Feature Storytelling at The Guardian US

A candid conversation with editor Jessica Reed

I’ve been on the road this week, but I'm jumping on here to share this enjoyable conversation I recently had with Jessica Reed, features editor at The Guardian US, who loves getting pitches for great narratives, features, and reported essays.

Reed recently posted this guide for freelancers on Substack: “You write, I edit: what I'm commissioning in 2025,” which offers examples of the kinds of stories she looks for. Our conversation went deeper into her journey into editing, and her thoughts on story ideas, writing, and structure. I also love that she decided to relocate away from the center of the media universe, which has helped her as an editor.

If you do want to pitch Reed, hold off for another month. She said yes to so many pitches after that recent Substack post that she can’t take any more right now. Maybe take this time to sharpen your idea, read through this interview and the links to stories, and try her in early April. On rates: “We usually pay around $0.70 per word for essays and around $1 per word for narrative,” Reed says. “We pay for travel. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes, a flat fee makes more sense.”

I also want to give a shout-out to Kim Cross, who was recently named a contributing editor to The Sunday Long Read. Cross, who talked to The Reported Essay in November about interviewing for narrative, will be spotting and recommending stories to the main newsletter, and editing its monthly SLR Spotlight: True Crime newsletter.

So if you have a great story to send along, do connect with Cross, who is a kind and generous narrative nonfiction teacher and freelance writer. “Getting a story included in the newsletter helps get you on the radar of editors at national magazines and newspapers, who read it,” she tells her students. “And it helps your story get traffic, which helps the publication, which helps give them another reason to assign you another story.”

Cross also has a couple of workshops coming up this year that would be of interest to narrative writers, including this one in May: Feature Writing: The Reconstructed Narrative, a workshop in Archer City, Texas. Maybe you live in Texas. Maybe you want a little writing getaway. It is a “a cool place—a one-stoplight town in Texas that inspired Larry McMurtry's work,” Cross said, where his Booked Up bookstore is becoming the Larry McMurtry Literary Center.

Also a belated congratulations to Mark Armstrong, recently named editor of Nieman Storyboard. I first became familiar with Armstrong when he founded Longreads in 2009. I had just started teaching in the Literary Journalism Program at UC Irvine, and the site—which started as a Twitter hashtag and account dedicated to sharing essays and magazine-length stories—became an invaluable resource I still love, consistently recommending great stories over the years, which often end up being discussed in my classrooms.

Armstrong plans to continue Storyboard’s rich legacy of being a resource for craft, storytelling and narrative nonfiction, adding more multimedia and audio into the mix. If you have stories to share, you can send them to Armstrong at editor@niemanstoryboard.org.

I also appreciate this blog post that Armstrong wrote on “creating a joyful mission,” about the time he met with a career coach and discovered his own mantra: “I make art that inspires other people to make art.”

Here is my Q&A with Jessica Reed, which has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Guardian US Editor Jessica Reed.

Sometimes, it is a mystery how people become editors, what the trajectory is. Can you tell us about your background? How did you get to do what you do?

I’m French, and I got my masters at Sciences Po in Rennes, France. I really wanted to move out of the country, and I sent a million CVs before graduation. I got a job in London. So at 21, I was a community comment moderator at a publication called openDemocracy. I think I was making $26k a year, which is crazy to think about.

At first, it was very repetitive. Literally being in a forum and saying: “No, you're crossing a line, you can’t post this.” Or: “Yes, let's foster big conversations.” At some point, they let me write blog entries as well, which was great. I spent two-and-a-half years there. And then, I got laid off.

But this is where I got lucky. I was unemployed for three months. I was not a British citizen yet, and I was a newcomer in London, so I didn't have any support, money, or family help. My partner at the time didn’t either.

One day, I sat at a cafe and bought a copy of The Guardian newspaper – the actual newspaper. It still had a jobs section back then. The Guardian was looking for an editorial assistant. I interviewed and got the job. I was working on the opinion desk, starting threads for readers to talk about the article of the day. I did that for years, and I gradually just went up, and up, and up.

I’m not sure I could have the same trajectory these days, but I got my start at the lower end of the journalism ladder – I think my starting salary at The Guardian was $32k – and I was able to grow within the same organization for 16 years now. I’m grateful every day.

Did you study journalism?

Political Science. I took a few journalism classes, but I just knew that I would never break into journalism in France. France is a meritocratic society in some ways, but it’s still very calcified in others. You really need money or a network in Paris to get a job in national media. I had neither. I knew that in London, I could still get a break.

When did you get to The Guardian?

It was 2008, just before the financial crash, and the gates went up afterward everywhere. It became really hard to get into any news organization.

