Jazmine Hughes delivering the keynote address at Conn’s 100th Commencement in 2018. Photo courtesy of Connecticut College website.
During her time at Conn and in the six years since, Jazmine Hughes ’12 has been a witty and prolific writer and editor. Now, she’s earned a new platform for her words, as Hughes will deliver the 100th Commencement address on May 20. Currently an editor for NYT Magazine Labs, Hughes previously worked as a contributing editor at The Hairpin, a fact-checker at New York Magazine, and editor in chief of The College Voice. Outgoing Voice editor in chief Maia Hibbett caught up with Hughes as she reflected on her years at Conn, her past six years in media, and her thoughts on Commencement, both in 2012 and 2018.
The College Voice: Looking back, your first job out of college was at New York Magazine as a fact checker. What was that like?
Jazmine Hughes: I interned at New York [Magazine] during my CELS summer, and it was the greatest time of my life. I don’t think I took the CELS money—I ended up getting paid minimum wage at that job. And I was like: I’m rich. I’m gonna live in Brooklyn and make nine dollars an hour, and this is just going to be my life; it’s gonna be incredible.
I was doing a lot of research, and just hanging out on the Internet. So I was like, I get paid for this! This is amazing. And then I graduated, got a job back there, and thought it would be the same thing. But a fact checker is a much, much different job and opportunity.
I was a restaurant fact checker. It wasn’t like I was in the room with the writer of the cover story and their editor being like, ‘this is what you got wrong!’ I had to call restaurants and ask them if the chicken was still $15.99, or ask: ‘are you still next to a liquor store?’ Nobody wants to talk about that shit. They just want to take orders and get off the phone. I’m able to talk to anybody on the phone now. I have zero fear.
It’s a tough and often an incredibly boring job, but it is a very important one. I think for so many writers and editors in magazines, jobs like fact-checking and copyediting can be seen as sort of a nuisance, like they’re stepping on the beautiful majestic work—the jewels that have been put upon this page—and I’m really happy that I started out as a fact checker because you really get to see that it is very much the foundation of every story. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your turns of phrases are if you’re wrong.
TCV: So now, you edit and write for The Talk and the Letter of Recommendation sections of the New York Times Magazine-
JH: No, I don’t.
TCV: You don’t?
JH: I used to, but now my job is something very new. The Times Magazine has a “Special Projects” section. It’s called NYT Mag Lab, and we do special inserts in the newspaper, which are controlled by the magazine. I started doing it in February. It’s a 12-page newspaper insert, but with like 30 stories, sort of like a mini magazine that comes with your newspaper, in addition to the actual two magazines that come with your newspaper. It’s kind of arcane.
That’s what my job is. But you’re right, I also am writing for the Magazine.
TCV: Of the pieces that either you’ve edited or written, do you have a favorite story you’ve worked on recently?
JH: The thing I wrote that I liked best in the Magazine was a very short essay for the music issue on sex playlists.* I thought it was going to be funny. And it was. Funny and mildly disgusting is generally the cross-section of my interests. I enjoyed working on [the sex playlist essay] because the strengths of my editor really came in. That was a story that could easily have gotten unnecessarily intimate, or cavalier, or gross, or sexy. But I really liked the outcome, in heavy part because my editor was so skillful.
TCV: And how would you say that your time The College Voice prepared you—or maybe didn’t prepare you—for the career you’ve had since then?
JH: I found out was a newspaper was, which was super helpful, now that I work at one. Both working at the Voice and, I have to say, taking classes with Blanche, really hammered home that a story had to have a beginning, middle, and end. Just because you have a point, or a joke, or an anecdote that you want to relay—that’s not a story. And the collaborative environment of being on the Voice—it was really cool to get ideas and to learn stuff from my peers. My interests are varied, but not as multitudinous as one might hope, and I remember legitimately learning a lot from The College Voice. When you’re on a college campus with a bunch of people who aren’t like you, you’re going to find out all this stuff that you would never discover on your own.
TCV: You’ve recently gotten a lot of attention for being named one of Forbes 30 Under 30. What was that experience like? Is there a special induction ceremony?
JH: I found out on Twitter. Somebody tweeted at me like, “congratulations!” and I was like, “what?” and they went “you’re on this list!” and I was like oh, cool. I mean, it’s a distinction. I’m incredibly flattered and super happy that I got it, but that doesn’t mean that the quality of my work is gonna be any better or I’m going to get any smarter or wake up the next day and be a better editor or writer. It really doesn’t matter if Forbes, or another publication, thinks that you are god’s gift to the world; if you are not doing good work, then it truly doesn’t matter.
TCV: Now I want to ask you now about an aspect of your work that I think has gotten a little bit less attention. You’re a founding member of this website Writers of Color—could you tell us about that?
JH: It arose out of a brunch. Maybe three or four years ago, I was having brunch with some of my friends, and another woman of color named Durga Chew-Bose and I were talking about how full of bullshit it was to go to these parties or into these editorial meetings and hear snippets of conversations in which editors claimed that they weren’t able to find any writers of color. They just had to keep hiring the same white guys to write the same stories. And we were like, that’s insane, because we were at brunch with a couple other female writers of color and we thought, well there’s five of us right here.
We wanted to make a database so that you truly couldn’t say: ‘I don’t know where to find these people.’ Part of the work of being an editor is not just working with what’s in front of you, it’s reaching out to people to find new voices. The Twitter account Writers of Color, which is the most active part, is just like, retweeting job opportunities for writers of color. It’s a jobs board.
TCV: That sounds like a really great resource. And right now, who are your favorite writers writing?
JH: I always ask people this question, and nobody’s asked me in a while! Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah just won the Pulitzer Prize for the GQ story that she did on Dylan Roof after the church bombing. I’ve read a lot of her work. When I got the job at the Times, I was really nervous, and the cover story in the Times Magazine that week was this piece that she had written about Toni Morrison. I was like, ah, I made the right decision.
My friend who started Writers of Color with me, Durga Chew-Bose, has this book called Too Much and Not the Mood, which is absolutely brilliant. She is the editor of this magazine called Ssence.
Arielle Levy is a writer for The New Yorker; she has this profile on Nora Ephron, who is my favorite writer—she’s dead now, so you know, she stopped writing. But she is my OG, and Ari once wrote a profile of Nora Ephron which I considered to be like my two greatest interests in one. Do I read men? That’s the question that I’m leaving myself with. I’m sure I have!
TCV: That’s okay; enough people read them. So you graduated from Conn six years ago, and now you’re you’re coming back to give the commencement speech. What new impression do you think you’re going to get? What do you think will have changed in the six years?
JH: I don’t know what to say, so I’m scared! I wanted to be my graduation speaker when I graduated, and I was not, and now I am that. I don’t want to mess this up at all.
I’m not quite sure how the College has changed. When I started, there were kegs. And then I think they went away after my freshman year, and the seniors could not imagine a world without kegs. The scene of the College is ever-changing. It grows; it changes; it’s like a person. Like a hundred-and-six-year-old-person. Insofar as graduation, I will definitely wear a more conservative outfit, because I wore a short dress that day. Obviously it won’t be as emotional for me as it was that day, where I felt like I was being ripped from the clutches of everyone I had ever loved. But I’m really excited. Six years is a long time, and I’m going to take stock of everything that’s happened to me in that time. What I was able to achieve at Conn—those things were the building blocks for my career. I don’t know; I’ll probably be crying.
TCV: Rather than asking you for a cliche piece of advice for impending graduates, do you remember any advice that you got when you were on the verge of your graduation, particularly good or bad?
JH: No! I don’t remember anything. I remember waking up and drinking a bottle of champagne with my roommates and singing the Dixie Chicks, I don’t know why. When I think about graduation, I don’t even remember if my family was there. I’m sure they were—I’ve seen pictures. But I remember being with my roommates—I lived in 360 as the time—being with my boyfriend, being with my friends. About so many people, I remember feeling like: ‘I want to take you by the face and kiss you all over and tell you how much of a great time I’ve had with you for the past couple of years.’
Getting my diploma, and seeing my professors cheer for me, I remember thinking yeah, I really did something at this school. And it really sunk in that I was leaving while I was walking across the stage to get my diploma, and I had like 20 minutes left of my time at Connecticut College. Better late than never.
TCV: Definitely. So do you have any advice for graduates?
JH: I’ve got to save that for my speech, girl! I can’t be giving you previews. But you’ll hear it, don’t worry.
*Editor’s note: The essay, titled “Sexy Songs to Have Sex to,” appears in “25 Songs that Tell Us Where Music Is Going,” in the New York Times Magazine. It’s track number six.
