Beneath the Byline: Interview with Sierra McClain

Sierra McClain is an assistant editorial features editor for the opinion section of The Wall Street Journal, where she writes and edits op-eds. Previously, she worked as a reporter for the Capital Press, a regional newspaper covering business and policy news across California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. She is a graduate of the University of Oregon and has held several fellowships, including the Joseph Rago Memorial Fellowship for Excellence in Journalism. Sierra grew up on a ranch in Oregon's Willamette Valley and enjoys hiking, painting, and singing in her church choir. 

Your background: Was there a specific moment that made you realize you wanted to be a journalist? If not, how did you end up where you are? And why journalism and not some other type of writing? 

Yeah, there was not one moment, there were a lot of moments. When I was probably about two or three, like really a toddler, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Just from my earliest childhood, my mom would read children's books and novels to me really from the time that I was born and so, again, just as a toddler, I loved that so much and knew that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I would write her these little books as soon as I started learning how to write. But at that time, my conception of writing really was just children's books and novels and history books, and the things I’d been exposed to— and I still would love to do that, as well — but as I entered middle school I started learning more about journalism and news, etc., but really it was in high school when I did a speech and debate league and then an AP World History class and just a few other things that got me really interested and engaged in current events. That's when I really started to form an interest in journalism and saw that that might be a way that my love for writing could sort of be applied in an occupation. But—there’s always a but in the story— I was like “Well, you know  the starving writer stereotype, I don't know if there's stability in journalism, that makes me a little nervous.” I had come from a family with a lower socioeconomic background and so I was kind of nervous about the instability and opted instead to major in history and get on a path to becoming either a high school or college history teacher or professor. And I love that, that would not have been a bad job. I love teaching. I love students. I love history. But it was a safe choice. It wasn't my number one choice. It was more like my number two choice. And so I actually got my history degree and right as I was about to graduate, my family— in particular, my mom and brother— encouraged me to pursue the dream I'd had ever since I was little: to be a writer. They saw that I liked history and thought I would be a good teacher, but thought that writing would be a better path for me, and just encouraged me to sort of take a leap of faith and try it out.

So I applied for a masters in journalism and was very fortunate, that even though a lot of the application deadlines and scholarships and whatnot had passed, I was able to get in anyway, get a scholarship, and get to start right away, like right after my wrapping up my degree as an undergrad. So that was really amazing. And just from there on, different things sort of solidified that I was on the right path. I just really loved the master's program in journalism, and then I did an internship the following summer— it’s a one year masters, so after I graduated— at a regional paper, but it was close to where I live, so local to me, and I loved that. They had an opening at the paper that fall and were able to hire me full time, andI it had wonderful staff, like great, great people. My two editors in particular were just great people to learn from. And I did that from 2019 to summer of 2023, and then I from there went into the Joseph Rago Memorial Fellowship for Excellence in Journalism. Basically, that turned into a full time job after that, with the same team on the editorial board of Wall Street Journal.  I'm not saying it's been a smooth path or it's all been easy, but I've just continued to be blessed with these different open doors and have really loved journalism. 

What are your favorite types of stories to tell? 

Well, I like a lot of different stories and so it’s hard to pick just one. I love stories where I get to go out on the field and meet people in-person and tell about an issue through the lens of people's lives, which I realize is a lot of journalism. But some journalism is more explanatory and some is more 5,000 foot level. I do really love stories that talk about, for instance, a policy, but then you go and meet the business owners and the employees who are affected by that policy and actually trace the on-the-ground effects, or look at a cultural issue and see how it is personally affecting people's lives. So I don’t know, I guess very human stories are my favorite. I've kind of formed a beat for myself in writing a lot about business, including the food system, so the business of agriculture and how food is produced and all of that. But I also really love covering a variety of other cultural issues, politics, etc.

What story/stories are you the most proud of? 

I don't know if this is the one I'm necessarily most proud of, but it just popped into my head because it fits the category of following a big-picture policy through a human story. So let’s see, this was fall of 2023. I think it was November. I was following the topic of California's electric vehicle mandates for semi-trucks, and I had heard from some different trucking associations and had read a little bit about the challenges that they were facing trying to use electric semi-trucks, but I just thought it'd be interesting to trace that on-the-ground. So I ended up flying to California and spending a day—from really early in the morning, all the way to late evening—riding in an electric semi-truck and just watching the driver have to sit there for hours letting it charge, and not being able to make a trip on time, and dealing with all these different logistical challenges just based on the mandate that he drive  an electric semi track—or actually, I should say it was a mandate being phased in—but anyway, he was struggling, is the short answer. So, just being able to trace the way that was being forced on businesses rather than by any kind of positive incentive structure that was just like, “You have to do this,” and then they were really struggling and were passing on the cost to consumers, was kind of a fun and interesting story and it humanized it, because I got to write about the driver and the trucking company. I guess that stands out, but maybe mostly just because it's the type of story I love doing. 

