Maintaining the Veneer of Objectivity with Mary K. Pratt

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I’m Eric Chemi and this is Politely Pushy. Welcome to Politely Pushy I’m your host as always Eric Chemi, today I’m joined by Mary K. Pratt, freelance journalist but you’ve worked with CIO, CSO, TechTarget, Wall Street Journal, MIT Technology Review, Enterprise IT, all the big things

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that so many major companies are involved with it’s it’s the world right now I feel like Enterprise IT is is taking over the world whether that’s AI or all the the aspects to it so Mary thanks so much for joining me here today oh thanks for having me you know I was

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trying to research you ahead of time but there’s not a lot about you on social media tend to be tend to be private I appreciate that I deleted my Twitter account I never used my Facebook account I understand that that idea of I want to write and I have my work public

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but I don’t want to be public so so tell me about how you’ve got to that point of my work is public but not me well I came from old school newspapers so um back before actually the internet which I’m a little bit embarrassed to talk about that that I’ve been in this industry

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that that many decades but coming in as a traditional journalist the the um the standard it’s my phone ringing sorry I still have an old landline in an old house I love it we landline ringing but this is real I like that you can’t even go one minute into a conversation

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your phone’s already off the hook yeah well you know usually it doesn’t but it’s an old house with old wiring and we don’t want to knock down the walls and start feeling with the wiring so that’s a whole other story but anyways um I’m an old school journalist and and the

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standard was really to be um maintain that um veneer of objectivity really to have no public opinion about the events and the issues that are being covered which I’ve always adhere to and I like to think that of course I’m a thinking individual and I can look at the news

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and understand the news but I never take any of that to my job I am um and and including in IT and and cyber security which doesn’t have say the political bend of covering any sort of hard news did when I was back in the newspapers but keeping off those social media

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platforms just allows me to really come to every interview every every um topic that I covered with this kind of clean slate about tell me the sources I’m interviewing tell me your ideas your insights your information and really listen to what’s being said to formulate

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the the article that I’m trying to craft and I think not coming with any sort of baggage puts the people I’m interviewing at e because they they don’t think I’m coming with an agenda or that I’m coming from my own personal positions and I think it helps just create much more

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effective interviews much more effective dialogue and just keeps me really open to the topics I’m covering um as I mentioned that’s really important not only for my my existing work which I still do and I’m I’m keeping really busy with all that but as I launch a

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community newspaper in my hometown which has become a news desert it really helps build that trust among my community members to say hey know we want to bring news back to our city and we don’t have an agenda we’re non-advocatory we’re nonpartisan we just want to know what’s

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going on and what people think and yeah so I really keep that low profile I’m also a little weary about all the data being gathered on me but that’s a again a whole other conversation we can have I I understand I think about I think about the same things but I’m curious then on the

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social media because I know there’s a lot of people having worked in newsrooms myself where they’re saying hey you got to build up your following you got to build up this and I wonder from your perspective being freelance and you’re pitching yourself to different outlets

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did you ever feel that hey I need to have a bigger following a bigger presence because they’re looking to me and they’re measuring me based on clicks and and I know a lot of reporters who feel like their following count matters more than even the quality of the work

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that they’re doing yeah that’s a hard balance and you know is it possible I’m losing out on something maybe um my feeling has always been it’s really about the work I produce um as as I said to you earlier before I get going I I keep a low profile deliberately because

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I want the the work the quality of the work to speak for itself and I think quality still attracts clicks right it still attracts um people who stay through the whole story who don’t just jump in and say this is this doesn’t work this doesn’t answer my questions

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this doesn’t inform me um so even if someone has a huge following if it really doesn’t deliver the quality I think they that that um kind of dings them um in the long run I’m sure there are people who do both really well who build their following and produce quality

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there’s probably a lot of merit I could learn from that um that work but I find that I’m so busy doing my job and doing it the way I want to do it that there’s not a lot of time left over to do that that additional work um maybe down the line but I do like to I do prefer

