Have you ever had a mentor?

Do you want one? Join my group.

Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made. 

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I never had a mentor.

Not any particular one, if I had one at all — someone who seemed to make a concerted effort to help me grow in a particular profession. Not until I started working at The New York Times on Sept. 11 projects in 2002 for powerhouse journalists and soon-to-be luminaries like Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, James Glanz and Eric Lipton. I then was lucky enough to work under Billie Sweeney at the Committee to Protect Journalists. She’d led the AP metro desk during Sept. 11, and CPJ was damn lucky to have her. She taught me more about editing than I can say here.

As I’ve watched our industry change and disintegrate over the years, one of the things I’ve mourned is the idea that you can find mentors with great experience in your newsroom. Buyouts of highly paid, experienced editors and reporters have led to outlets being run by young, sometimes untrained journalists. Which is not to say there have not been extremely talented young journalists I’ve met and learned from along the way. My first editor at The Atlantic magazine was now-Times columnist Max Fisher, who was 26 at the time. He taught me a bunch and I respect him immensely.

In any case, I would like to offer at this point a mentorship class that would meet once a week. I just spoke at the Lytton Center for History and the Public Good about what it’s like to do the kind of difficult, sensitive international trauma/investigative reporting I do. I titled the talk, “Journalism with a Mission.” Which, for me, was a way of challenging the idea that we journalists are not allowed to hope that our work can create change.

We can and, in many cases, we should.

If this year has taught me anything, it’s that Americans don’t seem to always distinguish between political journalism, punditry and what the rest of us do. So take a listen to this talk I gave if you’re interested, and consider joining the group I’m creating. I’ve spent many years mentoring new journos, but I think it’d be great to get a group together — journalists, writers, advocates, whoever — to learn together.

Let me know in the comments if you have interest in joining us. I’ll be charging $50 per session per person, day and time TK (journo-speak for “to come,” based on old typesetting where a “K” stood out more than a “C.”) Thank you, as always, for reading.

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On Chills, there are no ads, and no outside influences because of it. This is a subscriber-supported space that gives a behind-the-scenes look at how risky investigative journalism gets made, from a journalist with 20 years of experience. Read Chills for free, or subscribe for bonus content like this. You can sign up here. Thank you for supporting independent journalism.