That time period was brutal. It's still brutal.

I'm of two minds about it. There's never been a better time to want to become a journalist because we need journalists more than ever. Especially local enterprise journalists. We need those people the most, in my opinion. However, there's never been a worse time to try to join any news organization because the industry has been decimated.

What do you think of that contradiction, especially when you're talking to younger journalists? We need journalists, but it's also terrible?

You might think of it as a vocation. It’s a bit like being an actor, or a pianist, or a singer. You won’t make much money for a long time, and even then, nothing is guaranteed. I hate saying that. But at the same time, I wouldn't want to go against a journalism student who feels strongly that they want to cover their community or a beat because that's their calling, and that's what is going to make their lives meaningful.

Maybe my advice for new freelancers is to not be ashamed to take a job on the side. So many people feel guilty about it. Do copywriting, comms, any kind of job to pay the bills. And then try and carve time out to write.

You live in Montana. How did you end up there?

I spent eight years in London, and The Guardian decided to start an Australian edition. I was part of the team that launched it, and I moved to Sydney for two years.

My boss at the time, Katharine Viner, who's the editor in chief of The Guardian now, was responsible for the launch. That was one of the most exciting periods of my working life. To be able to go from nothing and help build a news organization and coverage from the ground up. It was so fun. It was so much work. It was thrilling.

I was the opinion editor and got to build a stable of opinion writers in Australia. Then I moved to New York, and I became a features editor. I stayed in New York for eight years. Then, I moved to Montana four years ago.

Why Montana?

As is ever the case, there's a man behind it. My partner used to live here and loves the outdoors. I do too. That's part of the reason. Also, I love Jim Harrison, the writer, who lived in Livingston, Montana. The French love him. Don’t know why. I’d always wanted to see his patch of the country.

Professionally – and I think I may get killed for saying this – I was also tired of moving in the same circles in New York, where the literary and news communities are extremely small and extremely detached from the rest of the country, or even sometimes reality.

I just never felt like I was fitting in entirely. I can put on my mask and pretend to be a perfect fit in that crowd. But there was part of me that just wanted a different experience. I thought: Well, move to Montana, a state that used to be a purple state but is now red.

In New York, most of my friends were writers, journalists, photographers and publishers. Here some of my friends are. But they’re also biologists, construction workers, woodworkers, and health workers. It's good for my brain. It's good for my editing too.

I love that. So much of my social and personal world is not made up of media people.

You need to do that. If you end up spending too much of your time with one type of person, you end up thinking the rest of the world is like that, and it's really not.

I don't want to cast any shadow on the world of media. It's hard enough to be a journalist and a writer. It's just that sometimes peer pressure makes it so that if you're in New York, you're always comparing yourself to the person next to you. You're always wondering: Why wasn't I invited to this book launch? I just don't have it in me to be that person.

That's really honest, and I appreciate that. I think a lot of us are like that. We feel like we have to be in professional circles, but we don't really fit in, and actually don't care to.

I think about envy a lot in the world of journalism. Like the fiction book, Yellow Face? It's all about that. Coveting what other people have.

You are also devoted to stories about ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. I read your Substack and thought: I should be pitching you more. I'm drawn to those kinds of stories too. What is it about that kind of piece that rises to the level of being a good story for you?

I commissioned one in particular, which I won’t get into all the details yet. But the writer said: “Okay, I want to write about this person specifically, who's cleaning a really polluted river. There's something going on with this river. He's taking matters into his own hands.” The story is about him, but it's also about the bigger context around him. Why has it been polluted in the first place? Why did we let it happen? The political context of pollution and the environment. So it's always a story nestled within a bigger story.

Yes, you have this person who you could see yourself in, and they're doing something that is really interesting on its own, but it also says something about the larger moment we're in now. There are levels to it.

Yes, I'm really hoping to build something called “the hope beat.” Not entirely solutions journalism, but profiles of people who say: “Fuck it. I'm going to do what I can to change what's in front of me. Because things are so dire right now that if I don't do anything, nothing will happen.” I think people need a tiny bit of hope right now.

How many pitches are you getting?

I can't reply to all of them because it'll be my full-time job! Some days it's 10, but some days it's 30. Some days it's less than that. I try to reply to 70% of them, but sometimes I struggle.

You talk about wanting to do longform and reported essays that have a narrative arc.

My favorite is narrative journalism. It's hard to do if you’re a freelancer because you have to pre-report it before you pitch. You have to have a pretty good idea of what the story is before you pitch it because otherwise the editor is not going to be interested. But who has time to pre-report something that might or might not end up as a paid assignment?

