Caty Green, TheAtlantic.com

At the time of this interview, Caty Green was managing editor of TheAtlantic.com.

How did you get into journalism?

I actually didn’t get started in journalism until after college. I went to Bates College up in Maine and majored in rhetoric, so mostly I was studying speeches and different ways of persuading. I decided to go to j-school because it was another form of persuasive writing that I wanted to learn about, but I quickly discovered that grad schools for journalism typically want you to have some newsroom experience. Usually, I don’t recommend grad school to student journalists if [they’ve] taken a lot of journalism courses during undergrad. I think you should just get right into the workforce. For me, it worked because I wanted more formal training.

What led you to The Atlantic?

While I was at Voice of San Diego, the executive editor at TheAtlantic.com, John Gould, got in touch with me. John and I set up a call, and we had a few good conversations about where I saw Voice of San Diego’s place in journalism and where I saw The Atlantic’s place in journalism—like what The Atlantic could be and what they could do to make a closer connection to readers. Kind of from our conversations, John and Matt Thompson, who’s the deputy editor [at TheAtlantic.com], created this job called the assignment editor. My main goals for the job were to broaden the pool of voices we were featuring and different kinds of contributors.

What will you be doing in your new position as managing editor?

It’s answering a lot of questions. I am kind of directing traffic within the newsroom. One thing I want to focus on is making sure that [the teams behind] our print product and our web product continue to integrate and continue to work together.

Do you have advice for young writers adapting to a new work environment?

The imposter syndrome is so real, and everyone has it. I was actually talking to a friend about this over the weekend. This job that I’m still just in training for is the first one where I don’t feel I have imposter syndrome. It’s more like, Oh, this is what I should’ve been doing. But it always comes up, and you always question yourself or doubt what people see in you to have given you this job. Go into whatever situation, if it’s a job interview or a reporting interview, thinking “I deserve to be here” and sell it.

— Katie White '17