By Kimberley McLeod

Essence magazine News Editor Wendy Wilson gets bored easily. In just a decade, she has held eight positions at four different magazines. Her passion for writing and giving the underrepresented a voice has been the common thread throughout the changing trajectory of her career.

Wilson first worked on a magazine at her private Bronx, N.Y., high school. The daughter of Jamaican immigrants who valued education, Wilson later attended Skidmore College where she joined the school newspaper and developed the multicultural newspaper. She also interned at the local newspaper where she reported and learned basic skills such as writing obituaries. Her most invaluable lesson was that she did not want to work at a newspaper. After graduating in 1996, she was a housing coordinator at an international language school in New York City.

In 1999, Wilson enrolled in New York University to gain formal instruction in magazine journalism. During her second semester, she worked briefly in a non-profit’s public relations department. While there she interacted with several journalists and collected their contact information to find work.

Both George, a now defunct political and cultural magazine co-founded by John F. Kennedy Jr., and In Style magazine offered her internships. At the time, Wilson was unsure if her interest was in news and politics or fashion and beauty, so she decided to do both. She worked Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at In Style, at George on Thursdays and attended school Thursday nights. “I nearly lost my mind,” she said.

While at In Style, Wilson interviewed at several other Time Inc. magazines. She met with the deputy editor of Teen People on a Tuesday and by Thursday received a call about an editorial assistant position. Wilson took the job and two years later was promoted to assistant editor, then staff writer for the “Real Life” section. She covered various teen-related issues, for example interviewing a girl who found her birth mother and reporting on another girl who was diagnosed with toxic shock syndrome. In July 2005, when the executive editor at the time, Angela Burt-Murray, left Teen People to become the new editor-in-chief of Essence magazine, Wilson told Burt-Murray that she would do anything to actualize her goal to work at the leading African American women’s magazine.

The Essence editor called Wilson that November and asked if she was ready to make the move. She did not hesitate. “It’s a magazine for people who look, sound and are like me,” she explained. “Not many magazines do that and do it well.” Wilson initially worked as a staff writer in “Work and Wealth.” For her first year at the magazine she did a home ownership campaign to get black women to be first time homeowners. Next, she moved to the “News and Entertainment” section. And now during her third year she is working as news editor of the website. Wilson currently resides in the Bronx, N.Y., and is an active member of Fordham United Methodist Church where she participates in numerous community-based programs. The 33-year-old still gets restless and is uncertain about whether she will stay in journalism.

Wendy Wilson discusses her craft in the following Question and Answer.

Q: What are your sources at Essence for news?
A: We look at all the newswire services from AP, Reuters, the New York Times to the Atlanta Journal. We try to read as much of the basic news that’s out there in areas that we know there are pockets of African Americans specifically. Some local news will happen, and we try to pick up on it if we feel that it might turn into a bigger story.

Q: What criteria do you use to judge whether the subject matter will be interesting and relevant to Essence readers?
A: For instance, even though the Sean Bell situation happened in Queens, N.Y., it was still an issue of police brutality that is all over the country. A guy in Dallas or a guy in Crenshaw could still relate to what Sean Bell went through. Anytime it has a tinge of possibility of being national, that’s the kind of story we want to look into. Our readers predominately are not in the Northeast metropolitan areas. A lot of our readers are from the South and the Midwest. We try to pay attention to the events that are happening in those areas.

Q: How does this change if the topic you’re covering generally isn’t favored by the black community, for example, your story about gay marriage?
A: We try to pick news stories that we feel the reader will get something out of. Because our readers are sort of insular, they’re just involved in what’s happening in their own areas. They may not be aware of what’s happening nationally. So with the Proposition 8 situation in California, it’s something that they’re hearing about, but they may not know exactly what’s going on. It’s really up to the individual to make his or her own decision. It’s not up to us to make that decision for them. As news people we’re there to bring you the information.

Q: How do you file your ideas?
A: Everything is online for me. It used to be paper-based when I was in the magazine but we get so much stuff coming in that it’s hard to print everything out and keep it that way. I archive everything by the month that issue is coming out. I wish I could do it by week to keep myself more organized, but I just don’t have the time. The magazine is three months ahead of time. I might get something now from a PR rep that might work in January. Well the magazine is working on the March issue and we’re currently in November. So I take that idea and archive it in my January file so that when January rolls around, and I’m looking for ideas for the website, I’ll just go into that file and pull that out.

Q: What were some of your less popular stories?
A: Right now, we think it’s a bit odd but we’ve had two financial stories that have gone up in the last two weeks, and neither one of those stories have been very popular. So we sit down and figure out why people are not clicking on these stories, what can we do to make them more readable or more clear-cut. How do we make them more interesting? Do we do it as a photo gallery? Do we get a different expert? What can we do to make the reader not only get the information that we feel is important for them to know but to make it more engaging? It’s a matter of figuring out how to deliver the information in a different way.

Q: Do you do most of your research before, during, or after your reporting?
A: I do all of my research before I do my reporting. If I’m going to interview someone, I definitely try to do as much research as I can. It’s my job to come prepared. You should be reading different interpretations of a particular subject. If I’m interviewing Queen Latifah and I’ve read something about her in People magazine, I’ve also read something in Rolling Stone, in Essence, in Variety and in the local Chicago Sun Times about her. I think that that’s only giving me more background information and different views of how people see her. That can only help me craft my questions.

