The Craziest Stories We've Heard From Journalists About How They Got Their First Byline

Not everyone follows a traditional path into journalism, and that's OK.

Illustration by Midjourney

Getting a job as a journalist is not like becoming a doctor or a lawyer.

Though you can certainly follow a path toward journalism that runs from editing the college paper to getting an internship to landing an entry-level job, there are also plenty of journalists who did not go that route at all.

In some cases, their path is so crazy that you could not retrace their steps if you tried.

One goal of this newsletter is to help aspiring journalists know the steps they should take to put themselves in a position to land a job. But these other stories are also helpful reminders that if things don’t go exactly as planned, they can still work out.

At the end of the day, if you keep trying, you have a knack for reporting and writing and you don’t give up, you may eventually get a job through some totally unexpected way as well.

Below are some of the craziest stories from the 250-plus journalists we’ve interviewed so far on Your First Byline.

Dave Lee almost got fired from Staples for his first story

So the example I like to give as my “first” piece — certainly the first piece I was ever paid for — was in the Guardian’s technology section. The paper had recently published a grumpy letter from someone complaining about how people who work in big box computer stores didn’t know anything about the technology they were selling. At the time, to pay my way through university, I was working evenings at a branch of Staples. I pitched an article to the Guardian’s tech editor at the time, Charles Arthur, offering a short first-person piece in defense of shop floor monkeys like myself who were on minimum wage and were given precisely no training or time to properly learn about what was on offer.

Charles loved the piece and had a photographer come and visit me while I was on a shift to get a few pictures — something I’d failed to run by my manager or anyone else at the company. A week later it appeared in the newspaper — me grinning like an idiot in my Staples uniform. In hindsight I was lucky not to be fired — part of the story was about the pressure to sell extended warranties to customers who knew no better. A lucky escape but a big break — from that day on I was able to refer to myself as a “technology journalist who writes for the Guardian” which was, y’know, technically true. Charles was kind enough to commission me a few more times after that too.

— Dave Lee, Bloomberg Opinion

Kate Knibbs wrote for a sketchy website reviewing cell phones

I applied for a bunch of entry-level jobs and internships, got none of them, cried constantly, moved in with my parents, and spent way too much time looking at the “gigs” section of Craigslist. Lo and behold, on Craigslist I found a job listing for a tech-news blogger role at a now-defunct website that primarily reviewed cell phones. It was called Mobiledia. I believe I started Jan. 6, 2012.

This was a sketchy, sketchy, sketchy permalance situation. It was full-time hours, and I was required to aggregate three to five tech-related news items a day. I was paid $1,700 a month via wire transfer by a man named Allen I never met who lived in Taiwan. We never even talked on the phone. We just Gchatted and then he paid me. I did this for nearly two years. Sometimes I wonder if Allen was real.

— Kate Knibbs, Wired

Ruth Graham randomly met an editor at a bar

I had recently graduated from college and moved to New York without a real plan or any connections. One night I was reading a book at the bar at the Noho Star (RIP) and I met the Sun's society editor, who was having a drink with a mentor of hers. We all ended up talking for a while, and somehow I ended up as an intern at the paper. I would go into the office a few evenings a week after getting off work at my temp job, and when a position opened up, they hired me.

— Ruth Graham, New York Times

Patrick Malone talked to an editor at a red light

I was serving an academic suspension from the University of Southern Colorado (now called Colorado State University-Pueblo). That meant I had to return to my tiny hometown on the New Mexico border, Trinidad, Colo. I’d found work as a truck-stop cook that would help me pay for school if/when they let me back in.

I was driving home to my Section 8 apartment from a shift at the truck stop, when somebody knocked on my car window at a red light. It was the sports editor of the local paper, Jon Pompia. He was familiar with my work from when I was editor of the junior college newspaper in Trinidad a couple of years earlier. He’d recently lost his longtime reporting partner, who’d left journalism to open a donut shop, and needed help with fall sports coverage. He’d heard I was back in town and he was desperate for some help. He asked if I would be willing to work with him for the next three months. Naturally, I was.

