Writing Jokes with Tanya Sichynsky (The Washington Post)
There are fairly few people who envision a path for themselves early on in their careers and see it all the way through.
[@tanyasic on Twitter]
Where did you grow up?
Good ol’ Alpharetta, Georgia, about 25 minutes north of Atlanta and home to at least one former Real Housewife.
Which Real Housewife?
Kim Zolciak! Her daughter graduated high school with my brother.
What led to you getting a job at the Washington Post?
Curiousity. All of my professional journalism experience up to this point had been in covering sports (my last job was at USA TODAY Sports). I started wondering what working outside of that world would be like not long after Trump threw himself into the race for president. So much was happening in politics, and the idea of covering one of the most historic and unprecedented election cycles of my lifetime was extremely appealing. So, I reached out to the audience team here to see what opportunities they had available.
What do you do there?
I’m on the audience team, a.k.a. Team Social. Right now, I’m part of a smaller team at The Post that helped launch our Snapchat Discover channel in February, and I’m one of a handful of folks responsible for creating our Discover “Story” daily. I work on the editorial side of the product, taking content from around the newsroom and editing and reformatting it to fit the platform, with an emphasis on how those stories play visually. It’s a really exciting and challenging project and it’s unlike anything I’ve worked on before.
How have Snapchat and Twitter changed the way you present stories?
They’ve really helped emphasize the importance of getting to the point. For better or for worse, not everyone has time for your 2,000-word thinkpiece. Burying the lede is a non-option on these platforms because telling users what they need to know in a quick and concise fashion is an instrumental part of being successful in those spaces.
Give the people what they want, and that’s usually along the lines of plainly telling folks how it affects them and the people, places or things they care about. You have very little time and space to do so; how you packaging that information is key.
What do you think about the term ‘fake news’?
I think it’s a lazy way of challenging ideas that don’t fit perfectly into your worldview. Of course, it’s really important that we all think critically about any media we consume. But dropping a catch-all label like “fake-news” is rarely intended to be a productive means of doing so.
What’s the toughest part of your job?
Hm. What I’d consider toughest is less related to this job specifically and more a reflection of the fact that I’m still learning a lot about myself and about work-life balance.
Oh, and resisting sweets in #leftovers Slack channel we have. That’s pretty damn tough.
I don’t know what we did before Slack at FOX. What’s the most rewarding part of your job?
The freedom I have to be creative in my work means a lot to me and is something the team I work on really values. It’s really fun to identify a space that no other news organization is succeeding in or even present in, figure out how best to authentically serve that audience and then create something that accomplishes that goal, and that people really care about.
What would you tell someone that wants to do what you do?
Don’t pigeonhole yourself to a single topic area, a single medium, a single role in a newsroom. Be incredibly flexible. For the longest time I thought I’d be a sideline reporter; that’s what I went to school for. But there are fairly few people who envision a path for themselves early on in their careers and see it all the way through, let alone make it a year or two without taking a turn they didn’t plan for.
Do your best to prepare yourself for all the plot twists that will come in your professional life by jumping at every opportunity to develop a skill you think you won’t need — graphic design, social reporting, audio producing, photography, news script writing, copy editing, whatever. There’s not a skill in that list that I haven’t had to flex at some point in my career.
Also, write good (read: not bad) tweets.
What makes something funny?
The things I find funny tend to fall into two very different categories: absolute absurdity or dark, too-on-the-nose observations about this strange ride we call life. Vulgarity never hurts, either.
What makes something newsworthy?
There’s this gif I saw on Twitter once of a CNBC full-screen graphic that read: “BREAKING NEWS: TRUMP TWEET.” I laughed really, really hard. But it hit me: Yes, this is always going to be news, this is always going to be newsworthy. That’s what happens when someone can hit a keyboard 140 times and move markets.
What you might personally consider “newsworthy” from a traditional standpoint (Company X shuts down plant, 5,000 people lose their jobs) may not line up with your audience’s priorities. Throw social media and the whole virality phenomenon into the mix and now you’re really cooking with gas.
It can be a tough question to answer.
Follow @jokewriting on Twitter. Interview by Zuri Irvin
