By Odochi Akwani
University of Nebraska-Lincoln A 17-year-old girl editing a local newspaper might sound strange on paper, but for Pitchfork editor Jillian Mapes, taking the expected path was never part of her story. Mapes began editing for her small town’s local newspaper in Hubbard, Ohio, toward the end of her senior year. She was assigned this job, while the editor was out of town, because of the work she had done at her high school's newspaper. “I mean it was totally weird. I was a 17-year-old girl writing a column about wanting to work at the Rolling Stone for my hometown of 12,000 people,” said Mapes, who is now 29. Mapes landed her first internship in New York City working for Billboard while only 20 and still in college. “I was really lucky to get in there and start being on staff because the thing about this kind of work is that it is kind of musical chairs,” Mapes said. Mapes said this starting point in her music journalism career is how opportunities began coming to her. The small community allows you to interact with people on all levels who see you and want to hire you for other jobs. Mapes is a senior editor for Pitchfork, which is an online music publication. She met executive editor Mark Richardson in 2011, and he recognized the potential in her. She didn’t officially start working at Pitchfork until 2013 when a position that felt right opened up for her. At Pitchfork she edits a section called The Pitch, which publishes op-eds, analysis, and short-form features daily. “I will usually get in around 10. I work on one to two things a day max, but obviously there's email correspondence, writers working on other things, setting things up with publicists and listening to music a lot,” Mapes said. Mapes' favorite project was a 2017 profile of Angel Olsen, a 31-year-old singer-songwriter. “It was just different. I've been profiling people, but it was just one of those times. You get a subject and you're like 'Oh yeah, I speak your language. You speak my language,'” Mapes said. No job is glamorous. Even with the best parts of getting to meet artists or going to free shows, there are challenges. Journalists compete have the top story or get more views. This is the reality of the industry when everyone is sharing the same idea in different ways, she said. Mapes not only has to deal with the mass of content online, but also the speed at which the content arrives. “I would say the most challenging aspect is the sense of timeliness in keeping up with the internet. You can't pause the internet...you're just sort of out there doing your thing and figuring out how to interact with what's happening in the world all the time,” Mapes said. There are industry faults as well, but Mapes is hopeful for the future of music journalism. “The default point of view in music writing for so long has been the straight white guy who likes rock music. I definitely want to see the growth that's happened this decade," with more writers of color and queer writers and women writers breaking through, Mapes said. The foundation for her career began with her education at Ohio University, where she graduated in 2010. When she was studying at Ohio University, she took a new emerging concentration that was offered at The Scripps School of Journalism. Before landing her full-time job at Pitchfork, she worked full time as an editor at Billboard, CBS Radio, Flavorwire, and New York Magazine's entertainment site Vulture. As a young person in classes about media and technology, it can be frustrating having a teacher teach you about social media as if you aren’t the ones using it. “I remember they were teaching us how to embed a YouTube video. You're teaching 21-year-olds how to embed a YouTube video-- they should be teaching you,” Mapes said. Mapes has found that immersing herself in student media and other online mediums while in college was the most helpful thing she did for her career today. “I think, at least at the time, knowing online skills was probably the primary way young people could get hired at publications. For me at the time I was like 'I'm going to learn HTML. I'm going to learn how to do basic CSS. I'm going to learn multimedia,'” Mapes said. Mapes advises music journalists to write personally while maintaining a third person point of view and making sure the story has only the relevant information. “As an editor my philosophy is figure out what the story is and stick to the story,” Mapes said.
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A note about the content: This site showcases the final projects of University of Nebraska-Lincoln editing students. Each semester, students pick a journalist or communications professional to profile. This is their work.
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