Questionnaire for Media: Aimee Rawlins, Fast Company
ERPR’s series, "Questionnaire for Media," features members of the media and asks about their lives and careers.
Aimee Rawlins, editor at Fast Company
I connected with Aimee Rawlins, Senior Staff Editor at Fast Company.
How did you first get into journalism? What was your first job in journalism?
I was an editor of the school paper during both high school and college, so I suppose it was a natural career path. A couple years after college, I went to grad school for journalism at NYU, which was a three-semester program that was still very much acclimating to the digital age. I did a handful of internships while in grad school, and then my first job out of there was at Forbes, where I was a copy editor for the digital site. That was during the financial meltdown, so it was a crash course in breaking news and turning stories around quickly.
How do you decide what to produce or publish?
We're always looking for a pretty sharp news hook - what makes that particular story relevant right now? All of our writers cover fairly broad beats, and most of the time they're bringing stories our way. We'll talk through the pitch and figure out if it's a good fit for the site. Sometimes that's a quick-turn story where we publish in the next day or two; sometimes it needs a few interviews and a bit more reporting, and occasionally it might be a longer-lead feature that the writer works on for a while.
What is the most interesting news story you’re following right now that you’re not covering?
I'm really interested in the housing crisis in the U.S. right now. There's not enough housing available, not enough affordable housing, and a homeless crisis that cities have no idea how to address. There are issues with zoning and permitting; building costs are astronomical, and the landlord class has become increasingly corporatized. I think there needs to be more solutions and innovative thinking at every level. We do cover some of those innovations and potential solutions, but if I had another life, I would go deep on housing policy.
If you weren’t in journalism, what would you be doing?
Probably urban planning or public policy. But I would also love to write for TV. Not sure whether that's more or less realistic than urban planning.
What do you read or watch every morning?
I've never been a cable news or morning show person, so pretty much all the news I consume is digital. I skim a lot of newsletters and, I'm sorry to say, use Twitter as one of the main places to get a read on breaking news or the stories that are trending. For our own coverage, I have a Feedly account that's more curated to topics that are interesting to Co.Design readers.
Which talent would you most like to have?
I'd love to be fluent in another language. I've taken bits of Spanish, French, and German, so I can pick out words here and there, but have zero fluency beyond English.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I started gardening and baking sourdough bread during quarantine, which I was pretty proud of myself for. It's kind of thrilling to see tiny shoots pop up from seeds and grow into plants that you can eat from. On a bigger scale, a few years back I left a job that had become incredibly toxic, even though I didn't have another job lined up. I still think I waited too long, but I'm incredibly grateful to past me for walking away. I have never regretted it.