For the first edition of the series “Interviews with Non-Evil People,” I talked with Stu VanAirsdale, current Publications Editor of the California Native Plant Society’s magazine Flora. A longtime editor and journalist as well as media/journalism professor at California State University, Sacramento, Stu shared his thoughts and feelings on job-hunting, how to frame your side projects as legit experience, whether Linkedin has value, and the inevitable demise of any social platform’s utility. He also told me that he was in a band but wouldn’t tell me their name.
This interview lasted for three hours and has been massively condensed and edited for clarity and all that.
For context: Stu and I already knew each other as I talked to his media class many years ago and have been in touch since. So the vibe was already quite casual. Plus we’re just casual people.
Can you tell me a bit about your trajectory? From the point of being in journalism to being like: "Nope, we're done," and then to where you are now.
I had a friend ask this. I could not remember what my first article was. I've been in this that long I'm embarrassed to say. I got my first publication in 2001. So it's 25 years ago. I think I was still in junior college before I even transferred.
The full backstory is I quit college. And then in 2001, I went to New York for the first time, and it was a week before September 11th. And so I got to see New York and experience New York City before it changed forever. And one of the things I really always wanted to do as a kid was attend NYU. For a number of reasons, it never happened. And so I walked through NYU and Washington Square and the Village. Seeing it blew me away, like, wow, it's really here. This is so cool. And so after 9/11, I will never forget, I literally sat up straight a few days afterward, just like in the movies. Saying, "I got to do something with my life. Like, I have to get a college degree. I have to do something.” Mind you, I was like 25 years old, but it hit me all of a sudden. I knew that the only thing that I really felt like I could do with any skill or sustainable prowess immediately was write. So I was thinking, “well, what can I write? Where can I get money to write?”
But at the time, it occurred to me, like: well, journalism. They pay to write. And so I just went, and I enrolled that next day to get my general education out of the way.
And then I went for two years to Sacramento State, got my journalism degree. I published my first piece while I was in a community college here and it was three pieces about the history of Tracy, California, a place where I had never been. Central Valley, agriculture town. To this day, I think I've only actually visited at that time and maybe one other time. When you see yourself published for the first time—at the time it was still print—it's pretty amazing. It's a great feeling, and you get addicted to it. The bug bites.
So from there, I transitioned to Sacramento State, got my journalism degree. I did go to NYU for journalism school, studied magazine journalism. By the time I was 30, I had a master's degree in journalism, and I've been working in journalism ever since.
I've taught, I've written, I've edited, I've run my own publications. My first dalliance with content strategy and publications management in the public affairs realm was actually in Stockholm, Sweden, for an intergovernmental organization. Let's just say that didn't pan out. But I took what I could from that experience. I think the apprehensions that I had had about working in content or PR, marketing, public affairs, whatever, were allayed. I knew that it could be done in a way that was ethical, that was compelling and that didn't demoralize me into a kind of trance or PR stupor.
Now I work for the California Native Plant Society which has been around for 60 years. Our mission is to both research and protect ecosystems for native plants and biodiversity around the state. I can't believe just how rich the stories in that space have been since I joined up about 18 months ago. I put out six issues of our magazine Flora since then with our team at CNPS. It's still very much journalism.
If someone wants to work in plants and their experience is growing weed, should they say that? That's not me. I'm just thinking, like, that is legit experience.
I would not say that.
Okay.
Not because it is gauche or because it is unethical, immoral, or otherwise. I would reckon that if you have experience growing weed, you probably have experience with fertilization. You probably have experience with soil. You probably have experience with husbandry and general horticulture that kind of transcends the specific plant you're growing. And if you're growing weed, you're probably growing other things, too. No one just grows weed. So I would probably lean on those and then maybe after you get hired, you could say, "By the way..."
So would you break it down like, "As a gardener, I do this"?
Again, I'm not saying that you should be ashamed about growing weed or circumspect to the point of denial. But I do think if you can leverage the non-weed experience from growing weed, you're in a much better position to advance your application.
A lot of advice has always been, “do a thing for fun, learn how to do it, and then you can apply that professionally.” But a lot of the things we do for fun are silly and sound stupid. So what would your suggestion be for people who've only done something for the shits and giggles of it who want to parlay it into professional experience?
All of that experience applies. You would use all of that in a professional role. I would not discount anything.
So stick it on your resume and call it a company. That's kind of what I've done with a few different projects. I started a publication in 2005 called The Reeler. It was about New York City film in general. We actually had a small team working together and we built it up and had revenue. It was a startup. It was incorporated. It had staffers. We paid taxes. We had advertising revenue. And we had readers, we had audiences. It had the recognition, it had all the things you'd want a publication to have.
I put that on my resume. That is a news organization as far as I'm concerned. Then it ran into the buzz saw of the recession and, you know, RIP The Reeler.
