Lexi McMenamin, FCLC ‘17: Freelance Phenom at the Editor’s Desk
Lexi McMenamin, FCLC ‘17
By Grace McCarty
“I wouldn’t be a working journalist if I hadn’t been a weirdo and brought my resumé to Elaine Welteroth’s book event senior year,” says Lexi McMenamin (she/they) with a laugh. She’s agreed to chat with me over Zoom from her cozy Brooklyn apartment. McMenamin humbly recalls the book signing at the Herald Square Urban Outfitters five years ago, where they first introduced themself (resumé in hand) to the editor in chief of Teen Vogue. Today, the 2017 graduate of Fordham College at Lincoln Center is a contributing politics editor at the same publication. On January 3rd, 2022, McMenamin joined the Teen Vogue staff full time as their News and Politics Editor.
By all accounts, McMenamin has landed her dream job, but she doesn’t like to call it that. Despite the fact that they are doing exactly the work they strove toward as an English and Political Science major at Fordham, they advise me to throw out the notion of a “dream job” entirely. Five years working in the field has shown them what a fragile, competitive, at times unfair, yet exciting, and fulfilling career path journalism is.
She recalls the sense of anxious uncertainty she felt exiting college. After connecting with Welteroth in 2017, she began contributing to Teen Vogue’s since retired Campus Life section during her last few months as an undergraduate. While McMenamin maintained a position at Teen Vogue as a contract assignment writer and freelanced for other publications over the next few years, she struggled to find a sustainable job in her desired field, “I was so emotionally crushed by not getting an editorial job first.” But, her alternate route to the editor’s desk turns out to have been a blessing in disguise. She worked full time communications jobs with nonprofit organizations until January, 2020. She credits this work with honing her social media and branding skills, which have proven essential to her journalism career.
“Being a successful, independent journalist today is super dependent on branding yourself...and self-promoting to the point of obnoxiousness at all moments,” she notes with a smile. McMenamin also credits the interactions, connections, and personal experiences their communications roles afforded them. “If I had just gone straight into journalism, I don’t know if I would be able to write with the same nuance. It shapes the questions I ask; it’s benefitted the perspective I bring to my reporting… because we’re not just automaton robots disseminating info from our robot brains.” Their diverse post-grad work experience grants them not only an insider perspective, but oftentimes, a sharper angle.
For the last year, they have been putting their accumulated media knowledge and experience to use as a full time freelancer and contributing section editor. Teen Vogue takes up most of their time. Ever since she wrote for and edited the opinions section at the Fordham Observer, McMenamin has known that politics writing was her endgame. As an undergraduate, she worried that others might believe her strong perspectives hindered her ability to convey the facts. However, they say that they have found the ability to combine opinions writing with straight reportage to be a valuable asset in their career. She was drawn to Teen Vogue because she found it to be “at the forefront of reporting with perspective for young people.”
McMenamin loves working for a publication with a younger audience, since “making things understandable and accessible” is one of their driving passions as a journalist. She finds that Teen Vogue’s reporting style placed the publication ahead of the curve on addressing and prioritizing issues of social justice after a 2017 rebrand, while other newsrooms “had belated reckonings” surrounding the 2020 election. McMenamin identifies her beats as politics, culture, and identity. Writing for Teen Vogue has helped her to see the constant overlap of these subjects, which she credits with making her writing stronger.
As McMenamin takes me through a typical work day, I realize how fast paced the newsroom environment they describe is. She produces at least 3-4 stories a week, beginning her day by settling on the most pressing event to cover with a Teen Vogue spin, and working with her entire team to publish the story online by the afternoon. They speak with the confidence of a seasoned pro, but gratitude and humility coat every word; “It’s pretty cool to wake up in the morning and be like, ‘this is what I think is the most important thing going on out there. And then three hours later, it’s on TeenVogue.com.”
As a contributing editor, McMenamin has gotten a taste of the other side of the freelance world. While discussing a recent project, she catches herself: “there are two op-ed’s that I’m helping with...well, I’m not helping with them, I’m the editor. So clearly I’m not adjusting well to my position of power!” Editing has given McMenamin a new appreciation for the volume of competition in the field she’s been fighting in for years. They describe being inundated with pitches after putting out calls for articles, and dreading the inevitable need to turn away talented writers.
In McMenamin’s perfect world, there are enough well funded publications to hire every writer who wants to work. Unfortunately, this vision is far from the reality of the field. With experience as both a freelancer anxiously awaiting a response and an editor overwhelmed with pitches, they find that the freelance system itself is in need of an overhaul. But, until then, they are doing their part to generate opportunities for new journalists. That’s one of the things she loves most about working at Teen Vogue: “it's a publication that takes chances on young writers all the time.”
McMenamin savors the opportunity to help emerging writers secure their first bylines. They look forward to dedicating more time to editing when they take on their new position in January. “It’s important to me that I be available to help people learn how to do this, so it’s exciting to know that that’s going to be a big part of my job,” she tells me. “I’m going to help a lot of people write for Teen Vogue for the first time, and that’s how I got here.”
Helping young journalists navigate the field’s ever uncertain waters shines through as a major passion for McMenamin. She lights up as she tells me about Zenith Cooperative, a mentorship program she founded with a colleague last spring. Zenith pairs working journalists, editors, reporters, producers, and other media workers with 1-3 mentees over the course of 6 months, during which mentees work toward a personalized goal. One of Zenith’s primary goals is to combat systems of nepotism and prejudice in media by paving the way for a new generation of contributors who are largely queer, people of color, low-income, immigrants, and based outside of the US, among other marginalized identities. “The media industry is really intimidating, and when you don’t know who to ask questions, your questions never get answered,” McMenamin notes with a nod to her own experience as an emerging journalist. “With Zenith, we want to create more intentional spaces for people to ask those questions.”
As a junior English major in light denial about the prospect of graduating myself, I relish McMeniman’s eagerness to help people in my position. Her personable presence is enough to put anyone at ease, but her advice yields the same effect. McMenamin gently advises young journalists to get really, really used to rejection, noting that even in the “position of peak clout” she could have envisioned for herself as an undergraduate, she still deals with rejection on a daily basis. Nonetheless, McMenamin urges young writers to know and prioritize their self worth. “You probably know exactly what you’re doing,” McMenamin says in a way that makes you believe them. “There are just a million people who also want to be doing exactly what you want to do.”
Yet, McMenamin makes those one and a million odds look possible. I can see myself in the nervous, resumé clutching college senior at Welteroth’s Urban Outfitters book event, there not to scout the season’s best overpriced boho overalls, but rather, an opportunity. And I hope, as anyone in my shoes would, to one day be able to see myself in the present day Lexi McMenamin: a motivated, successful writer and editor who makes the most of her beloved, tumultuous field every day, and paves the way for others to do the same.