalism but also those with ideas on how the business we love can be a sustainable one.
Ina Fried is a senior editor at Re/code.Â