What is your favorite story that you wanted to tell that didn’t get the greenlight or got killed?

There's no major circumstance that come to mind. I guess I've been very fortunate that most of my pitches have ended up turning into a final published product, but when they haven't, it's mostly been in the brainstorming kind of stage. So going back to the previous newspaper I worked at, it was the Capital Press, and the pitching process was a little more informal. I'd call my managing editor and just say, “Hey, I want to run some ideas by you,” and we would just chat through different ideas and flesh out, “Oh, well maybe you could do this angle, or that angle.” So that was a little bit less of a formal submission process, so in that phase, I probably had a lot of ideas die just through the processes. We were just batting around ideas and figuring out the best ways of covering things. As far as more formal, “I'm going to write about this,” not getting it across the finish line has mostly been that it’s already been covered, like someone else has already written about it, but even in that case, there have been opportunities to sometimes take a new angle.

Going back actually to the piece I just mentioned, I initially pitched that idea to my manager more as a 5,000-foot level story, like, “This is happening, this is really interesting to write about,” and started writing about it. Then he said, “Oh, actually the editorial board has already covered that”— I'm part of another part of the Opinion section, so he was like, “If you were to cover this, you would need a different angle that’s totally different.” So that's when— and actually, it turned out for the best because then my story was more of a fun, original, get-out-there-and-actually-be-on-the-road story. But my original idea got swatted down because it had been covered, but when I pitched it as, “Oh, I can I write about it being in the truck,” then that was a new take, so that was a yes. But yeah, we have a pretty flat organization, in the sense that there's not a giant hierarchical structure and series of loops I have to jump through. They’re very open about just chatting through ideas, so I guess to the extent that my ideas haven't been accepted, it's mostly because — I'm not saying, “Oh, all my ideas are great”— we're all just chatting through things casually before I formally submit something anyway, so I'm getting a sense of what they think are good ideas. 

What have been some of the most challenging moments of your career? 

I mean, I've chosen this life,so obviously I think the pros outweigh the cons. But it is true that if you don't work in journalism, there are a lot of fields where you have a true nine-to-five job, and as soon as I get off this call from you, I have more work. I'm going to go prepare some questions for an interview with Glenn Youngkin tomorrow and that is something that I maybe wouldn’t be doing if I was in a field that was more of a nine-to-five. But I think every job comes with trade-offs and the challenge sometimes is that there are weird hours, or we have to race to edit a piece of breaking news, or sometimes just the news cycle can be more demanding than some other jobs in certain ways. But I think the job is interesting and important and I enjoy it. And I'm fortunate I get to do something I love, even if journalism can be demanding in certain ways. 

What writers and authors have influenced your work the most?

I guess different ones for different categories. Paul Johnson as a historian has really influenced me. He was kind of a journalist/popular historian, but his books, like Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the 1980s , A History of the American People, etc., were very formative in shaping my view of history. I mean, supplemented by many other materials, but even just his style of sharing information that's nuanced and includes a lot of interesting things I never learned before. I would say a lot of the columnists who write for The Wall Street Journal have just been people who I read and admired for many years, so it was cool to finally be able to come and actually work with them. I've really enjoyed Kim Strassel's work and he actually just retired, but Dan Henninger and, I mean, just so many I could name, many of them— those are not even just the two favorites— but just so many of the writers are people whose work I admire.

How have you seen journalism/the media change throughout your career? What further changes do you anticipate? 

I think— I don't know to what extent this is true or not— but it does seem that as society has become increasingly polarized politically, that is probably reflected in the media, and I think it probably goes both ways: as the media becomes more polarized, so does society as people pick the publications they read, etc. At the same time I have started to see there are some publications that are recognizing that they're in a bit of a silo. This is just even just in the last year. Since the election, for instance, a lot of groups that previously, the mainstream media sort of assumed were on their team, maybe voted differently than they expected. And so I think there's maybe a little bit of a self-awareness that readers and voters are a diverse mix of people with a diverse mix of ideas. But I don't really know exactly whether that — you asked what I expect for the future— I don't know if that realization will continue, or whether, we'll just see things go back to the way they were with more polarization and less exploration of different ideas. I don't know. 

People consume more media than they ever have. How do you think this has changed the world?