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kind of a lower profile um by choice as much as um personal choice by as much as professional objectives do you have hidden lurker accounts where you can go and look at things is your issue about the looking of what’s on social media or the or the you publicizing your opinions

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on social media or is it both um neither neither and I think too I think first off my like I I’ve been really steady with my work so I don’t feel like I have to chase a lot of work so that that probably helps um I’m was well established coming into freelance and

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have been doing it for more than two decades so I don’t have that pressured perhaps to chase work if that changes maybe again my approach to this has to change um in terms of finding things on social media I think so much of it has just become noise um not all of it and I am

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on LinkedIn so um that seems to be for work a much more um I don’t want to say curated experience but maybe a little bit more curated where it tends to be much more in line with the kind of topics I’m covering so I’m able to see things there I find some of the other um

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platforms without going too far down that rabbit hole so much of it is noise that it becomes an ineffective use of my time and my time is very precious as is everybody’s um when I interview people I always thank them for their time everyone is very busy so for me to start

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digging into too much social media it’s just how I choose not to send my to spend my time I can usually find dialogue conversations and the information I need through much more effective channels do I lose out on part of the dialogue absolutely but the big

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issues bubbling up in those social media platforms tend to make the news so I can usually find out those big items um through more traditional news channels and screen out the other news that is just distraction for me well I’ll say now then thank you for your time thank

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you for your time in case I forget later thank you for spending time knowing you’re busy tell me the like you said doing freelance for a couple of decades why did you go that route as opposed to hey I’m gonna try to get the full-time newsroom job at one particular outlet

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yeah it’s just completely personal I did work full-time um for for many years um and worked at a number of newsrooms and had fabulous experience loved covering the news um and for me my journey was absolutely around family I have four children so when I first

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started having children freelance fit better better with our schedule I’ve been in news rooms when um big news happened um and it’s all hands-on deck it’s all hours and I found that it wasn’t really going to be conducive to be the kind of um parent I wanted to be

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but I still love the work so freelance I was an early actually early adopter of at home work I I’ve been working at home since 2000 um and there’s pros and cons I always told people over the decades there are definitely pros and cons to working um remotely and working at a

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home office um but it allowed me a lot more flexibility much of that has become more standard in the workplace at this point but back in 2000 it was not the norm to be able to craft one’s own schedule to pick the hours um that I wanted to work those kind of things so for me it was

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that and I came from straight news I had done some business reporting I’ve done a lot of different beats so around 2000 I went into business reporting that was as many people remember the .com and then the .com bust boom and bust right um so I started covering Information

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Technology just part of the business reporting I was doing and that whole it space exploded at that point so I started doing more and more of that and just found it really engaging and interesting and it was evolving there was always new Dynamics and a lot to to

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learn and say so I just kind of started following down that route and that’s where I’ve been for and added cyber over the years on the go handed glove so I’ve been covering that but I still do other kind of reporting every now and then um which is fun um and in fact um speaking

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with a young reporter the other day we talked about how the best part of the job is you’re always learning you always meet people I’ve met some great people over the years and you learn almost every single day there’s something new to hear something new to learn in any

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place you’re working even long time um even covering a beat this long every day I learn another another Dynamic another piece of the puzzle I like that I like that story so what are you learning right now now Enterprise IT, cyber security management

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what do you what’s your current exciting thing that you want to pursue more of oh um boy that’s a hard one um I mean I’m intrigued by the whole AI issue um and oh there’s so much there so I’m trying to gather buzz I was like how long are we gonna go without talking

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about AI but it wasn’t too long oh no no um I I’m excited and um by the possibilities of AI I think there’s a lot of areas around AI that are incredibly important for society this is where I’m going to bridge a little bit and talk about my personal opinions

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which again I don’t usually do um things about its its ability to solve these you know intractable problems these unsolvable problems around um like medicine and health care and precision medicine and and environmental issues and and all sorts of important areas

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econ I mean there’s just so many good things AI can do we also know that there are some things that we are um cognizant that maybe we don’t want to go down those roads I think what I’m curious about is when I hear people mostly friends and and you know people I

