My First Byline: Marisa Kabas
Freelance journalist
What is your current job?
I'm an independent journalist and publish a subscriber-supported newsletter called The Handbasket. I also post a lot on Bluesky, but that's an unpaid position.
What was your first byline?
My first real byline outside of my high school and college newspapers was in the now-defunct conservative newspaper The New York Sun. I was an Arts intern there in the summer of 2008, and at the time the talk of the city was the opening of the new IKEA in Red Hook, Brooklyn. My editor asked me to write a story specifically about the store's cafe, and even more specifically about the famous Swedish meatballs. The only problem was that I was a vegetarian at the time, so I couldn't try them myself. But I did my best and went to IKEA to ask diners to describe the balls. A formative experience. The New York Sun has been resurrected online with Larry Kudlow as a columnist, which is somehow more depressing that its original iteration.
What was your first real job in journalism?
My first real journalism gig was in 2013 as a writer for the “Today” show website. I wrote posts for the Kathie Lee and Hoda blog, plus a column called "Real Weddings." Photographers submitted photos of regular people's weddings they'd done along with a bit about the couple's story, and my editor would select which ones we wanted to cover. Then I'd chat on the phone with the couples and they'd tell me about their love stories, the dramas of dating and family and wedding planning, and what it meant to them to get married. It was really sweet and earnest and I miss it sometimes.
I also wrote other stories, like this one about three little girls in Oklahoma who each had cancer and did a photoshoot before and after their remission. The photographer actually emailed me earlier this year to show me a photo she took of the girls to mark the 10-year anniversary of the photo. It made me so happy.
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How did you get it?
I worked at Buzzfeed from 2012-2013, and even though I was a journalism school graduate, I was a publicist there. When I graduated college in 2009 during the height of the financial crisis and the crumbling of newspapers, media jobs were hard to come by. (I'll never forget interviewing at the New Yorker and the executive editor of the magazine asking me, "So how do you think we can monetize our website?) So went the PR route for a while, first for Jif Peanut Butter and other food brands. When I saw a job opening for a publicist at the awesome website that all the cool people loved, I applied and got it. But being surrounded by writers and not being one of them was uniquely painful, and with little passion or flair for PR, I was quickly given the boot.
Shortly thereafter though, Doree Shafrir, one of the Buzzfeed editors with whom I'd worked and who knew I really wanted to write, reached out and said her friend at Today.com was looking for someone to write for them on a freelance basis. It was a really kind gesture that I'll never forget. All it takes is one person looking out for you to make the difference. And you never know when you'll get to be that person for someone.
What advice do you have for people looking to break into journalism?
I would tell aspiring journalists that this work has never been more important and it has never been more difficult. Between the ever-dwindling number of outlets and the political desire to demonize journalists, you're going to come up against a million walls. But when I tried to do anything else I ultimately failed because I knew this was what I really wanted to do — what I needed to do. If you feel that way, then keep pushing.
The exciting thing about the current landscape is that there are so many different ways to break in. So while it's important to have role models, don't try to hew too close to someone else's story. There's never been a better time to blaze your own weird path.
Find Marisa on The Handbasket, LinkedIn and BlueSky.