Journalist speaks about her writing process

Liza Featherstone tells story of journalistic activism

John Palmer Senior Editor

Since 1985, first-year students at Vassar have been required to take a writing-intensive freshman course, designed to develop critical skills required for college-level writing. This year’s William Starr Freshman Course Lecturer, Liza Featherstone, knows a bit about solid writing: in addition to penning two books, she’s written for The Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ms., Salon, Rolling Stone, Newsday, Nerve, and Nylon. Last Monday, she talked to approximately 100 interested freshmen and upperclassmen, explaining her approach to journalism and her journey to becoming an author.

Featherstone began her talk with a reflection on the recent events in New Orleans. She said she felt “paralyzed by my own personal inability to respond.”

As a writer, and not a helicopter pilot or first-aid worker, how could she make a difference? “My particular skill set seemed utterly irrelevant,” she said. “Surely anyone on earth would be more useful than a writer with a computer.”

But that’s not the whole story. Although the ability to write may not seem like much, writing a story, and reaching thousands of people, can help make a difference.

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the surrounding suburbs, Featherstone was asked to write a story about the victims of the hurricane. “It was the most useful thing for me to do at that moment,” she said.

For Featherstone, writing is a way to connect and make sense of the world. “To really take in the horrifying scene of the world and figure out your place in it is not an adolescent, one-time event...it is a lifelong experience,” she said.

As a college student and American Culture major, Featherstone paid close attention to the media and the emerging CNN of the early 1990s, writing her thesis on the media presentation of the Reagan-Bush war on drugs.

“I wanted to tell the stories that were not on CNN,” she said.

Featherstone began to intern for The Nation as a fact checker, and later began publishing articles. She now holds the position of contributing editor for The Nation.

With her 2004 book Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart, Featherstone inspired many to take action against Wal-Mart by telling the stories of female employees who worked under sexist practices. While their younger, less qualified male colleagues received rapid promotions and pay raises, these women remained stuck in lower positions, Featherstone said.

Featherstone interviewed a number of the 1.6 million women who are plaintiffs in the gender discrimination case against Wal-Mart. Telling the stories of these women left her with a number of difficult editorial choices, she said.

“When we write we need to be conscious of our differences, but aware of our commonalities,” said Featherstone. “One of the most important things a writer can do is to listen.”

To relay the stories of the Wal-Mart employees, Featherstone needed to assess how to represent people in print. Though she wanted to avoid simplistic and heroic representations of the women, she also struggled with avoiding condescending portrayals. Since many of the women interviewed were from smaller towns and were less educated, Featherstone needed to standardize their English dialects to help her largely middle class audience to relate.

Featherstone admits that most of her magazine and newspaper submissions are often overtly opinionated—she takes a stance and practices what she calls “opinionated writing.”

“Neutral writing is impossible,” she told the audience.

Featherstone also co-authored the 2002 book Students Against Sweatshops: The Making of a Movement. She used this medium to encourage college students to take action against colleges that sell apparel manufactured in sweatshops.

For the twenty-first century student, writing is more important than ever, said Featherstone. “Everybody is becoming a writer,” she said.

Though Featherstone has written opinionated articles for The Nation and other political magazines, she said journalists can shape public debate in more subtle ways. As a writer for Teen Vogue, she proposed the idea of an article on safe sex, which would, for the first time, acknowledge that Teen Vogue’s readers are having sex. While the article itself was written in an objective tone, it balanced abstinence with proper condom use, and helped debunk “the liars that are in power,” she said, “and that’s what I think journalism should do.”

According to Featherstone, with the new abundance of e-mail correspondence, students and professionals need to be able to write effectively, precisely, and promptly. “When you see something outrageous, you need to be able to write a letter to the editor,” she said. Writing is “a really important way to engage as a citizen.”

And while Featherstone acknowledged that writing may seem like a useless profession, with limits on form and audience, she now views it as her way to act.

-Additional reporting by Rachel Wolff, Editor in Chief