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know outside of work voice concern or fear about AI not just about job uh loss um I think that’s a legitimate fear um I’m not as worried about it because I think it’s like the tractor right like we used to have a lot of people dig ditches now then we got the tractor and

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other people moved on to different types of jobs I think that will happen when maybe work less hours a week which I think everybody would love um I think when people talk about the fear of AI the sense of being tracked or all these kind of things that they feel are are a

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little bit creepy what I’m intrigued by is a sense of um they seem to give up a lot of control where at the end of the day I don’t think it’s sentient um if it ever gets that way we unplug the computers I don’t know but the sense that too often people give up their

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control of technology right like they say I’m addicted to the phone I’m like then put it down shut it off go to a flip phone you don’t want to be on you know a social media platform all day then okay then don’t um I think too often which again you know um I’m not on

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social media and there were there were other reasons um going kind of a little detour um I kind of fell into the rabbit hole a little bit with Facebook early adopter where um it was easy to feel a little snarky sometimes about post and I’m like that’s not who I am and that’s

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not who I want to be so I got off of it I think with AI we we too often give up where we come with the sense of we don’t have as humans the control of it where at the end of the day it is a tool we created and it is a tool we can control if we see it and choose to use it that way but

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that’s a little bit out of the scope of what I write about I write more about the governance of it so these are dynamics within the governance of it but I think they’re larger societal issues that we’re going to be tackling I find that fascinating even if I’m not

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necessarily leading the conversation around that and then you mentioned starting a community newspaper that feels very very different from Global IT, what’s going on there well um like most of um many many communities we had a newspaper we had a you know really good

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newspaper it was um a daily then it went weekly then it was digital only and then it kind of disappeared and for my community which is um you know it’s a Vibrant Community there’s a lot going on it was a I felt the loss personally as a resident felt it and there were three

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couple things that really made me drive toward this um was our our big ba our big football field which is where our fourth of July fireworks are held was torn up one day I went by and it’s literally torn up and there’s tractors and I’m like I don’t

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know if they’re building a skyscraper or what they’re doing like there was no news about it I couldn’t find anything um local elections I couldn’t get any information about the candidates it was actually a local college had reporting on the local candidates and then um a

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really cute pizzeria in my city had a new bakery open up next to it and I’m like well that would I would love to know about a new bakery coming into town and I thought I had been waiting for someone else to take up that that torch and and start a newspaper and when no

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one did I thought h i I can do this and I will do this so I made some noise networked um anyone who came to my door like the candidates who were running for office um colleagues and contacts I had in the office or in my city I just said you know hey I want to do this I don’t

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want to do it alone I can’t do it full-time and through that networking got in touch with um another woman who was looking for for this kind of opportunity and Shi in a third formed a nonprofit to work as a publishing agency and uh or the publishing entity and we

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are we are building it so we have a website we um we’re moving it Forward we’re hiring staff raising Capital uh doing all those kind of good things so yeah we’re we’re moving forward but not really ready to say too much more than that that it’s in the works okay okay

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and then part time at night this is what I do on my off hours in your night time the you said you’re you’re in a position now where your enough workwise you’re not having to chase work in terms of the regular freelance uh IT stuff that you’re doing what is the the process then that

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you’re doing stories are you pitching to editors at outlet saying hey I’ve got this story do you want it are they coming to you and assigning you stories or are you know who’s who’s creating the stories in what work is the is the flow going it’s um a combination but most of

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them most of them at this point are assignments um which is great um but I always have a a list of ideas and sources and such so um but most of them come to me now I have long-term relationships with all my editors um the publications for which I write have been

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in place for a long time so that helps and I treat and there’s not a lot I write for you know essentially mainly two um entities right now um yeah so they come to me with stories but they’re always in my space um some of them are expanding out like I’m doing more around

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sustainability reporting um you know back when it was just IT and cyber security it was very was much more narrow but like as the fields grew as organizations expanded what they could do with digital technologies so did my reporting so I do a lot around data

