Erin Keane
Editor in Chief at Salon
What was your path to becoming an editor?
I started at Salon in 2014 as a culture writer and stepped into the culture editor role a few months later as an internal hire, a position I held until 2016 when I became managing editor. I had been a reporter and critic, for newspaper and public radio, before joining Salon and had coordinated some freelance work for a previous outlet, but my role in shaping Salon’s culture coverage and working with a team of writers over a period of time gave me the foundation to expand beyond the culture desk when broader management opportunities became available.
How and when did you learn to write? Do you think writing can be taught?
I have been writing almost as long as I’ve been reading, since early childhood. Some of my formative educational experiences came through my creative writing education, via the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts and Spalding University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing, where I earned my MFA. I’ve taught writing at the community and university level, and I believe it can be taught if the desire to learn and communicate is there. Journalism, including ethics and best practices, can absolutely be taught. Writing is a craft; you might not be a natural, but if you put in the work and are open to feedback, you’ll get results.
Who are your biggest inspirations within the space?
Every day our team here at Salon tackles the big stories and illuminates that which the powerful would like to keep in the dark, and they do it with intelligence, grace, awareness, responsibility, and open minds. I’m constantly amazed by their work ethic and team spirit; we’ve worked hard to build a spirit of cooperation here and I feel their efforts toward that every day. Outside of our offices, I look up to journalists who don’t give up or in when pursuing truth and accountability: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, Mo Ryan, April Ryan, Kristina Goetz, Nico Lang, Kim Kelly, and Tanzina Vega - to name just a few.
What is your brand’s mission? Who are you seeking to impact?
Salon publishes intelligent commentary and careful reporting that surprises people, and challenges our perceptions of who we are. We foster insightful conversations that humanize the news and feature intriguing personalities in unexpected ways.
Salon asks, and seeks to answer in good faith:
What is the state of our democracy?
What led us to where we are now?
Who is being left behind?
What cultural, personal, and political topics are worth a closer look, a deeper dive, a reconsideration?
What is true?
Salon is a platform for unexpected points of view, engaging in thoughtful consideration of what it means to be a human in the world, and in the universe. Salon is a community that lives up to its name, a place where the feature may be just the start of the conversation.
What is the most challenging aspect of maintaining your particular brand’s voice?
Maintaining a tone of appropriate urgency while avoiding overwrought dramatics is one ongoing challenge we face in these very serious times.
How has COVID affected your editorial strategy? What is something you’ve learned from this new normal?
We shifted in early March to covering the coronavirus pandemic across all of our verticals, building on the foundation our science & health team laid in January and February. The economy and labor beats have tracked how Americans have been affected by layoffs and business closures, how essential workers are navigating risks and negotiating for greater protection in their workplaces, and how stimulus and relief legislation affects businesses and households. Our culture team has explored the new social trends that have emerged as a result of the shelter in place orders, and our food vertical has pivoted to coverage of comfort foods that are easy to prepare with fewer ingredients on hand. Our news and politics team provides daily coverage of Washington’s response to the pandemic, as well as state governments, while maintaining our ongoing focus on the 2020 elections. And we’ve gone remote with our interview show, Salon Talks, recording online interviews instead of sitting down in studio with our guests. We’ve learned our team’s inherent flexibility is an invaluable asset; we've been able to pivot to the latest new developments in an unprecedented news cycle without much changing for us internally.
What do you think will be the greater impact on journalism?
Aside from our New York-based SalonTV studio team, our staff has been working remotely for a while now, so we already had experience managing an editorial operation from different points across the country, and we understand how to channel those different perspectives so Salon’s reporting and points of view — as informed by New York, D.C., and San Francisco, where we were founded, as they are — are balanced by views from the ground across the country as well. Going forward, it will be interesting to see how many national outlets will accept that writers and editors don't need to base themselves in the most expensive cities in the country if their work doesn’t actually demand their presence there year-round. Talented journalists of all backgrounds have lives and roots in other places, and given the dismal realities of local journalism job markets, I’d love to see national outlets take more notice of this experienced and diverse labor pool going forward.
What feedback have you gotten from your readers that is new/different than before?
I never expected that during this time of heightened stress and anxiety and anger, we’d get as much positive feedback from our audience as we have. We’re used to hearing from people who are angry when we hold those in power accountable, but lately we’ve seen an uptick in encouragement from readers, especially long-time supporters, who appreciate our work. Those messages help keep us going through the stress and anxiety that we are also feeling as individuals working through this pandemic.
What are you currently reading?
I’m reading Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy by David Daley, Salon’s former Editor in Chief, which reminds us why we need to stay engaged with the methods by which our officials are elected, not just with the offices they occupy. I just finished The Prettiest Star, a beautiful new novel by Carter Sickels about the AIDS epidemic and a man who returns to his rural Appalachian hometown in 1986 to die. Next up is Shayla Lawson’s highly-anticipated essay collection debuting this summer, This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope.
How important is it to have mentors during this new journalistic landscape? Can you describe your ideal mentor relationship?
Mentors have always been important in journalism and the current moment is no exception. Often mentors are found at work; ideally, those relationships continue on even after one or both parties have moved to other positions and outlets. I think it’s important to have trusted, experienced colleagues who know you, who value you professionally and personally, and who can advise on the overall shape of your career as well as on day-to-day issues.
Knowing that news breaks on social media, whether it's a new government policy or the latest celeb pregnancy announcement, how does your team use social media to report on the story?
We’ve moved away, for the most part, from treating an individual social media post as the story itself and consider instead how to place social posts in context so our readers can get the deepest understanding possible of the news being broken.