Beth Macy is an author and former reporter at The Roanoke Times. Her latest book is Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America.

“I learned how to interview by delivering papers. I didn’t know it was interviewing, but I would stop and talk to old people who were bored and lonely and have great conversations. I think I learned how to talk to people by delivering the papers. And there’s a certain thing you have to do when you have to collect the money and learn how to negotiate with people when you’re 11. That’s some reporting skills too.”

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Dean Baquet is executive editor of The New York Times.

"I always tried to question what is the difference between what is truly tradition and core, and what is merely habit. A lot of stuff we think are core, are just habits. The way we write newspaper stories, that’s not core, that’s habit. I think that’s the most important part about leading a place that’s going through dramatic change and even generational change. You’ve got to say, here’s what’s not going to change. This is core. This is who we are. Everything else is sort of up for grabs."

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Latria Graham is a writer living in South Carolina. Her work has appeared in Outside, Garden & Gun, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Her latest essay is "Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream."

“My goal as a person—not just as a writer—is to be the adult that I needed when I was younger. That’s why I go and talk to college classes. That’s why I write some of these vulnerable things, to let people that are struggling know that they’re not on their own. … I have to be unmerciful to myself, I think, in order to do it. I really do try to dissect myself and my mistakes. And just kind of say, Here’s the full deck of my life. Take from it what you need. But I’m not holding out on you.”

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Ed Yong spent 2020 covering the pandemic for The Atlantic. His latest feature is "How Science Beat the Virus."

“I am trying to give readers a platform that they can stand on to observe this raging torrent that is the pandemic, this cascade of information that is threatening to sweep us all away. I’m trying to give people a rock on which they can stand so that they can observe what is happening without themselves being submerged by it. But I am trying to construct that platform while also being submerged in it.”

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Lindsay Peoples is the editor-in-chief of The Cut.

“You see so many incredible people make one mistake and lose their job or they speak out about something and then the next day something blows up. And so I do think that I often feel like I have to be so careful. And that's hard to do because I'm just naturally curious and I want to know and I want to find and explore and do the things. But I'm aware that … people think I'm too young. I'm too Black. I'm aware of all those things and I'm still going to try.”

Jon Mooallem is a journalist, author, and host of The Walking Podcast. His latest book is This is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together.

“There is this impulse that we have, this very clearly documented impulse that people everywhere have, to help. It sounds tacky, but when the bottom drops out, when ordinary life is overturned and there’s this upheaval or this disruption—if it’s a natural disaster or even something like this, that there’s ... in the book I call it a ‘civic immune response.’ People do spontaneously help each other, they work together, they collaborate. This whole idea that society falls apart and everyone descends into madness and violence is just not true. And we know that. We have science that shows it.”

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Brooke Jarvis is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

“Obsession is inherently interesting. We want to know why somebody would care so much about something that it could direct their whole life. ... When people care about something a lot, what can be more interesting than that to understand what drives those powerful emotions? ... Part of why I do this work is that I am able to get temporarily obsessed with a lot of different things and then move on to the next thing that I'm temporarily obsessed with. ... There's always a new question that I want to follow.”

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Kevin Roose, a writer at New York, has contributed to The New York Times, GQ and Esquire. His latest book is Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits.

"Google will give you away. I feel like one undercover book is all you get these days before the jig is up. ... Unless, like Barbara Ehrenreich, you legally change your name. I was not quite prepared to go that far."

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Jonathan Abrams covers the NBA for Grantland.

"Players know that with the stories I do I'm not trying to burn anybody. I'm trying to tell a story for what it's worth and be honest to that person. ...That's one of my main goals, that you know why this person is [a certain] way when they step on the court. You know why Monta Ellis is going to keep shooting the ball. You know why Zach Randolph is such a gritty player. What these guys have gone through growing up, it materializes in their game."

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Zach Baron is a staff writer for GQ.

“People love to put celebrity stuff or culture stuff lower on the hierarchy than, say, a serial killer story. I think they're all the same story. If you crack the human, you crack the human.”

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Jeanne Marie Laskas writes for GQ and the New York Times Magazine. Her latest book is To Obama: With Love, Joy, Anger, and Hope.

“I hate saying this out loud, but it’s true: I’m really shy. Fundamentally, I'm 100% scared most of the time. I’m scared and wondering how I can not be noticed because I don’t know what to say and I’m shy. If you say I’m a good listener, that's why … I become more invisible so I’m more comfortable.”

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Andrea Valdez is the editor-in-chief of The 19th*.

“You know how sometimes you hear a song and you think, Gosh, it feels like that song has always existed and an artist just plucked it out of the air and played it and now it’s a part of our musical canon? I really hope that The 19th* is a news organization where it feels like it has always been, should have always been, and will always be there.”

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Sloane Crosley is the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake and several other books. Her new memoir is Grief Is for People.

“You take a little sliver of yourself and you offer it up to be spun around in perpetuity in the public imagination. That is the sacrifice you make. And it makes everything just a little bit worse. So it's the opposite of catharsis, but it's worth it. It's worth it for what you get in return: a book.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic. His latest cover story is "The Case for Reparations."

"The writer hopes for change, but writers can't assume that their work is going to cause change."

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David Kushner, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired and The Atavist.

"The minute you see an incredible character, you know. The only thing I can compare it to is bowling, not that I'm much of a bowler. On the few times I've thrown a strike, you know it before it hits the pins."

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Rembert Browne is a staff writer at Grantland.

“I'm ok with not being at my most refined online at all times. It's happening in real time and some of that is therapeutic. I could write a lot this stuff privately, but I'd rather just hit publish and see what happens. It's a weird world. But I'm super deep in.”

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Jazmine Hughes is an associate editor at The New York Times Magazine. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Elle, Cosmopolitan, and The New Republic.

“You hope that one day when you’re the editor-in-chief of Blah Blah Blah that you’ll wake up and be like, ‘Okay, I deserve my job.’ But so far I haven’t met anyone who has told me that they feel that way. But, I will say, I don’t talk to white men a lot.”

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