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sustainability um sometimes it’s very industry specific sometimes which help because I have this business background I can speak different um languages of different sectors um so yeah so they come to me and they keep me busy and they’re great I I work for great people

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um it’s one of the best things about my job is the people for whom I work um so they keep me busy and that’s great I’m happy to have it so you know obviously we hear from companies hey I want to get published I want someone to talk about me or get this article what should they

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even do how do they even get in front of someone like you because most people I know and most people you know when I was writing I didn’t really take pitches right I I looked at them I saw them okay maybe it gives me an idea and I go in a different direction but I didn’t really

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take the pitch but then sometimes like one out of a thousand times Maybe I did so there was no rhyme or Reason to say well this is the one that I did and why so so what is your what is your working relationship or or typical usage of companies who reach out to you to say

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hey can you include us or write about us yeah I do get a lot of pitches um some of which are just completely relevant to my work you know I’m trying to think of some of the on I you know which is one of those I don’t know you get on these PR lists and

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or you know I don’t know distributions and and I get things that are just you know and I I I did read a book and I can’t remember which one it was about email and it said it’s like somebody you know so I say this because I don’t respond to emails that are completely

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irrelevant to me anymore or many of the ones that I get that might be relevant to me I don’t because it’s it’s the equivalent was of someone keeps knocking at your front door and you you’re trying to work you just can’t open the door all the time so I don’t do that if I get a

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couple of emails from someone I might just send it out back saying I’m not going to follow up I you know I’ll respond when if it’s relevant to me um so I that’s just a time management issue I not try to be rude I usually keep all the pitches that are relevant for me I

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have a way of filing away ideas people who I think might be um relevant um expert sources for my for my work and if they come from the uh an external PR person if it comes from the person themselves or if it comes from um an internal PR person or sometimes you know

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I have good relationships with professional organizations that represent the type of experts i’ use such as CIOs and CSOs and chief data officers and the like so I have a way to um it works for me I don’t know if anyone else could use my filing system

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but it works for me have a way to keep all of these on file and it is like like you said sometimes there’s a little kernel in a pitch that is relevant or it’s an expertise um say a CIO is doing environment or sustainability um initiatives whatever maybe looking at

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how AI their AI deployments are are using energy you know because we know AI is really energy so I’ll file that away as someone who can talk about this dynamic and then when those assignments roll around where when I need a pitch related to these areas I can draw on

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them to to you know craft the story to to line up interviews and the like so that’s how I do a lot of my um finding sources finding ideas knowing and also knowing what’s in the you know what people are talking about knowing what’s you know kind of going through people’s

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heads um I also look at a lot of newsletters um conference schedules and people who refer me to other people you know I have great sources who say you know this person is doing this really interesting work or this person can speak to you or or the like so it comes

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to me through variety of sources um I think for people who really want to be seen as expert sources and PR people are really helpful and I work well with them I know they have the job and I have my job and sometimes it’s um it can be a little bit of odds but it’s a very

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symbiotic relationship so I do think PR people are very helpful for expert sources who are looking for these opportunities to work as a liaison um I work with these people a lot and you know they’re great finding things I think what’s hard is when I need

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sources and and sometimes the expert sources want to speak but they’re too narrow in in what they’re willing to speak about like they had this one thing and I really need to speak about like a broader issue it doesn’t really work um sometimes that’s a challenge um give me

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an example on that like let’s let’s drill down a little bit more on on this thing so if say for example and this is just hypothetical perhaps I’m doing an interview or I’m working on a story about customer experience and um you know very broadly and someone only wants

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to speak about a really narrow piece of it that might be fine it might fit in as one antidote for the story but if you’re going to be so focused or not willing to talk say you’re only willing to talk about how great it’s worked out for you but not willing to talk about the bumps

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to get there that doesn’t really that’s not really effective for me right like I can’t just tell the the the shiny happy story because that’s not really helpful for for for me as I when I position my stories um it’s always about, I talk about it advancing the conversation

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right it’s not going to be people write whole books on these topics I always say it’s one article it’s one piece of the puzzle it’s advancing the conversation and to just showcase how great it worked for you as an organization as a CIO or CSO or whatever it might be doesn’t

