Tomorrow, I’ll be speaking on a panel at the annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists in Minneapolis about things freelance journalists do other than pitch. I’m sharing an adapted version of my talk below.

But first, some amuses-bouche (a news-bouche? Sorry sorry sorry)

👶 There’s a first time for everything! Shortly after I hit send on my last newsletter, someone informed me that a bit of wording I’d used was confusing. I made an edit to the web version of the post, and am sharing the correction here. I might handle these differently in the future, but for now, this is how I will ensure both web and email readers are aware of corrections.

Correction, May 23, 9:14pm ET: An earlier version of this post was ambiguous about the level of coordination between the CDC and state and local health departments on MV Hondius passengers’ suitability for home quarantine.

Why do I do this? Correcting errors quickly and transparently is a mark of journalistic quality and good ethics.

💸 As promised/threatened, paid newsletter subscriptions are live! 

Doing good work here means doing less work elsewhere. To make that financially sustainable, Landmansplained needs to bring in some income. I’ll keep the archives unpaywalled for a little while, and free subscribers will still get access to about one post a month. To upgrade, click here.

Enfin, the main course:

Last January, I got laid off after three years covering health as a senior reporter at Vox. I wasn’t particularly distressed about it: I’d been unhappy for some time, and I wasn’t sure how much of it was the job vs. me. The layoff felt like an invitation to take a breath and figure out what I actually wanted to do next. So I spent a few weeks resting, seeing doctors and dentists while I still had good insurance, and cleaning out my Flexible Spending Account. Then I let my brain breathe.

I had one concrete financial goal for the year, which was related to the slow death of my 2005 Subaru Forester. I had to buy a car, and I wanted to buy an electric vehicle, which at that time would earn me a $4000 tax credit if my income for the year was below a certain level. So my financial goal for the year was to keep my adjusted gross income low enough that I’d be able to keep that tax credit. This meant there was very little pressure to earn money, and there was high pressure to spend money on things that were professionally relevant and could therefore be deducted on my taxes.

One important caveat before I go further: this all sounds very organized in retrospect, but when I was actually in it, this period felt like total chaos. On an almost daily basis, I wondered if I was just receding into the landscape, slowly being reclaimed by irrelevance with no hope of ever having a meaningful career in journalism. Most of the time it felt less like deliberate skill-building and more like grasping desperately for purposeful activity. It’s only in retrospect that I can see a strategy at work. It had three pillars.

This meant investing in skills that I’d developed some curiosity about while I was at Vox, even if they came with a pretty high price tag. The most extravagant of these investments was a course on independent newsletter journalism called Going Solo — it cost $1000. It was organized by Liz Nelson, whom I’d worked with at Vox and knew to be a rock star. She had just started Project C, an organization dedicated to supporting independent news creators. The course used newsletter creation as the vehicle, but what it really taught were the non-journalism skills independent journalists actually need. I’d never thought about content planning, audience, or revenue like this. It also came with membership in a creator Slack community that has been invaluable for technical and moral support — both of which you need a lot of when you’re building something alone.

I also bought myself a year’s membership to IRE, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and went to their annual conference in New Orleans (points flight, friend’s couch). At Vox, I’d wanted to do more investigative work but kept hitting walls and figured I just wasn’t wired for it. IRE disabused me of that. Going to a conference where I didn’t know anyone and had no professional persona to perform was unexpectedly freeing — I could just absorb things. The lesson that stuck: the key to investigative success is mostly persistence. Other people weren’t necessarily better than me — they just didn’t quit.

I had a front-row seat to the mushrooming health misinformation ecosystem over the past decade or so. Social media felt like a cesspool, and I didn’t want to become a slave to the attention economy that had drawn in so many competent scientists. But it’s really hard to function independently without a social media presence these days, so when the Going Solo folks announced there was a TikTok class for those of us who didn’t want to figure it out on our own, I went for it. There were four sessions and the instruction was pretty rudimentary, but it got me started. Even better, it connected me with a couple of other people who wanted regular practice and some regular accountability to practice our social video skills.

Field reporting was another thing I’d wanted more of, so I went looking for grants. I ended up with a spot in the AHCJ German Healthcare Study Group, which required me to develop and report a story in Germany. It was a ton of work, but it reminded me why I got into this in the first place: I love being in a room with people I wouldn’t otherwise meet and learning how they see the world.

And I finally stopped avoiding AI. I spent the year testing several generative platforms to figure out where they actually help. My tentative answer: pattern-finding, research, structural scaffolding, proofreading, light fact-checking. I’m still figuring it out.

When I put this piece through an AI proofread, it hinted this pillar would be a turnoff to readers. But I’m not at all embarrassed about it, and I think AI should go to therapy.

One thing I realized pretty early on was that I was telling myself an unhelpful story: namely, that I’m a follower, not a founder.

A few things helped me push back on that. First: a coach named Freya Blom, based in the UK, who’d been recommended by Going Solo alumni. She is the human equivalent of doing psychedelics. She helped me dismantle that story and start thinking of myself as someone who could actually build something.

Another helpful element: external accountability. In addition to the coach, I asked my therapist to hold me accountable for taking certain steps, and that sometimes helped. I also leaned on alumni of the Going Solo course, including people in that TikTok class — one was a co-working buddy online, and another set up weekly online meetups where we talked about our forays into social video. But honestly, none of it was as effective as committing to a hard deadline I couldn’t wriggle out of. I launched this newsletter because I agreed to speak about it before it existed. Never underestimate the motivating power of saying yes to something you’re not ready for.

The last thing that helped was learning to talk to myself differently. I don’t respond well to negative incentives — threats, shame spirals, catastrophizing — which are unfortunately the tools I reach for first. So I did a lot of yoga and tried to develop some kinder internal defaults. The mantra I landed on, which I still deploy regularly: “Good enough is good enough.” It really helps.

If you’re in a similar in-between place right now — laid off, burned out, or just trying to figure out how to make a writing life work — I’d love to know what you’re navigating. You can email me at [email protected], fill out this form, or find me on Signal at kerenlandman.07.

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