Later, in 2021, I started a podcast called What Is California?, and I did three seasons and dozens of episodes. Never made a dime. Never came close. I think maybe one person donated, like $20 on Patreon. And bless them. But still, that's work. I made an audio production for an audience. It had listeners, it had real guests, it had real analytics. I was like: “I'm putting that on my resume. That is experience I have. That is something I can do for a prospective employer.”
Applicant tracking systems ask for company names. What do you suggest freelancers put as a company so it doesn't make them look like they're free-floating?
I think I actually say self-employed. I stopped putting “freelance” a while ago because some people view it as a red flag. I would never personally view it that way, but AI tracking systems may see “freelance” and say, you know, “God forbid.” it's just semantics. I would just change it up.
What should people be using LinkedIn for?
I think you can absolutely cultivate a persona there. I think a lot of people have done so in a way that's not organic, they’re just paid placements for their pseudo-influencer bullshit. They're wankers who have found an outlet on this platform. That's the way the ecosystem is evolving.
And I think what we found in the 20 years of social media—it feels like a law of nature almost at this point—anything that starts in a healthy and constructive fashion will deteriorate into its inverse as a cesspool of filth and moralization. Call it Stu's Law.
But I think if you're early enough somewhere, and you develop enough of a voice and a profile and a reputation and relationships organically, you can kind of carve out your own space. And it works. It fucking works.
How do you figure out if a person would be okay with you reaching out ?
Well, I don't think there is a way to figure it out definitively. I think a lot of it's instinct. At the risk of sounding stalky, you can certainly go back through people's posts and messages and see what they have posted previously and if they ever posted about an opportunity and said in that message: "DM me if you wanna know more." So you can actually go back and find people inviting questions and outreach that isn't immediately evident but is there.
What do you do with people if you saw that they viewed your profile? Do you reach out to them?
I think what I've done with that is gone to their organization's job postings. And if there's a job posting that looks like it might work for me and that I wanna apply for, then I will apply for it and I will reach out to that person. If they don't wanna get back to you, they won't. I think on the whole, people in positions of oversight or supervision know what it's like to get started or want a change of scenery or new opportunities. And I think the majority of those people would not only welcome but actively encourage outreach and questions about the opportunities where they work.
And if people say, "Don't DM me. It's a boundary," it's like, fuck that. LinkedIn is for connection. It always has been. That's the whole point. It's called LinkedIn. It's in the name, you know? So use it to whatever extent you feel comfortable.
I feel like you have a lot higher likelihood of getting what you want by asking for it—or at least asking about how to get it—than throwing your application in with hundreds of other people and saying a prayer. Finding that little thread, that little point of entry and staying on top of it, staying in contact with people. It's a lot of fucking work. But it pays off. It does. I've seen it.
So if someone wants to do their due diligence on a company before applying, what steps would you take, aside from just googling, "Is this company evil?"
I think it's like anything else, you just have to just hit Google for a little bit. I would advise anyone with [journalism] experience to do what we would do when we start reporting a story. We check the clips. We check the work. We go and see what there is to know about this organization.
That's the first thing, and in the instances where we don't have enough information, I would go back to the journalism toolkit. Talk to people. Just reach out and say, "Hi. I'm interested in this company. I'd really love to know more. Can I just talk to you about it?”
I think the conversation is going to be changing a lot from “you're selling out” to “you're working with an evil company.” It's less people caring about the shift from journalism to something else, and more about who are you now aligning with. Like, what extent of our values do we actually need to see in this company for us to feel okay working there? And for other people to feel okay about us working there.
The reality is, your best shot of changing something is if you're on the inside. And so I think there's a lot of upside to taking a role like that. And there are downsides. I don't know if having a sheaf of a background check on this company or that company or the other company is really as valuable as just talking to a few people, trusting your gut, and hoping for the best. Obviously, there are some companies where hoping for the best is perhaps naive. But I think at most companies, it's actually a reasonable response.
I imagine a lot of people are thinking, "I’ll leave journalism now, spend a few years making good money doing something I don't like, and then come back to journalism." So they have to think, "What companies can I work at, where when I return to journalism, people will still trust me?"
I don't know. I don't think that's realistic. It's not like there's some abstract pool of companies just waiting to hire ex-journalists. All these jobs in every sector right now in the media, are just colossally competitive. It doesn't matter what your background is. Journalists, former journalists, current journalists, ex-journalists, whatever, they bring with them an already established set of tools and skills and experience that could be very valuable to a non-journalism enterprise. But there are a lot of folks with just as valuable skill sets in other sectors that you're competing with. And so I don't know if we can afford to be that selective, sadly. I wish we could. I got very lucky. I transitioned from a straight-up journalism job to something in the public affairs team and yet I still pretty much do journalism.
You can reach Stu at [email protected] or on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuvanairsdale/