Today’s free newsletter features my chat with Rachelle Hampton, who very well may have the best media job in town. Plus: why one editor will now only take story pitches over the phone, some good ol' fashioned media gossip on fashion media’s most well-known gossip-er, new job postings fresh off the press, and a whole lot more in today’s issue.

xoxo,

Stephanie

Rachelle Hampton seemingly has the best job in media. She gets to tune out the crazy news cycle, works for a media company that actually is doing well and isn't struggling (Defector), and, as the cherry on top, makes a decent living dishing on gossip. The whole arrangement is almost too good to be true — except it isn't.

Rachelle is now in her third season of hosting the podcast ‘Normal Gossip,’ taking the baton over from co-founder Kelsey McKinney in 2024. The premise is familiar, but inventive: each week, she sits down with a special guest and narrates a listener-submitted gossip story that you can’t help but get invested in despite the people involved being anonymous. You can see why Rachelle told me that landing this gig was like getting the last chopper out of ‘Nam when it comes to media jobs.

While the gossip is fun and pretty low stakes, there is quite a bit of work that goes into vetting these stories that listeners don’t see. For this week’s Maxed Out, I talked to Rachelle about what goes into the art of telling other people’s drama, and some of her favorite games, books, newsletters and magazines.      

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How's everything been with recording your third season of the show?

It's been going really well! This is the third season that me and Se’era [Spragley Ricks] have done together, so it's the 10th season of ‘Normal Gossip’ overall. I feel like this is our first real season in a way. Last year just felt like a lot of new things being thrown at us, from learning the format of the show to going on tour for the first time right before producing our second season. So it was kind of just getting up to speed last year, and this year kind of feels like we're getting to put our stamp on it. It's feeling really good. It's just at the point of the season where I'm like, if I have to write one more script, look up one more Google document, I’m throwing my computer into the ocean.

My time here has gone by really fast in a way that's hard to understand. Even though I'm in it, I look around and I'm like, oh yeah, I guess it has been something like 18 months now since I've taken over. It'll be two years at the end of this year, so it's happening.

I know you were at Slate before you came over to Defector, hosting ‘ICYMI’ before you took over ‘Normal Gossip.’ What's the difference between hosting that podcast versus this one?

It was definitely a big transition. After three years as a founding co-host on ‘In Case You Missed It,’ seeing it through infancy, I knew once I was done with that, there was never a world in which I was going to do another show like that. A twice-a-week, always-on show was just too much for me. Daily news shows are so admirable to me because I realize I'm not necessarily a person who loves to be in touch with the news cycle in that way. I like to reimagine being in a world where you read the newspaper on a Sunday and catch up on everything at the end of the week, rather than constantly being tapped in at any given moment — and not only being tapped in, but being tapped in enough to give salient commentary.

When I got to Defector, I knew that [‘Normal Gossip’ founders] Kelsey and Alex [Sujong Laughlin] were thinking about winding down the show, and I wanted to help them with the season they were working on. It felt like an opportunity I would be so angry at myself if I didn't take on. Getting a real chance to sit in the back seat and watch Kelsey make season seven — her last season — was one of the first times I felt like I actually got a chance to learn something since I was in college. Most of my work in media had just been about, throw you in and we'll see if you swim or if you drown. Something I appreciated about taking over ‘Normal Gossip’ is that Kelsey was very much like, don't give me a decision right now — you're just helping us out with the season, but if you don't want to do this, that's actually totally fine.

The show is entirely scripted, which is not true for ‘In Case You Missed It.’ Because of the way ‘Normal Gossip’ works — we're taking gossip that we get submitted and then anonymizing it — it's pretty tightly scripted. But it's scripted to not sound like it's scripted. You can hear me learning as the seasons progress, which is something that's actually kind of hard for me to deal with. I hate learning in public. I would prefer to be perfect immediately. There was a lot of learning curve, and I did a lot of that in a very public role, which was challenging. My therapist heard a lot about it.

What was it like taking the reins of a podcast that already had a pretty loyal following, being the new person stepping in and building that trust and loyalty with the audience?

To be completely honest, it was terrifying. I was scared, and to this day I remain scared sometimes. I'm a perfectionist, I hate disappointing people, and as someone who was a fan of the show before I became the host, I understand what it means for something you love to change, especially when it's something that brings you comfort. I'd also already been through a host transition when Madison [Malone Kircher] left ‘ICYMI’ and we brought Candice [Lim] on, so I already knew you're just going to lose a portion of the audience. It's just the reality that podcasting is a very intimate format, and what people relate to is ineffable. Even intellectually knowing that people leaving wasn't a judgment of me … that's still hard to take on, especially when you're learning how to do something. It's like, am I fucking this up? Are you leaving because I'm not good at this, or because I'm not as good at this as I want to be?

It's a challenge I'm still navigating, especially as someone who's kind of private and pretty introverted. I like to spend a lot of time by myself. I'm honestly a little bit of a shy person. I'm not the person at the party who's going to be the center of attention. I haven't had a birthday party in years — just the thought of it stresses me out. I've lived in my apartment for two years and haven't had a housewarming party, which is the bane of my friends' existence.

I mean it’s stressful, I get it! As someone who is an introvert myself. 

I also feel like [being an] introvert doesn't mean you don't like people. Fundamentally, I really like people. I'm fascinated by people. I love learning about the way other people live their lives, and that curiosity is at the core of a lot of my work. I say this to my producers all the time — if I could do this work under a pseudonym or wear a mask like Orville Peck, I probably would.

What goes into the art of telling gossip? How do you make listeners care about everyday people and their drama?

It's not just me, it's a whole team. I want to give props to our producer Jae Towle Vieira, who is the one in the inbox, picking the gossip, basically, because we get so much. I don't have access to the ‘Normal Gossip’ email, which is probably better for my mental health.

Jae is really the first line of defense of being like, how do I think this is going to land? Does this story have enough to sustain a 45-minute episode? For a 10-episode season, we'll probably have talked about 20 gossip stories, and we narrow it down. You're trying to put the guest in as quickly as possible, read them into the world so you don't have to explain too much. It can't be like a fantasy novel where you're dropped in with 25 different characters and you're like, whose name do I have to remember? We have a whole rule about how many named characters we'll have in a story — we try not to do more than four.

Once we pick the gossip, it goes through a writers' room — me, Se’era, Jae, Justin our editor, and usually another Defector staff member — to anonymize the story and sort out someone's five rambling voice memos that digress and have no clear middle, beginning, or end. Sometimes we'll have follow-up questions — did we get the timeline right, what happened after this, what message did this person send, did you hear a response?

A lot of ‘Normal Gossip’ is actually a lot more about cutting than it is about adding — that's extraneous, that's confusing, that was really funny but unfortunately we can't include it because it makes this point not land as much. It's a process of whittling down to the most salient points so people can come away with what I think the essence of the gossip is.

Have you ever had an experience where a listener thought a story was about them and called out the show?

We've definitely had situations like that. Thankfully, the team does a good job of not really clueing me into what's going on in the inbox or on social media. Kelsey would tell me that people would think it was them and it wasn't — someone would write in, be like, I think this is me, and the team would cross-reference it with the submitter and say, it's not, it just sounds really similar. There have been recent incidents of people figuring out that they're the subject of the gossip, but that's not really my business.

What's the piece of gossip that stood out most to you — the juiciest one you've had the pleasure of telling?

That's a really great question, not least because the stories kind of go out of my head as soon as I've told them. I think the one that's coming to mind is the first season finale I did, season eight, with Shea Couleé — a polyamorous love triangle on a honey farm. I don't know if it was just recording with Shea, who was singing Mariah Carey's 'Honey' as I was telling the story, or if it was just being my first season finale, but that gossip gets to the core of what I'm really interested in, which is relationship dynamics, romance, and also just people. 

Would you consider this your dream job?

It is 100% the best job I’ve had. A lot of that has to do with working for Defector. A lot of us feel like this is our last job in media, because I have no idea how I could go back to working for someone. The reason the show works so well is because at the end of the day it's my show, and I get to set the schedule and the pace and the editorial decisions I want, in a way that just wasn't true when you're working for a company that's owned by another company — all the decisions are being made in a room you're not in. Here, the decisions mostly lie with me, which can be scary but is also very freeing. I want to make enough money to afford my life, but I want to make something I'm proud of, or that I feel like I'm learning while I'm doing.

What's one thing you've learned about people from telling stories about their ordinary lives and drama?

I feel like what I've learned is what I've suspected, and it's very optimistic of me, and it's also probably down to the fact that I'm not really on social media anymore — but I've found that people are mostly trying to do their best. I do feel like people are mostly fundamentally good, and that most often their worst traits are not about the person they're interacting with. It's easy, when the entire story is told, to say, oh, this was actually probably about this person experiencing something else in another corner of their life that somehow got funneled into this part of their life and blew up in a very dramatic way that's very funny to tell on a podcast. But it's also helpful for my own life — when someone isn't acting their best toward me, I'm like, this probably has nothing to do with me. 

Alright, and now we’ve reached the Maxed Out portion of the Q&A. To start, how much screen time are you racking up on your phone these days?

I have mine turned off — I think I did that during the pandemic. I don't need to know that information about myself. I don't have any social media on my phone. I'll download Instagram for like five minutes and then delete it, or when I'm sick I'll let myself download it to go on Reels because my brain is already soup, so might as well continue the stupefaction. I'd guess my screen time is probably somewhere around at least five hours. I play a lot of phone games — I play Sudoku on my phone. I'm often looking at my phone playing a little game, so it's often on.

Any games you'd recommend?

I have no idea how this game came into my life, but it's called Township — you literally just make a town, farm, and fill out orders that people want. I have a pig farm and an apiary, and you can get little factories as you progress through the levels, and unlock little islands, and get bananas because you can't grow them. I'm a fan. I play this game a lot. I get upset when there are no tasks left for me to do. 

Oh fun! Reminds me a little bit of Sims.

I've never actually played Sims — I have this feeling that if I do, it'll become a problem.

Yeah I won’t lie, that was my case. Anything you want to shout out in the media world — what you're reading or watching?

This is the first season I've retained the ability to read. Usually about halfway through the season, all I want to do is watch Trixie and Katya videos on repeat. Still doing that, but I've read a lot more. Right now I'm in the middle of ‘Lonesome Dove,’ which kind of slaps. I was reading a lot of Toni Morrison earlier in the year — I was on a real short-book kick, reading books under 200 pages, and then I picked up ‘Lonesome Dove,’ which is like 850 pages, so we've gone the other direction.

I recently started watching the ‘Mission: Impossible’ movies for the first time. I realized I'd never seen them before, even though I love action movies. What a fascinating man Tom Cruise is. I'm about to watch the third one — the second one was not good, so it put me off. I know they're going to get bad and then get good again. 

I honestly don't listen to a lot of podcasts when I'm producing, because I'm really sensitive to other people's voices — not that I can't stand the sound, but I pick up other people's vocal tics, and when I'm writing I kind of just want to hear myself. 

For newsletters, I really love the Hell Gate newsletter — that's the one I open the most. I really like New York Magazine's newsletters. I recently got into Equator magazine, which has been really good — it's a global magazine, so it's been helpful to get out of a U.S.-only frame and do local and global coverage. I also love Hammer and Hope. It’s a magazine about Black politics and culture, and it's gorgeous.

What we’re seeing and hearing around the industry.

Hotline bling. Because my parents are getting up there in age and have been out of the job market for a hot minute, I’ve always laughed off their adorable but completely out of touch career advice to just call companies and ask if they're hiring. It was the Boomer Way, after all. But maybe not anymore now that editors are getting bombarded with sloppy AI pitches. Growing tired of getting that AI slop in her inbox, editor and publisher of The Food Section Hanna Raskin will soon require journalists to pitch her publication the old-fashioned way — by picking up the damn phone. Remember when we all had to do that? I shot her a note to ask her how the hotline and new pitching process will all work.

