Q+A: Lavanya Ramanathan, Senior Editor at Vox’s The Highlight

Ramanathan shares what her team looks for in longform stories that fall outside the news cycle.

In March, Vox teamed up with the new subscription service Apple News+ to launch The Highlight, a general-interest publication seeking to “explore big ideas” through longform features, in-depth Q&As and reported essays plus ambitious accompanying design — an ambitious vision made real thanks to the tech partnership, according to senior editor Lavanya Ramanathan.

“We are able to build out really beautiful stories,” she told Study Hall. Once a month, in the style of a print magazine, Highlight releases a full “issue” complete with a cover story and cover art. We jumped on the phone with Ramanathan to talk about her vision for The Highlight, the benefits of thinking outside the news cycle, and what she looks for in a story.

Interview by Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs. This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Study Hall: What do you see as the core mission or ethos of Highlight? What kind of stories do you look to publish?

Lavanya Ramanathan: I’m always going to be attracted to big ideas, which sounds sort of vague, but I think things like the piece on being ashamed to fly — it’s about picking up on what is happening in the culture and then telling people about it in a way that is in-depth and really putting it under the microscope. I think a lot of the stories we have coming are really going to express what the Highlight is, and that is we are gunning to be in the same realm as New York Magazine and The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. That sounds crazy and ambitious, [but] I come from legacy media — I was at the Washington Post as a feature writer for 15 years, and a copy editor there, and I think we can do it, and I think we can do it with really great writers who I know are out there.

SH: Are there meaningful ways in which you want to take from those legacy media publications and then ways in which you want to be a departure from them?

LR: I think the Highlight under my stewardship will be a perfect blend of these things. We have very high standards, and that includes primary sourcing, really looking for nuance, and taking time with stories to make sure they are balanced and fair and deeply sourced. These are all things I’m definitely bringing with me.

I’m also bringing with me a sense of slowing down the digital publishing schedule, taking a step back, and looking at things on a broader level. I think a really good example is a story we have on Keto — anyone can write about the Keto diet being trendy, and what we did was look at it as a cultural phenomenon. One of my favorite parts of that story talked about how the Keto diet comes after our fat-free era and how this diet in a lot of ways may have been a cultural response to that time period where we thought low fat foods were going to make us skinny. And where we ended on that story was not that Keto will make you skinny, but that there are cultural forces at play and what’s so interesting about Keto is it’s a rejection of a lot of things in traditional food culture. I think that really tells you a lot about the nuanced reporting we’d like to do going forward.

SH: There seems to be a sense of urgency to peg everything to the news cycle and make it relevant, but a lot of good deeply reported stories don’t necessarily have that. I think sometimes the most thought-provoking and interesting stories I read don’t necessarily have a news peg.

LR: Yeah, and in fact I really enjoy stories that, for example, bring up somebody you maybe haven’t thought about in a long time. I’m always thinking of a dream list of people to come back to: “What ever happened to?” I think those are great stories.

SH: When you launched it was stated you were looking to be “of the news but not on the news.” What does that mean to you?

LR: I think it’s the zeitgeist idea — what are people talking about, and what are the ways that we can sort of deepen that conversation? We’re going to be a place for reported personal essays that illuminate something maybe readers haven’t thought about. We did one from Emily Guendelsberger thinking about the ways in which people were talking about burnout. I found that her writing and her story illuminated to me that we are neglecting the largest population of US workers, which are low-wage workers, and she has done a lot of writing and reporting around that.

Guendelsberger worked in Amazon factories and she worked in a call center and talked about the ways in which low-wage workers are really suffering the brunt of technological advancement in the workplace, being monitored at every moment and how that’s contributing to burnout. On top of that, is it moral to be asking workers to work at this pace and at this level simply to provide a roof over their heads and food for their families? What is that going to do the workforce in 10 or 20 years? What kind of workforce will we have? Are we setting ourselves up for something really grim? I think that’s a really great piece that went a little further than what is in the news.

SH: I know the publication is young, but have you found that audiences react especially strongly to a particular kind of story? What are you seeing people respond to?

LR: There was one very early on about moon poop; apparently we have left human waste on the moon and we have to go back and get it, as our science editor Brian Resnick was arguing. It was sort of tied to the Apollo mission anniversary, but it was one of those fascinating “Who knew?” stories that did really well. It’s really great to see those stories do well, and also I think it really does speak to what our mission will be, which is to tell people about things they didn’t know or weren’t thinking about.

SH: For the sake of our freelance writer audience, I wanted to ask what you as an editor look for in a pitch.

LR: We’re looking for between 2,000 and 3,000 words for longer features, and with those we’re looking for somebody who in a pitch is pretty specific, who has already made overtures to try to get these interviews, and also knows what the angle is. I think it’s really helpful to come to me with a nut graph. And I’m still in a position to be able to work with writers to hone that pitch.

Also, don’t come to me with stories that people have already done. We want to be doing stories that you haven’t seen elsewhere. If you’re pitching me something that I feel like I’ve heard before, I’m just not going to be interested in that. But maybe we can always find a new angle on something. I think that publications like to be on top of the trends — “Oh, so and so’s writing about it so we should write about it” — but I think we are not interested in that at all.

We’re also looking for smaller pieces. Since we function a little bit like a magazine, we want some service ideas that are smartly done. We are looking for SOME personal essays — I gotta tell you, I don’t want ALL of the personal essays. We are selective about the personal essays that we choose, and when do have them we want them to be reported. I think a couple of great examples of that are our stories on stillbirths and our story on pet diets which is really a story about predatory lending at the veterinarian’s office. I think we will also want comics. If you are doing any of those things, we would love to hear from you!

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