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Advance the conversation it’s too promotional I need you to show a little bit of the the downsides or the challenges and how you overcame them because that’s what people that’s what our readers want to know is like I have these challenges too I’m trying to get

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over them how did you overcome them and what was the benefit they’re not willing to talk a lot about that piece of it just telling the good part of the story doesn’t really work as well for me and it might might end up in the story but it’s really ends up being less um

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pronounced their expertise gets kind of buried further down the list because they’re not willing to tell the whole story um whether it’s on like I say customer experience or data analytics or implementing AI or whatever it might be um people need to be a little bit more

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forthcoming um and it helps because business publications there there’s no kind of thatch journalism there’s no it really is this um stayed kind of um I don’t want to say conservative in that kind of political sense but conservative in the sense of there’s not it’s not um

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inflammatory it’s not um clickbait kind of stuff so it really is positioned in a way that helps others learn from people’s experiences if that makes sense that does make sense how much do you get pressure from vendors or competitors saying oh well you know you wrote about

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them but you didn’t you didn’t write about us or our features or better and I know you said it’s it’s not gotcha journalism it’s not clickbait but I find at least in my experience there is enough pressure of well you wrote about a competitor or you know you didn’t put

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this particular thing in your story or you left this out and and some people feel like it might be gacha journalism other people may feel like it’s click yeah yeah I don’t get a lot of that which helps um vendors I don’t do a lot of vendor reviews I don’t do vendor

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products so that that takes a little bit of pressure occasionally I’ve done um for some publications like I might cite a particular vendor as an example in a story that’s what I meant more like you cite a vendor but then they competitor you are you write about a story and you

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quote an executive from one company but their competitor like well you shouldn’t have talked to them you should have talked to us instead because we’re better than though yeah um it’s it’s usually I can usually say why I cited something like if it’s um an example of

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say a leading you know I can point to like an analyst firm said you know these are the three leading vendors in the space so I have a little bit of cover to say you’re not one of them so I’m not giving all the list it wasn’t meant to be a list it’s not a review and and part

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of it I think is a little bit having come from the reporting background it’s it’s very easy to just be like sorry you know like I don’t work for you that was one of my favorite rep lines from a working journalist really again old school newsroom journalist you know when

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you get those complaints and you know I knew this person who you know his attitude was he listened for two minutes he’s like guess what I don’t work for you I don’t work for you um I try not to be blunt but but I kind of say it in a more polite way I’m like you know it

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really wasn’t it’s not an ad and if you want to get promot you know take out an ad it’s this is not what my job is it’s not what my role is and it’s fair and it’s you know sometimes I’ll say look I’ll keep you on file and if you have a great story if you a client has a great

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story to tell if you have a CIO who wants to talk about how inventive your product is and how they solved real business problems that only they could do um you know yeah like pitch that to me but don’t just tell me you want to get your name in the paper because again

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buy an ad so yeah that’s that’s a little bit of the old school journalism coming through right no I I I I agree because I’m always saying if you want to do an ad then buy an ad because too many companies come with ad speak and they’re going to get a story of their

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ad speak and I said a story has has the drama it’s like you said what are the challenges like an actual story would have you know the protagonist and the antagonist and the challenges and the drama and the climax the resolution that’s still a story right whether it’s

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in business or not and and a lot of companies just want to give a a feature sheet or a fact list yeah and like I said most of my work doesn’t have a lot of that so it’s it’s um shielded me a little bit from that I’m sure my editors probably get it more than I do so again

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I work for great people they might take a little bit more heat than I do do your editors do you feel like your editors are ever getting pitched and then they’re assigning you a story that they were pitched on no no I mean I’m sure they do but I never find it’s like a

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vendor speak like if it if they do get that it’s so filtered and it really is and and again my space is very much on the Enterprise um so it’s an Enterprise business problems and a lot of the dialogue around CIOs and CSOs is around that like what don’t talk to me don’t be