Was there a particular incident that led to the decision to revise your pitch submission process? I know you mentioned getting bombarded with AI pitches. When did that start to occur? 

Nope. I started seeing AI pitches about a year ago, but they've been taking up more of my time as the technology improves and writers become more adept at using it. (Interestingly, since we added a "Did you use AI?" question to our standard pitch form, 31 writers out of several hundred have checked 'yes.')

Fortunately, our publication has a very narrow editorial scope, so I can typically gauge the veracity of a story idea pretty quickly: If a writer fabricates a sweet tea origin story, for example, I'll clock it right away. But when it comes to specific small towns in the southwest corner of Louisiana or an heirloom grain variety in West Virginia, I often need to explore the topic further — and when the writer suggests there's some kind of injustice that ought to be exposed (which is what AI coaches users to cite when pitching TFS: I yesterday checked with Claude to confirm as much), it's our journalistic responsibility to check it out.

In other words, I was putting way more work into these pitches than the people (or "people") who sent them. And perhaps it was my related indignation that led me to wonder if these folks would make such claims to my face.

How will the hotline be maintained? Will it be run during certain hours, or will it be appointment based? 

I'll man the phones on Tuesday afternoons, but fully understand many writers work full-time jobs or have other obligations that will prevent them from calling during designated hours. They're welcome to email me to set up an alternate time.

Is there a target timeline to share details on the hotline number itself?

We're in the midst of a publication hiatus. I never intended to reveal this arrangement until we were back to our regular schedule, but couldn't resist chiming in when The Institute for Independent Journalists referred to our "pitch calls" on LinkedIn. It's not in place yet because I'm out in the field, rather than at my desk. But we'll share the number on Friday, September 11, as planned. We're encouraging writers to sign up for the newsletter to get the details first!

Have a tip for me? Send it to stephanie@la-fronde.com or my Signal if you want to keep things confidential (itsstephwill.94).

Lauren Sherman gets her moment. I did very much enjoy reading Aidan McLaughlin’s Vanity Fair profile of Puck’s Lauren Sherman (and also find it amusing that she landed a feature from a Condé brand, the parent company that she’s skewered on many occasions — a nice little stick-it-to-the-man moment). Look, I can't really speak to all of her scoops, but internally at Condé, a lot of the non-C-suite folks usually heard what was going on from her first, before any company memo got circulated (if at all). All that aside, it’s a well-reported story that has all the snark and gossip you’d expect from a profile about a Puck person.

More cuts at Vox. Unfortunately, there were more cuts at Vox today, which Semafor first reported. In all, four people were reportedly impacted, and editor in chief Swati Sharma said in a company memo that the move was meant to center story coverage around these five pillars: changes in society, shifting power, everyday economics, wellbeing and the natural world. Constance Grady, a veteran culture writer, announced that she was one of the four people caught up in the layoffs. Once upon a time there was a world where I rarely ever heard of layoffs happening at Vox — across the street in D.C., at Nat Geo, I was secretly envious, as the hammer came down on our group just about every quarter back then (this was mid-2010s). How times have changed…

BET.com’s transformation. BET.com is undergoing a pretty big shakeup with its digital content strategy. Yesha Callahan, BET.com’s head of editorial, has been pivoting the brand these last few months into a video-first newsroom, establishing new initiatives like the BET Creator Studio and now its Community Reporting Initiative that will work with journalists around the U.S. to cover regional headlines. BET is just one of a few legacy newsrooms, like Axios and The New York Times, who are making some notable investments into local journalism. I asked Yesha about what she’s looking for in prospective journalists interested in being a part of the program. 

As for the stories, I want the ones that never make it up the chain to a national desk. The local election nobody’s covering, the fight over a piece of land, the church that’s fed a neighborhood for 30 years and is about to lose its building.

But I also want the big stories everyone dropped. This week's report covered Keith Porter Jr., who was killed by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. For about two weeks it was everywhere, and then the trucks left and his family was still standing there without answers. That’s the pattern I want to break. A reporter who lives in that community doesn’t leave when the news cycle does, and eight months later they’re the only one still asking.