The Essentials of Profile Writing: A Q&A with Jess McHugh

Photo credit: Matthew Avignone

At holidays, as a journalist, family friends sometimes come to me with suggestions for whom I should profile next. Maybe their neighbor who handpaints wind chimes and is making a killing selling them on Etsy? Or a neurologist who is also an avid birder? But what makes a subject worthy of a profile?

Jess McHugh, an author and journalist based in France with writing in The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The New York Times, is the right person to ask. She takes an expansive approach to finding profile subjects. She has reported on everything from a controversial evangelical influencer to a Nazi-hunting couple. For McHugh, profile writing has long been an extension of her broader curiosity and sociability.

“Early on, I found myself drawn to talking to people,” she told Study Hall. “I felt like profile writing was a way to talk about the biggest moments in history and some of the biggest news stories of the day in a way that is more digestible and more human.” 

On February 13, McHugh will be teaching an online course on the essentials to profile writing. 

I caught up with McHugh to discuss her profile writing process, pitching, and what participants can expect from her course. 

What makes someone an interesting subject for a profile? 

I think it really varies from writer to writer, and everyone has their own answer to this. For me, I love stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, so some of my favorite profiles fall under that category. One of my first profiles was a story for Time about the oldest living gay activist, a guy named Randy Wicker. He is still around and ran what was called a “sip-in” protest back in the day, when you weren’t allowed to be openly gay and ordering at a bar in the 1950s. That’s been the theme throughout my writing: people who have a depth of experience in some way that has been shaped by moments in history and who have been themselves shapers of history. I also think people who are quietly doing something for the greater good are good profile subjects. I wrote this piece about a husband and wife who decided to become freelance Nazi hunters, and that was a wild ride. 

How did you come across that story of the freelance Nazi hunters?

It was so random. I live in France, and they’re quite famous here in France. I was scrolling on social media, and I saw a black and white video from the French National Archives that shows the wife in this couple slapping the then-chancellor of Germany in the face because he was a known former Nazi. And I remember thinking to myself: “I got to know more about this.”

Sometimes there’s a dynamic with media outlets that focus on culture where editors tend to favor people with, like, large social media followings or who have a lot of clout. When you pitch profiles of people who are less known, how do you communicate what makes this person interesting? How do you emphasize that broad appeal for editors?

It’s about highlighting the usual things that make a story interesting to a reader, whether it’s a work of fiction or a work of nonfiction: strong characters, some sort of narrative arc, some sort of “so what” in the broader article. Profiles need those things, too. Sometimes where people go wrong in pitching a profile is that they think having access to this interesting person is enough to sell the story. But especially when the person doesn’t have huge name recognition, you really need to make sure that all of those elements are in place. It’s important that there’s rising and falling action in the story, and that you’re situating this person in some broader context that’s going to be interesting and important to the reader, whether that’s some sort of historical moment or some contemporary policy or political issue. 

Once you decide that you want to pitch a story about a person, how do you navigate the pre-reporting process? How do you explain things like boundaries and what’s on/off the record? I imagine some people are very excited about being written about and others are very skeptical of journalists, with good reason.

Yes, that’s so true. I’ve seen the full range, from people who are like, “Finally, my day has arrived” and people who are like, “What is it that you want from me?” 

My rule of thumb is always to go slow with sources, especially sources who are vulnerable in some way. For instance, I’m pitching a story right now that’s based on a woman who is incarcerated. I feel like extra precautions need to be taken with someone who is incarcerated. So far, we’ve spoken off the record, and she agreed to the on the record interview recently. While you want to make sure you’ll be able to speak to a source on the record for a profile, it’s fine to pitch without having already done an on the record interview.  Oftentimes, I think it’s better, because the editor is going to want to shape the angle of the piece anyway. My personal rule of thumb is: I always like to do one short-ish pre-interview before pitching because you want to know whether the person is a good talker. You want to know if you’re going to get all those elements of a great narrative. But you also don’t want the pre-interview to be so long that they’re going to use up their best anecdotes. And then when you go to do the actual interview, they’re like, “Well, as I already told you on the phone!” This approach is great too because you can usually get one or two sharp quotes from the person that illustrate what makes them so compelling, and you can put that in your pitch to the editor.

I was really intrigued by your Guardian article about Brittany Dawn, the evangelical influencer, who was once a social media fitness guru, and is accused of scamming customers. She didn’t respond to your requests for comment. I thought your piece was a good example of journalism about someone who has been accused of doing dubious things, and contextualizing those actions and the impact of those actions. How do you approach someone who has a checkered history? 

That was a fun story to report and, in a lot of ways, a challenging story. To me, that was my version of the journalistic classic “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” an instance where the subject of the story didn’t talk to me, and I had a feeling she wasn’t going to. She was also being sued at the time, so I don’t think that she was allowed to. But it goes to show that you can write what is essentially a profile without speaking to the person, if you speak to enough people around them. So I interviewed a lot of people who say they were harmed by her. I also was able to go semi-undercover at this religious retreat that she held. That allowed me to get the narrative arc that you would get with a willing subject. 

To answer your other question, about approaching these subjects, I think a good example of this was when I did a narrative reported podcast last year in six parts called “The Truth About Sarah.” It was about this woman named Sarah Cavanaugh, who was convicted of what a lot of people viewed as a very heinous crime. She was a social worker who pretended to be a Marine battling cancer and stole a lot of money from charities and from individuals. She was in prison when I first approached her, and I wrote her a letter, essentially saying, “Hey, I think there’s more to your story here, and more than the kind of black and white headline version. I’d love to talk if you want to talk.” Especially with sources who are going to be maybe more resistant or difficult to approach, it’s good to open with the option of talking off the record. So she and I spoke off the record for maybe three months before she decided to speak on the record.

I read your profile of chef Alexandre Mazzia. When you are profiling an expert or specialist, what strategies do you use to learn about that person’s profession? 

That one was also doubly challenging because I did that interview in French, and I don’t know that I necessarily had the culinary vocabulary in English, so I learned a lot of new words in both languages. I do think it’s important to at least have some general knowledge of what the person’s job is and how it works, and to read up on them, if there’s existing material on them. If the person is in a field you don’t understand, I think there is a benefit to asking questions like: “Hey, this is how I understand what you’re doing. Is that right? I’m not totally sure I’m grasping this. Can you explain it to me in simpler terms?” 

What can people look forward to from your course on the essentials to profile writing? 

You’re going to get a lot of practical tips about how to pitch, where to pitch, the basics of what makes for a good profile, and why there are profiles everywhere. I think we think of a profile in these narrow terms, but in reality, so much of what we’re reading every day could be categorized as a profile. It’s just a great tool for the writer’s toolkit, and a great way into bigger topics, whether you want to write about what’s happening with ICE or you want to write about the history of whatever thing you want to write about. A profile is a good place to start.