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enamored with the technology don’t don’t talk about tech for tech sake what is the business what is the objective so it helps that that space that whole space has moved to that dialogue so if my editors are getting pictures from any um vendors and I don’t have that visibility

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they’ve never shared that with me by the time that kind of assignment gets crafted and I’m I’m working on it it’s usually around like what are what is this business dynamic and they generally say we don’t want we don’t want vendors you know I’m not you know generally I’m

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um I don’t want to say barred but we’re we’re not interviewing vendor executives for these stories it’s really those CIOs and CSOs and analysts and and researchers and and the like so again it shields me a little bit from it that all being said I think for my role I still

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have to know what the vendor community is doing I have to know about their advances and often when I do get vendor information it’s really helpful for my job I’m not sure it’s helpful for them in terms of getting um promotions but but all those studies vendors do and

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letting me know about their product advances um help me do stories that say heyy you know this new solution is now coming onto the market this this class of technology is evolving in this way and it is allowing CIOs and CSOs to seize upon it I think these the people I

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write for right they’re all executives they’re all very smart they’re they’re business people they can read about these kind of things and then go investigate these products themselves so in some ways I guess the vendor community is benefiting from that um but

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by name probably not but all that information that comes to me is helpful in terms of keeping pace with everything that’s going on and as you know it changes so quickly these days it’s it’s critical to keep on top of of all those advances um so you can speak do the job

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well talk to these executives about about what’s available and how they’re using it do you ever get assigned a story that you think I really don’t want to do this this sounds very annoying um on very rare occasion and there have been a few that I’ve turned down um not

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often and I’m trying there’s a couple that I I’ve shied away from some of those those lists of products um which again we don’t do very often and it’s um it’s always meant to be informative but I don’t I don’t do those because I I don’t feel I feel like I don’t I’m I

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can’t picking and choosing which ones to highlight feels um beyond my scope of of expertise so and there’s one there’s one other story I think I said yeah there was one other story that was particularly technical um it’s been a long I took coding I you I could never

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code you know maybe the low cook platforms I could use um there was one or two that were particularly Technical and I said you know I don’t think this is the right the right one for me I couldn’t do the job well um and I told my editor that and was again an editor I

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worked with a long time and I said you know hey look if you’re if you’re really jammed up if nobody else can take this on I’m sure I could make it work but I think it’d be better served with someone who is a little bit more technically astute in this particular area who can

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have the conversation better than I speaking of which I’m gonna ask you a question you don’t have to answer it I say that people sometimes too what but yeah what’s the business model here as a freelancer if you turn it down you’re not getting paid are you getting paid per

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article do you get paid per word is it a flat fee do you get paid more for more experience but but they’re trying to keep costs down like I worked in news rooms I’m in a business report so I’m just curious having never been a freelance journalist so what is the the

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model here and how do you best sustain yourself um I think my editors are very good and I feel very fairly compensated um and that helps um I have in my experience and I’ve been doing this for 24 years so I can speak for those I’ve turned down would be a better one um

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when 200 2001 rolled around and I remember when everyone was putting up websites right the highspeed internet everyone needed websites and I remember doing getting pitches and some people were you know paying very well and some people were people actually put in their ads

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for freelancers or their pitches to to have me work for them um your pay is your published byline and and like that’s that’s insulting so your pay is nothing basically nothing right right I’m just like that’s just insulting um I think that goes to larger issues

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around work um I don’t think people should work for free um my kids are my kids are entering the internship phase and um they thankfully get college credits I remember in my college I think you had to pay the college for the credit and then you went and work for free uh which

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seemed um at a be at those price tanks seemed a little bit ludicrous um I think people should be fairly compensated and what that fairly means I’m sure is judged on experience and a lot of other things um like I said I’ve worked for I’ve I have these really long-term

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relationships and I would like to think it’s because I um provide value and and I’m a good employee um I will put put a plugin for my daughter she’s a super good employee I see it in her she’s uh she uh works at at um should I say it she works at Starbucks and gets up for

