Launch Student News Victoria Feng

From her early days as an occasional opinion writer for her high school's student paper, Lyz Lenz has never shied away from speaking her mind. In the last few years, her freelance writing career has risen dramatically, with bylines in the Columbia Journalism Review, the Washington Post, and Glamour. Lyz's work, which constitutes both reported pieces and personal essays, focuses on feminism, religion, the Midwest, and everything in between. Her book, Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women, was published in August 2020.

 In this week's Launch Student News interview, Victoria talks with Chloe Angyal, freelance journalist and Contributing Editor for Marie Claire.

While writing for her high school newspaper, The Goods by Vox reporter Rebecca Jennings fell in love with journalism, specifically about culture, an interest she has carried on in her college days at NYU and her current role as a columnist for the "This Week in TikTok" roundup. She shares some of her tips and tricks, such as being on TikTok and Twitter for hours every day so she can get the latest scoop, but also encourages student journalists to move beyond merely covering news; instead, they should bring in outside sources to do a thoughtful analysis of what's happening in our world today.

After getting experience at her high school newspaper, Kim Kelly was able to land her first professional byline in the local newspaper at only 15. Since then, Kim has continued pursuing love of journalism, fusing it with her other passions such as heavy metal and labor. She currently writes a labor column for Teen Vogue and is a contributor to the Baffler. She’s also written for publications including the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, NPR, the New Republic, and the New York Times. Her book, Fight Like Hell, which is about the history of labor movements in the U.S., is set to release in 2022.

For Nicole Clark, a contributing editor at Catapult and freelance journalist, pursuing journalism was always a "pipe dream"- writing was something she had been passionate about since childhood, but she worried about the career path's instability and believed she would major in economics or communications. During her time at Yale, Nicole realized the classes she were most drawn to was her creative writing ones and she gave herself a two-month trial period to pursue journalism. Fast forward to today, Nicole has continued her love of creative nonfiction by writing numerous personal essays about and editing essays at Catapult. She's also written for publications including the New York Times, Vox, New York Magazine, Salon, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

While working in an advertising position, AC Shilton realized her true passion wasn't in marketing, but rather journalism. She started off by submitting freelancing story ideas to her company, building up clips and experience as she went. Despite obstacles such as being denied a staff writing job because she didn't have a journalism degree, AC continued working hard, creating a list of dream publications and poring intensively through the publications' website to get a better understanding of their writing style. Today, she's written for places like Outside Magazine (where she serves as a food and drink columnist), the New York Times, and Men's Health and appeared in the Netflix docuseries The Innocent Man. She shares some of her best tips for student journalists in this week’s Launch Student News episode.