My First Byline: Jason Dick
Editor, CQ and Roll Call
What is your current job?
I'm the editor in chief of CQ and Roll Call.
What was your first byline?
I had worked for school newspapers and yearbooks since junior high through college, but the first non-academic byline I had was with a very ‘90s magazine called Bikini, which was a part of Ray Gun Publishing and based out of Santa Monica, Calif. (Its cover masthead read: "Action, Film, Style, Rock n Roll.") It was a 1996 book review of the crime novel "The Death of Frank Sinatra" by an L.A. writer named Michael Ventura. It was a good read and I got paid. I did freelance book reviews and stories for them for a few years and it was a blast. One was about an attempt in 1997 to set a world record for a group skydive by a group of women in Eloy, Ariz. Johnny Knoxville was also a writer for Bikini, although I never met him. It was a fun magazine to break into the business.
What was your first real job in journalism?
It was with GreenWire in Washington, D.C., back when it was owned by National Journal Group.
How did you get it?
I was teaching on the Navajo Nation in Arizona in a place called Rock Point. I came out for some friends' wedding to Washington and they mentioned that National Journal Group was expanding its digital newsletters, and if I had ever given thought to moving out to D.C. to cover politics. When I was an undergraduate political science major, I had interned at the Arizona House of Representatives for its Natural Resources Committee and later the Arizona Department of Agriculture, so I had an interest and background in land use, environmental and energy issues. When I got back to Rock Point, I had a decision to make, whether to opt for another year of teaching at Rock Point or leave at the end of the school year. I applied for a position as a staff writer at GreenWire and got it. I took a hefty pay cut, and then moved to a more expensive part of the country, but I was ready for the challenge, I had some money saved up and it all worked out.
What advice do you have for people looking to break into journalism?
Be curious, be tough, don't let others make you doubt the worth of good journalism and have fun. There are a lot of other ways to make a living, but journalism is important, rewarding and, yes, fun.
Find Jason on LinkedIn.