Yeah, I think a lot of people, especially young people, consume a lot of information on TikTok and other forms of social media. And it's largely influencers, and it's not vetted, necessarily. I mean, just to nerd out for one second on our process: if you submitted an op-ed to our paper, for instance, and it got accepted, you have a first editor that goes through and not only edits it, but also thoroughly fact checks it; then it goes off to a second editor who then also reviews what the first editor did to make sure everything is factually correct and also is looking for any errors; and then it goes back to you; and then once you've signed off, then our entire team reads it and is proof reading and looking for any errors, any factual issues that the first two editors missed; and then it finally goes off to this lead editor who reads everything and signs off. And that's not even counting the art team and some other teams that are looking at pages too and sometimes catch things, so I guess all that to say, there's a lot of looking for accuracy or trying to build accuracy. There's a lot of vetting that goes into the process of putting out a piece on our page, and I think you don't have anything like that— even with the Community Notes and all the different things on social media— you don’t have anything that robust in most of the places that people are getting their information. On the one hand, I think it means people believe a lot of things that aren't true, that are just factually completely false. But beyond that, I also think it creates echo chambers, as we know about algorithms and the way that people get fed content that's the content they already like, etc., so it sort of makes people just scream at each other. 

What is your advice for younger people interested in journalism?

It’s hard to pick one thing. I guess I'll just give a few. I definitely encourage, like people like my mom and brother encouraged me, if it's something that you're passionate about, whatever aspect of it, writing or reporting or both, it’s good to chase those dreams and cultivate those skills. And you may or may not end up actually finding that journalism is the right fit for you, but I totally think it's worth exploring if you think that it's something, because it's just an amazing job that is so much fun. I think just trying to get as much boots on the ground experience as possible is helpful. I think even though journalism education programs such as journalism school or writing programs can be really helpful—they are totally valuable—I think actually having experience, doing reporting on deadlines, such as through a student newspaper or an internship, or freelancing, or a fellowship, or a training program, like that is really invaluable. I think that for me, I knew I liked journalism the whole way through my journalism masters program, but it was very, very demanding. But we were not writing at a daily newspaper deadline type of pace and it was actually that following summer, when I did my first internship at a newspaper, when I was just like immediately sent out to cover this breaking news story about the state Capitol, that I was like, “Oh wow, this is journalism. This is what I like,” you know? And that's when I really started to stretch my muscles and practice my skills. So, I guess I would encourage people to apply for every possible traineeship, fellowship, internship, type of opportunity that they can to see if it's the right field for them. And then also just to continue to be a lifelong learner in it. I did the— it's now defunct— but I did the. Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship, which was this great year-long fellowship while I was a full time employee at the Capital Press, my previous paper, and it was just every Wednesday for two hours, they would have leading journalists from all over the country come in and train us on different things, like how to place better public records requests or how to structure and interview effectively or whatever. Similarly, at The World Journalism Institute, you get a lot of great speakers and journalists come in and train you on how to write a good narrative, nonfiction story or whatever, so just continuing to learn, I think, is a good practice.

Part of journalism is paying attention and asking good questions. What are some daily habits or ways of being that promote paying attention and asking good questions?

Reading widely. Looking around the world as I walk through the streets of New York, I see a lot of people looking down at their phones and, don't get me wrong, sometimes I'm doing that if I'm trying to navigate somewhere I've never been or reading an e-mail or whatever, but I actually do have my head up most of the time. And because of that, I run into people I know all the time and see things I wouldn’t otherwise see. So I don't know, I think that's maybe just because I like seeing the world and I'm curious, but that provokes thoughts a lot. Like, “Oh, that's an interesting business, maybe I should report on something to do with that,” or, “Oh, I wonder why XYZ.” A lot of story ideas that I've come up with are quite literally just through, “Oh, I wonder about that,” or, “How does that work? Yeah, I guess that's maybe that's just me being kind of a Luddite, but it's not just from technology. It’s from interacting with the world around me and sometimes just through conversations with people. As I'm talking with someone, even in a casual context, not to do with work, sometimes they'll say something that provokes an idea and then I write it down and follow up on it and want to explore it. So I guess just always being curious and letting myself be curious. 

What do you read (journalism and not)? 

Well I read super widely. I try to read newspapers and magazines across the political spectrum and that cover different areas of the world, or different beats. So I read The Wall Street Journal, obviously, The Dispatch, The New York Times. I don't have a subscription to some of them, like I don't have a subscription to The Washington Post or whatever, but I still read what I can get access to. But yeah, I mean, I'm just reading widely, like The Atlantic and all across the spectrum to The Economist, to WORLD Magazine, everything from far left to— well, I don't consume a lot of far, far left content — but maybe from like left/center left to right/center right. I'm not really reading anything super far right, like Breitbart or whatever, unless I'm trying to just see what's going on in a story, and I'm also not reading The Grift or something, you know? But mostly anything from center right to center left I'm trying to consume so I see all the different takes that people have and people's ideas about what's going on in the world. I also just read a lot of books, so a lot of history, economics, biographies, I mean very widely, like across a lot of different fields. And then I also try to always have a novel going. I just finished a novel the other day, Until We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, is the latest one, but I'm just like always picking up the next novel.