Anjali Khosla
Anjali Khosla is Assistant Professor of Journalism & Design at The New School. Previously, she was the Editor at Fast Company and professor at NYU. From her daily work helping produce some of today's highest quality business writing, to teaching graduate-level students about the world of digital journalism, she has a lot of interesting insight to share.
Q: I see that you have a strong journalism background and that you're also an educator--how does this experience impact the work you do today?
A: Teaching has an enormous impact on my work as a journalist. The best students—their enthusiasm and earnest belief in media and democracy—help prevent me from descending into cynicism about our industry.
Q: Tell me a bit about what an average day looks like for you as the editor at Fast Company.
A: I wake up! I check Slack, I answer Slacks, I edit newsletter intros. I listen to the news.
Most of my day is then spent editing stories, assigning stories, and discussing stories. At this point, I actually don't have a lot of big meetings anymore, only a few a week. I seem to have successfully leveraged myself into a role which requires I work mostly on the journalism, which makes me happy.
Q: What's the most interesting piece of writing you've worked on recently?
A: I'm super proud of this investigative story about an alleged ICO scam that my NYU students recently published. We worked on it for more than six months.
Q: What are some of the things that happen behind-the-scenes as an editor that the average person may not know about?
A: I spend *a lot* of my time talking with my writers.
I'm a conduit for ideas, yes, and I provide writerly advice, yes, and I help solve reporting problems, yes--but I also act as a sort of career therapist. I've lost track of the number of times writers have cried in my office.
This happens for a lot of different reasons. Sometimes they're upset at me because I can be nit-picky about facts or sourcing. Other times it's because a piece is taking a lot of time to edit--and during that, we may have a new revelation about the structure late in the process.
Working on a big feature or investigation is a very intense process for a writer. They invest a lot in it. Emotions can run high, and sometimes they take it out on their editor. They're not always wrong to do so. Either way, it comes with the territory.
It's all in the aid of producing good work. Once the piece is published, the writer is almost alway happy with it (and are happy with me again).
Q: Biggest pet peeve while editing someone else's work?
A: The only thing that truly frustrates me is when I have to tell a writer the same thing over and over again. If I have to dispense the same criticism every time you file, you're not really listening...and if you're a writer who doesn't listen, you might be a bad reporter.
Q: What advice would you give to writers who aren't traditionally trained, but want to improve their overall writing skills?
A: Read! Read! Read! Read everything. Read voraciously. Read critically. Read things you don't really feel like reading. If you read something that blows your mind, read it a second time and try to deconstruct why it came out so great. Have your friends read it, so they can discuss the work with you, as well.
Also, I have to say, editing other people has made me a much, much better writer. Whenever anyone asks me to read their novel manuscript or whatever, I always try to say yes if I have the time, because editing a diverse range of work is such an important exercise for me as a writer.