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like a 4 AM shift and has for years putting her you know helping to pay her uh pay your fun money through college um what does she think about this new CEO I don’t know I don’t think that’s I think that’s above her pay grade um um but I think there’s like I

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think one if one works hard um and it it does good work it I you know I say this around a journalism right I think it’s I think it has a reputation of being something it’s not I think there are a lot of good opportunities um it’s never going to be you know Fortune 500 CEO pay

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um there’s no secret to that um but it’s you know it’s it’s been a good career I mean I I would I would speak it up any day you know I learn a lot I’ve met some fabulous people I’ve done some um really interesting things I rode an elephant in a circus now that now we know not to

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ride elephants in circuses but I did that as a news reporter um I I’m sure I covered some other things Country Fairs that was fun that was some fun assignments um I did a magazine report once where um I was pitching it about the proliferation of day spas when they

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were really starting to build up I said well maybe we can do a feature in my editor said you know it would be better if we actually pay for you to go do that I was like okay so you know I’m like who argues with that kind of experience so um it’s a good field and and

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professionally it’s it’s been a great career I can’t complain about any of it your bio says on on the I think it’s the TechTarget page ranging from community news to fashion to health and fitness what were you do what were you doing in fashion um I love fashion so um as a

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community newspaper it was I was on the features pages and I forget like how it came about I don’t know if my editor asked me to start writing it or I pitched an idea but I had a weekly fashion column and I got picked up by the AP a lot or some you know kind of

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random places I was working for a big bigger chain back then um no longer exists so it would run um yeah so I I I wrote this weekly fashion column and as I moved from that newspaper to a bigger one in the south um and I worked on their actual Wire Desk um I had an

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opportunity some fashion writing for them as well and then when I started freelancing Women’s Wear Daily needed a reporter and to cover Chanel local Chanel show so I was like yeah they called me and they said can you do it I was like yeah I can do it um so it’s fun

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it was great um and I think as a writer I will say one of the things I think it helped me as a writer do is to have more fun with my work and it bring a little bit more my voice to the work um to have more um flare in my writing I I mean I’m not a um I don’t think I’m a verbose

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writer I don’t think I’m like over the top in my voice or anything like that but covering fashion allowed me to loosen up a little bit you know go go away from that strict straight news reporting or business reporting to add some color and and and conversational

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tone which I think I’ve carried through but it was a great experience um there’s only so much of that I wanted to do um I don’t think I’d go back to it but it was it was fun and that’s like I said that’s a great thing about journalism you’re always kind of have this opportunity to

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do something new and different and meet people in in new places and and the like so um I’m sure I’ve done some other things they’ll come to me after the call I’m like oh yeah I did this cool thing and well you wrote a dozen books it says for school students nonfiction about

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yeah well there’s again you know these um these opportunities come to me which again is great um they filled in especially when I had um younger children it seemed seemed good they were just the kind of things you’d find in your children’s elementary schools or

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your middle schools or high schools and you know um I only picked topics that I thought were that I was interested in so one was like a I think Elementary or Middle School um book on World War I and I’m like okay that’s really interesting I you know I I find the topic interesting

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I’ve always wanted to read The Guns of August I read it for writing that book um I didn’t finish Guns Of August but it was something I wanted to read so it’s kind of getting paid to do something that was interesting to me and it was a new Venture um one was parliamentary

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government how does par you know how does parliamentary government work again kind of a middle school book so it would be the reference book your kid comes home when they’re learning about British government or something um and I had studied overseas I had studied in and so

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and had British government as one of my topics so kind of knew a little bit about it um so yeah so that was just kind of an interesting piece to do and when you get paid for doing something that’s kind of interesting to you it’s who can argue with that and it was

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different it was kind of neat getting paid to learn that’s that’s my goal in life gonna pay me to learn then that’s good yeah this has been great Mary I appreciate the time thank you for thank you for your time thank you for for being generous with us and and just

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walking us through your experience what you’re looking at what you’re trying to not look at as well so thank you so much Mary hope it helped. Thank you to my guest and thanks for listening subscribe to get the latest episodes each week and we’ll see you next time