Q: Do you have any routines for conducting interviews?
A: First I always let them know that I’m recording the interview so they know that what they’re saying is on the record. Then I always like to thank them for taking the time to speak to me and that I’m going to get started now. It let’s them know that I’m ready to roll and that I take time into consideration. And then I try to make them feel at ease. That’s one of the most important things you can do as a reporter. If there’s something you can find to relate to them on, then say it or approach it. Then I just go through my questions.

Q: Do you ask your questions in any particular order?
A: The trick that we use in the trade is that we ask all the easy questions first so that if the person does get hostile they’re not completely going to hang up on you and then you don’t have your other questions answered. The trick is to ask all the fluff and things that you really need to build your story first and then ask the more controversial and harder questions.

Q: Are there any places you especially like or dislike conducting interviews?
A: Most of the interviews I do are at my desk over the phone. Interviews in person are always better because you can add so much more to the story and you can get someone’s personality. I personally do not like doing “junket” interviews. You get five minutes on the red carpet or you get five minutes in a room with a certain celebrity. You tend to ask the same questions that everyone else is asking and they have canned responses so you get nothing fresh out of that.

Q: Do you record your interviews or take notes?
A: I’ve been trained to do both. That was one of the things in grad school that they taught us. You never know when something is going to happen. I’ve been in a situation where my tape recorder got stuck or it didn’t tape. I always do both so in those situations I can always go back to my notes.

Q: Do you transcribe your own tapes?
A: Yes. I’m from the old school on that. It’s kind of tough because that slows me down a lot especially for the web and I’m trying to change that a little more as I go along. But I find that it’s so much more helpful for me to write a story, and it’s helpful to our research department as well when they’re fact-checking my stories. I know tons and tons of reporters who don’t do that, and they end up suffering for it. Their writing is not as good, and they end up having a lot of problems verifying what they said.

Q: How do you get people, and especially politicians, to speak openly to you and not simply recite “talking points”?
A: You find a way to relate it back to the reader because ultimately that is the most important person. That’s why we do what we do. If I go to a politician and I say, well this is affecting 60 percent of black women in the U.S., how would you go about x, y and z then I’m bringing it back to the people. It’s not about me. It’s not about the politician. It’s really about the reader and that part of their consistency. I hope that I can get them to open up by bringing it back to fundamentally what’s important. That’s the people.

Q: How much will you challenge your subjects during an interview?
A: If they say, “I’m not really interested in answering that,” I’ll say,  “Ok, well that’s fair enough.” And we’ll move on the next thing, and then I might ask two more questions. I might try to rephrase that other question again in a different way and if I don’t get a response that’s it. I’m not one to push to the point where you have someone who is upset or you destroy a relationship.

Q: What does your desk look like when you start to write?
A: Basically, you have to be able to write wherever. At my desk if I really want to get into it then I turn on some music and put on my headphones and just get into a groove. It’s hard to do because I sit in a cubicle. I sit around a lot of people. I don’t have the luxury of having my own office, which is an issue I’ve been barking about for years.

Q: How many drafts do you typically go through?
A: When I was writing for the magazine I would say typically two or three drafts. Now with the web it really has to be so much faster and usually it’s just one draft. Maybe a couple of things are edited in between, and then it goes up. You really don’t have a whole lot of time for the editing process.

Q: When do you know your story is complete?
A: When it gets through the editor-in-chief. When I know she doesn’t have any more questions. With the magazine you know that once it gets past her, you’re pretty set. With the web, it’s pretty much done when I finish writing it because there’s not a whole lot of time or room or energy for re-editing or re-writing. Your writing has to be quick and simple. It’s a different type of mentality writing for the web than it is for the magazine.

Q: What piece of advice do you have for an aspiring journalist?

A: Trust your editor. I have a piece now that I wrote in July this year and it won’t be coming out until the March issue. It’s been edited by one person already, and now it’s going into the second tier of editing. Then it will go to another editor and finally to the editor-in-chief. Literally there are three people looking at it before the editor-in-chief gets to it. It’s time-consuming, it’s mind-numbing, it’s frustrating, but in the end all of these women know what they’re doing, and the piece always is better. I’ve learned to trust what they’re asking.
(Interviewed, edited and condensed by Kimberley McLeod)

CHECK OUT WILSON’S WORK!

At ESSENCE, Wilson has written about numerous current events and trends in the black community including, Suicide Study: A Look At Why Black Men Are Opting Out of Life, The History Maker: How Barack Obama made Ann Nixon Cooper a legend, and Ministers Protest Gay Marriage.

ESSENCE is the leading lifestyle, fashion and beauty magazine for African-American women between the ages of 18 and 49. It was established in 1969 and was the first monthly magazine of its kind. The magazine strives to “celebrate, inspire, entertain and empower” its readers—apparent in the tagline, “Your voice. Your style. Your life.” ESSENCE is owned by Time Inc. and has an audience of 8.1 million.