I was just talking to a wonderful freelance magazine writer yesterday, and she was also saying pre-reporting is the hardest part, to get these magazine pieces assigned. It's very difficult when you're not getting paid for it.

It’s labor that has a high chance of not getting paid because you don't know if it's going to be commissioned. And I'm not sure how to fix this conundrum, but I totally understand how it would be so upsetting to pre-report a story and really believe in it, and then not being able to place it.

I know that editors need to know a writer has access for a longform piece. You need to know the writer has a subject who is game to go through this whole process of letting them shadow someone around, agreeing to talk about all these things for many, many hours. Editors need to know what the story is. But if you haven't spent the time, you don't know what the story is. It is important to do that pre-reporting to find the narrative, but at the same time, it's a gamble.

But here's another glimmer of hope: narrative journalism is going to be one area that will not be able to be touched by AI.

I agree. AI cannot deal with people getting mad at you, or refusing to talk to you. It can’t walk an interviewee through the hardest details, take them through the fact-check process. Perhaps sports stories or straight news, AI is already doing some of this. But narrative is a different beast.

AI can’t find that person who lives in the middle of nowhere, has never talked to a journalist and get them to open up.

Or write that story with empathy and nuance. Or corroborate different people’s versions of stories. All the things we do, I don't see AI ever being able to do it, because it's an element of human emotion and instinct.

Yes, thank you for saying that. It's about feelings. It's about emotion. And that's the one edge narrative has on AI.

When it comes to The Guardian, when I've thought about stories about America, I haven't necessarily thought of The Guardian first as the place to pitch. Because, I think in our minds, we think of The Guardian as not a U.S.-based publication, and we're going to places like The New York Times. Then I was reading all your linked stories, I was quite impressed by the ideas and angles. You're the U.S. editor, can you talk about that role?

We have almost 100 people on staff. We have an office in Los Angeles, a big office in New York, and an office in D.C. So there is a lot of muscle behind the U.S. operation. Of course, The Guardian is known for being more international. That's part of my challenge.

Sometimes, I think seasoned writers don't think about me – or us – when they really should because our reach is so big. I don't think people realize the amount of influence and traffic we have, both in the U.S. but also globally. We have so many readers in Europe, and across the world. One story I published last month got 1.7 million views. That's enormous.

People beyond America are obviously interested in America. There is a lot going on that affects the world.

One thing I really like about our position is that we have this slight edge: covering America for the world. We look at America from the perspective of the insider and the outsider. Our American readers love to know how the world sees them too. That's a sign of open-mindedness, right? As a French person, I'm always curious how Americans see the French. I think it's very funny most of the time.

When you're pitching The Guardian versus The New York Times or The Atlantic for example, what would make it a pitch for Jessica?

I have a love in my heart for slightly weird stuff. I like a crazy idea, or crazy places. Something that sounds like a very bad idea, but you're going to do it anyway. Like when I sent one of our writers, Stephen Marche, to a prepper conference in Ohio—but he turned it into a treatise on middle-aged life. It was so fun to edit.

I love, love, love, editing people who have a mastery of their craft, but also the place they're in. I worked for a long time with Jason Wilson, who's an investigative reporter in Portland. He knows that region like the back of his hand – all the militia movements in the American West. It's such a treat when you're an editor. It’s like a friend calling you with the most outrageous gossip. It's your job to listen. So I love working with people who know what I can't see, because only a few people cover these patches of America.

Yeah, national bureaus have dried up and local papers have closed.

I used to say that my favorite story to edit was a very local story that I could sell in Japan. Something very small that you could elevate to be really big.

I sent one of our great writers, Ed Pilkington, to the last Walmarts that closed in McDowell County, West Virginia, a few years ago. It was a local story: Walmart is closing. But it became a story about what it meant to be working-class at this point in time. Even though there is no Walmart in Europe, people still know what it is. I could make it a story with global resonance, because it is emblematic of what America is at this point in time.

Do you think it’s important to understand what a story is saying about the moment right now, and to have that articulated in your pitch? It sounds like the stories that you're looking for, at least in some way, are speaking to something happening now, or how we're living today, or the issues we're facing at this time.

It's probably my job to be able to see that in the pitch. It's partly my job to zero in on one sentence and say: “This is what it's about.”

That's a good piece of advice to keep in mind. Some of the best stories are about thinking big but writing small. When you edit, can you talk a little bit about that too? How do you approach editing a story? How do you shape it into a narrative?

I usually talk to the writer on the phone. I ask them very early on to give me a list of the interviewees they have in mind, a list of the main characters, and if they have access to them, or if those people want to be photographed.