— Patrick Malone, Seattle Times

Maris Kreizman started out recapping episodes of ‘Modern Family’

In 2011 I became Vulture’s recapper for the sometimes-funny show “Modern Family.” Willa Paskin, then an editor at Vulture, had seen my Tumblr blog, Slaughterhouse 90210, and thought I’d like to write about TV. Such agony, having just the night to try to write something vaguely coherent about a mediocre sitcom I’d just watched. But that was the start of a long and lovely tenure freelancing at Vulture, where I expanded to do more TV-writing and tons of book coverage.

— Maris Kreizman, Lit Hub

Alexis Benveniste made a cringey YouTube video to land an internship

I had done internships at Seventeen and Elle magazine and wrote for the student paper. For Seventeen, this is so cringe, but I made a video on YouTube of 17 reasons why I should work for Seventeen magazine in front of copies of the magazine’s One Direction cover.

— Alexis Benveniste, freelance

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Keri Blakinger started out as a source on a story about the county jail

I spent the latter part of my teens and the first half of my 20s struggling with heroin addiction. At 26 I went to prison, and got released a little under two years later.

A few months after I got out, a guy I used to get high with called me and said that he had a friend — Glynis — who was a reporter and editor at the Ithaca Times and that she was looking to interview women who’d been in the county jail. So Glynis drove out to the house I’d paroled to in bumfuck nowhere and talked to me for an hour or two about what it was like going through the system there as a woman.

At the end, she told me she’d Googled some of the things I’d written in the past — I guess stuff I did for the college newspaper before my arrest — and that I was “pretty good” and could try writing for her if I wanted to. I think the first article I did was coverage of a town board meeting where they were talking about state environmental review requirements.

— Keri Blakinger, L.A. Times

Chris Cillizza helped George F. Will learn to use WordPerfect

So, my sophomore year of college, a guy I didn’t really know (he was a junior) approached me and asked whether I wanted to work for a “prominent journalist.” He offered no other details. It was, in a word, weird. He told me to show up at an address in Georgetown. I was naive and innocent, so I did. Turned out the job was working as a research assistant for the conservative columnist George F. Will. (The guy who approached me is named Jed Donahue and is the smartest person I have ever met — and a great friend.) I wound up working for George Will for the rest of college. I helped do research for columns, tried to fix his computer when it broke (He had an ancient machine with WordPerfect on it — ask your parents) and, for a month in the summer, housesat for him when he went to California. That was the best part of the job for two reasons: 1) He had a big screen TV (this was the 1990s and almost no one did) and 2) He had a pool. When I was graduating in 1998, I had no idea what to do with my life. George Will put me in touch with Charlie [Cook] — he occasionally used Charlie’s handicapping in columns — and that’s how I got my first gig.

— Chris Cillizza

Robyn Pennacchia’s first byline was about the death of Scrooge McDuck

For the now non-existent site Death & Taxes I wrote an entire article, no joke, about how Scrooge McDuck died in 1967, speculating what that meant for the entire plotline of Ducktales. That was a thing you get away with in 2012.

After I freelanced for Death and Taxes, I got hired full time. Probably because of quality content like that.

— Robyn Pennacchia, Wonkette

Samit Sarkar met an editor at a music festival

I met some members of the Destructoid team in person at a music festival called Blipfest in late 2007 in New York City — I was attending college there at the time — and in early 2008, I messaged the community manager to ask if the site might be interested in hiring a copy editor. (Not that I had ever copy edited anything professionally, but I've always had a knack for it, and I would frequently post comments on Destructoid correcting errors in the articles. Hey, it's a way to get noticed, if nothing else!)

One of the staffers I had chatted up at Blipfest was Destructoid's founder. He eventually wrote back to say that he thought I had seemed "sharp" when we met, and then asked if I had anything more that I might be able to offer. (Looking back now, I realize it was probably a gentle way of saying that he had no plans/ability to pay someone solely as a copy editor.) While I loved reading Destructoid, it was clear that no one on the team knew a thing about sports video games — they only covered sports games if they were mocking them. But I had been playing games like MLB The Show and Madden NFL for most of my life (and I felt like I could string sentences together fairly well), so I offered to provide my expertise in that department. For the next four years and change, I was the sole sports guy at Destructoid.

