How to Land a Job at a Prestigious Magazine: Lessons from The Atlantic’s James Parker

O.K., so you think you want to write for one of America’s leading public opinion magazines?

You think you’ve got the stuff to write at a magazine that’s had the same font style longer than you’ve been alive? Longer than your parents’ lives?

You want to write for a magazine that’s old enough to brag that it reviewed On the Origin of Species, back when it was first published? This ain’t BuzzFeed, kid. (From 1934: “How a Young Upstart Totally Threw Out the Rulebook and Got Germany Back on Track: 15 Reasons Why Adolf Hitler is Everything for Us Right Now.”)

Sorry, pal. This is capital-‘J’ Journalism happening here. This is Serious Writing. Take your “listicles” and shove ‘em.

What we’re talking about here, is The Atlantic.

If you’re still interested — that is, if you think you’ve got the chops — listen up, because I’m only going to say this stuff once (I’ll probably only have time to say it once, anyway, before I pack up the rest of my ideals and head off to law school).

This past week, The Atlantic’s James Parker, the magazine’s culture writer and house fixture joined Professor Carlo Rotella’s creative nonfiction workshop — a course entitled, “Writing for Magazines” — to share his hard-won wisdom about the world of obstinate editors and comped lunches.

So, if you’re James Parker in the late aughts, you’ve done pretty well for yourself. You carved out a reputation at a regional magazine, The Boston Phoenix, for delivering high-brow appraisals of low-brow cultural phenomena. You lived the life of the free-lancer, both delivering the genius-in-a-bottle product and being your own most stringent quality control. You even worked in a bakery. Now, you’ve managed to score an interview with the brain trust of The Atlantic, who will see if you have the stuff of a salaried writer. These jobs, Professor Rotella adds (now functioning in the Discussion Moderator capacity), are “the rarest in journalism.” Like the white stag, you only get a few shots at bagging it in one lifetime.

That said, Parker got the job. He’s held onto it for the last decade.

How, you ask? Well the interview, it must be said, was the easy part. Parker achieved the “perfect mixture of beer and coffee.” Performed well, it’s said, this metabolistic high-wire act has been known to transfigure even the most skittish of copywriters into a paragon of wit and worldliness — the genuine Christopher Hitchens. Lunch was a breeze.

The real difficulty arrived after the check was paid. Just when Parker thought the job was his to lose, he was told he would be meeting with the magazine’s Senior Editor, a substantially younger and — Parker worried — smarter man, named Ross Douthat. What Parker thought was the digestif, turned out to be the apéritif.

His chemical spell waning and his hangover waxing, Parker, by his own account, crashed and burned.

But he got the job.

What Parker thinks won Douthat over, in the end, was the accent. A Brit, to a Yank, just can’t help but sound sophisticated.

So, then, what advice does Parker have for young writers who had the misfortune of growing up on the wrong side of the Atlantic, if they want to write for The Atlantic?

For a start, always try to surprise. “Subvert the reader’s expectations in order to entertain.” But don’t get too cute. It’s a delicate thing, this writing business. It requires subtlety. A good piece, Parker says, is like a “quivering custard.” You don’t want to poke it.

That said, voice is the most powerful weapon in the writer’s arsenal. That’s how you grab the reader’s attention and hold them there. Think of your pieces as weird little sermons, or letters. But as we’ve already established, don’t overdo it.

“You say very little,” Parker explains, “and the reader’s imagination does a lot.”

All told, that’s pretty good advice, but it doesn’t amount to everything the English accent conjures: the boarding schools. Oxbridge. The royal family. Churchill. The rubber majesty of the Wellington boot. Sadly, that is a mystique closed to the American would-be magazine writer. Try to fake it, and hazard embarrassment, or just keep working on that elusive caffeine-alcohol balance.

But there remains another option. As Parker observes about attempting to appear clever in one’s writing, “Sometimes, the best thing is to just stop tap-dancing and let the thing breathe.”

Yes, that could work.