If it's a complicated story, I'll ask the writer to send me a skeleton: This is what the introduction will say. This is what I'm trying to do with the first section, second section, third section. A lot of it may be empty, because there's still reporting that needs to be done. But at least I have a sense of the narrative. And then we build on that. We add as we go. Then once I have a draft, everything becomes like a big puzzle.

Reading through your stories, I notice some of your intros are pretty powerful.

I have a lot of strong opinions about introductions.

Tell me about them.

An introduction is like a racehorse. It needs to be lean, mean, and fast. You have to grab me by the balls from the very beginning. The only thing I care about as a narrative editor is whether or not people are going to keep on reading. You can't cram extra information into an introduction unless it is very powerful or meaningful. The introduction should be a punch in the gut. Then later on you can do whatever you want. You can zoom in, you can zoom out, you can have more context. But if you fail at writing your introduction, you fail at the piece.

I like introductions that are a scene, or have dialogue, or something that puts you with the characters you're going to follow. I joke with Ed Pilkington because he's so good at introductions; I call them the “Ed Pilkington introductions.” It is his own style where it feels like you're flying over a scene, and then suddenly he drops you with a parachute, and you're in it.

I'm still learning as I go every time I edit. But capturing a rhythm and keeping a rhythm is very important to me in long reads. I always have so many headaches with great science writing because the science itself can be boring, but the story it serves is not. So it’s about finding the balance between explaining the science and the narrative. It’s a fight.

You also said you want more reported essays. How do you think of reported essays versus personal essays?

What I like the most is when the writer experiences something and is able to be analytical enough to draw conclusions that will be of interest to everyone. My favorite essay writer will remain Sarah Smarsh. Here’s my favorite essay of hers, for Aeon. Here’s my second one, which she wrote for us.

Another example: this piece about a writer being given a house in Detroit that belonged to someone else. Anne Elizabeth Moore went above and beyond in her research and reporting. It took some gumption. And a shout-out to the Economic Reporting Hardship Project, because we worked with them on that piece.

I wish there was a master list of every single available resource to get grants. I recently said yes to a pitch about opioids, and the pre-reporting was so good. I asked the writer: “You pitched it elsewhere, right? Or the piece got canned?” She said: “No, the pre-reporting is thorough because I got a grant.”

Where can a reported essay go wrong?

If it's too in the weeds. If it's just an intellectual jerk-off. The biggest crime, in my opinion, is to be boring. We don't have the time or luxury to be boring, because there’s so much competition for your attention out there.

For some reason, everyone's pitching me about parental estrangement right now. Unless it's a mega interesting story, why would I care that you're not talking to your mom anymore? It needs to be elevated. Either the story is so unbelievable that it does all the work, or the writing needs to be so punchy that I want to keep on reading.

I'm gonna get so much shit for this, but there's a lot of mediocre essay writers out there, and I think everyone knows it.

I think a lot of writers are recognizing that “I’m not just going to pimp myself out” for a couple hundred bucks and be exploited by the industry.

That’s a big worry I have as an editor. More and more, I ask writers during the editing process: “Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you are going to be comfortable? Do you want to mention it to your family or your friends first?”

So for you, it’s a combination of reporting, voice, structure, and the strength of the idea.

All of it. It should be the whole package. One of my favorite pieces of journalism ever is “Thanksgiving in Mongolia,” by Ariel Levy. One of the best essays of all time.

I’ve brought that essay into classes. It's so visceral, like I was in her body and mind for a moment, through the power of her writing. I remember her being in the hotel bathroom. Taking a picture of her baby. Oh my god, the scene doesn't leave me. I feel like she brings that reporter’s eye to the writing, the way she just walks you through these scenes.

In Levy’s essay, the scene that stayed with me was when she's in a clothing store:

I went to buy clothes that would fit my big body but that didn’t have bands of stretchy maternity elastic to accommodate a baby who wasn’t there. I heard myself tell a horrified saleswoman, “I don’t know what size I am, because I just had a baby. He died, but the good news is, now I’m fat.” Well-meaning women would tell me, “I had a miscarriage, too,” and I would reply, with unnerving intensity, “He was alive.” I had given birth, however briefly, to another human being, and it seemed crucial that people understand this. Often, after I told them, I tried to get them to look at the picture of the baby on my phone.

Sometimes, it's about details that stay with you for a long time. One of our editors, Merope Mills, wrote an extraordinary piece about losing her daughter. It's an eviscerating, powerful piece of writing, which actually morphed into political action later on. The story is such a shock to the system, but what stayed with me are the details. For example, her daughter's favorite word was “defenestration.” Specific details like that seem a little bit out there. For some reason, I still think about that detail every few weeks.