— Samit Sarkar, Polygon

Katie Hyson was noticed by a radio editor after she did a storytelling event

I had started doing on-stage storytelling at Guts & Glory GNV (similar to The Moth), and one of the [local NPR] newsroom higher-ups, Gary Green, heard me. They brought me in to help create the pilot episode for a storytelling podcast, and it got me on the newsroom's radar and it on mine. In Gary I had an invaluable supporter. He saw me not for my resume or what I already knew, but for my potential. He saw me as a journalist before I did. He advocated for creating the assistantship for me. He told me I was crazy to leave my job to take it, and I told him he was crazy to offer it to me. He said they could teach me everything I didn't know, and what they couldn't teach me I already had in spades. So I took the leap. Bless that man.

— Katie Hyson, KPBS

John DeVore wrote capsule movie reviews for a technical DVD publication

My first professional byline was a short review of the horror movie “The Thing” on DVD. I was an assistant editor at a small business and technology trade and there was a sibling magazine about home theater gear called Home Theater Magazine. This was at a small publishing company staffed by veteran service journalists who took their jobs seriously. The word count was probably 100 words or less, and it was a review of the DVD, a new format. Most of the copy was dedicated to details about the DVD — specs, bonus features, sound quality — but I was allowed to offer brief praise for the movie. My opinion wasn't the point, though. Most readers just wanted me to confirm the aspect ratio was 16:9 or not.

— John DeVore, freelance

Julie Bogen replied to a tweet

I got my job at Refinery29 after replying to a tweet! I didn't know anyone at the company — and frankly I didn't know that much about the company at the time — but they were looking for an assistant, and I think they liked hearing from someone who was literally using the platform they wanted their hire to be experienced in.

— Julie Bogen, The 19th

Jenna Amatulli saw a job posting from her coworker at TGI Friday’s

Early in my unemployment, I got an interview at AOL for a now-defunct vertical they had dedicated to Marlo Thomas. (Side note: I got the interview after a friend I worked with at TGI Friday's posted about the role on Facebook — her friend was the hiring manager. My friend then put us in touch and I got the interview. Quite the journey!)

The Marlo Thomas role would've had me writing daily lifestyle-type pieces. Again, I thought it would be a good stepping stone to become a reporter down the line. I ended up getting to the final round of interviews and even met Thomas at her fabulous penthouse in Manhattan. I didn't get the job, which they told me just before Thanksgiving, and I was crushed. In my despair spiral, I sent the AOL HR team an impassioned email begging for an opportunity to interview for any other roles I'd be eligible for at the brand. They told me HuffPost, which AOL owned at the time, was hiring fellows for a few teams and that I could try for one of those. I was set up with two editors running the fellowship program shortly thereafter, who decided I'd be a good fit for the Weird News and Crime team. I met with Buck shortly thereafter and the rest, they say, is history.

— Jenna Amatulli, Guardian U.S.

Mark Simon emailed a journalist a joke

In August, 2001, Seattle and Cleveland played a memorable baseball game in which Cleveland came back from 12-0 down to win. People were calling it the best comeback in baseball history, but I knew better.

I e-mailed the notable baseball writer Jayson Stark, then working at ESPN, and told him it wasn't ... that the greatest comeback ever was when Charlie Brown blew a 50-0 lead with two outs in the last inning after beaning Peppermint Patty.

Jayson ran my anecdote in his next column with credit. So I wrote Jayson a thank you and said hey, I know ESPN has information experts who work on their TV shows behind-the-scenes. Who hires those people for the TV show Baseball Tonight?

Jayson — who didn't know me at all — wrote me back with the name of a person. That person also wrote back with another name. And six months later after an intense interview, that person hired me.

— Mark Simon, Sports Info Solutions