Issue 16: In The Spirit Of New Things

A bit about journalism, media, the cost of learning new things, and an interview with Aanu Adeoye! Note: I ramble quite a bit in this letter.

As much as I hate how a new year is alluring in the way it signifies a ‘fresh start’, I can’t keep myself from setting goals, a lot of which I never follow through with.

Last year, one goal was to write and publish more. Not just creative writing, which I think I’m a little good at, but narrative and literary journalism. I’m not as good with these.

Early in 2020, I pitched a story about safe spaces to Minority Africa and it got accepted. It was my first-ever accepted narrative journalism piece. It led to this story about the role of Wine and Whine in creating safe spaces for Nigerian women. Over the course of the year, I would write and send several more pitches, some of which never got accepted (or responded to. Hot tears.) At the tail end of the year, I worked with Bolu Akindele in writing this story about the role of Nigerian women in the end SARS protests. Having read several stories that reflected the kind of writing I wanted to emulate, it was a delightful experience. It helped that I was working with someone with more experience than I had.

In the end, I didn’t feel too bad that I only published two stories in the genres I wanted to explore more of. It helped me realise how much I needed to learn and helped me unpack my motivations. This in turn helped me understand the kind of stories I wanted to tell. It can be difficult to get things done if you don’t understand your motivations.

In reflecting on how my wants have changed over the past three years, I thought about making the switch from law to whatever it is I’m doing now and how I’ve learned a lot about creating content, editing, managing a team, and building products. When I started working in media (you’re probably tired of this story already), I had minimal experience in a newsroom. Sure I had worked in publishing in the same capacity and had previous content experience from uni, but it wasn’t the same thing. So when I read articles like this on the future of the New York Times and consequently get the opportunity to peer into global media companies, read about newsrooms, their processes, their standards, their mistakes, I do it for two reasons: to understand how newsrooms work (and see what things I can copy) and to bask in the excellent writing style. Maybe this is the year I try long-form.  

I wrote all of that to say: starting something or getting better at it is often complex and unfortunately not a one-way street. Understand your motivations, that it’s okay to fail (woefully, if I may add). After all is said: You should read about it, apply it, and maybe even write about it.

There’s so much you can learn from reading other people’s thoughts, listening to more experienced people, and asking for help. I used to be that person who was afraid to ask for help or to show some level of inexperience. I’ve learned, perhaps the hard way, that it doesn’t cost anything to ask for help.

In 2019, Aanu Adeoye was managing editor at TechCabal and I was managing editor at Zikoko (both publications under BCM). Working in similar roles in different teams was the premise of our friendship — exchanging ideas, asking each other for help and insight on things at work and outside of work. I’ve learned a lot from Aanu, that’s why in the spirit of new things, I decided to include this conversation about his journey in journalism in my first letter of 2021 to you.

How did you even get into journalism? A brief history.

I fell into journalism. Sure, I read newspapers growing up because my mother thought it was a good way to learn new English words and understand the language better, but I didn't have dreams of becoming a journalist. I wanted to be a surgeon. But writing was always part of my life and I excelled at Literature in secondary school. In 2011, at the end of my first year at the Obafemi Awolowo University where I was studying Geology (changed my mind about the whole surgeon thing before University), I started a WordPress blog and wrote about football, mostly. In early 2013, I met Chike Nwoye on Twitter. He'd just started a website named 'The 12th Player' and needed football fans to write for the site. He brought me on board and gave me a column. I did that for a while and learned the ropes of editing for the first time during this period. In 2014, and also on Twitter, I met Sam Diss, who at the time was an editor at Sabotage Times, a London-based website. I wrote a few things for them about sports and he put me in touch with an editor at VICE who commissioned me for my first ever paid article in December 2014. Journalism at the time felt like a way to make extra money as a final year University student (I graduated in early 2016) but I realised I was decent at it and have kept going since. I guess I haven't looked back since that first VICE byline.

I had no idea you studied Geology. Lmao. You’ve been writing for quite a bit. I imagine that you might have a favourite story.

A year ago, I would've named a few contenders but right now it's an easy decision. This piece, for Rest of World, about Obinwanne Okeke, a.k.a Invictus Obi, and the complicated and changing nature of internet scams is my favourite. It got a lot of positive feedback and made Longform's Top 100 stories of 2020, which is the Holy Grail for this type of journalism.

What's your process like?

I do a lot of reporting and research. For a typical story, I'm speaking to a fair amount of people, many of whose voices don't even make it to the article. But I think it's very important to get a wide range of perspectives from experts and sources. I sketch out an article with an outline, a rough estimation of what should go where in the piece. This is the most crucial part of writing an article for me. The outline serves as a guide and my article exists within this framework, and so I try to get this right. I'm also very particular about my lede and nailing it. People have busy lives, and your story is competing with millions of others on the internet. It's vital to draw in the readers with the opening paragraphs, and that's why I'm overly fussy with getting the lede spot on. For me, writing is the easy part. It comes naturally to me. But I also have a love-hate relationship with writing. As much as I'm aware of how easy it comes to me, I also don't enjoy doing it much. People often say that if your hobby is your job, you'd never work a day in your life. But that's been my experience for the past five years and I'm not sure it necessarily holds true. As the FT's Janan Ganesh puts it in this 2019 column: “if you do make a career out of your passion, some of the passion goes.”

“There is nothing I would rather do than write columns for the FT. But because I do, it is a job. I don’t get to saunter over to the laptop when the ghost of inspiration possesses me. I have deadlines. Any activity, even Alba truffle-eating, becomes less fun once your ego and livelihood depend on it.”

But I love it when it all comes together and the hard work shines through. I'm also self-aware enough to know that many can write (or many people think they can) but only a few people get to do it for a living. And as much as the deadlines and the process are a bummer, I'm thankful every day for having the privilege of putting words next to one another as my career.

What's something you've learned about working as a journalist? 

I've learned a lot. You quickly realise that we're in an endangered industry where jobs disappear frequently, and the stability of old-school media is long gone. Journalism is also a team sport. Most times only the reporters with bylines get credit when the piece is published but it's such a collaborative effort with so many people doing the hard yards behind the screen. From editors to fact-checkers to product designs to the copy editors, there's much that goes into producing what people see online and in print. And on a lighter note, being a journalist also entails knowing a lot of stuff you can't publish because you don't have enough in terms of legal standing, but you know is true. 

Because I’m an editor, I’m always terribly excited when people mention the team behind the scene. Speaking of people, who in the industry do you look up to?

I'm a simple man: if David Remnick, longtime editor at the New Yorker, writes anything I read it. I'm also a big fan of Jonathan Liew and Barney Ronay, both sportswriters at the Guardian. Others are Sirin Kale, George Packer, and Patrick Radden Keefe. Jia Tolentino is also a favourite.

What's something you aspire to as a journalist? 

I'd like to write a book or two at some point. 

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I hope you enjoyed reading this week’s letter! See you next week with a short letter on stereotypes and an interview with one of my favourite creatives! Pardon any errors in spelling and grammar. My editor is on strike. Fight him here.