In the third week of Cherubs, Abby Stone of Concord, Massachusetts sent nearly 50 emails and DMs for a single story. She got six replies.
“It really forced me to dig and find more sources,” she said.
For many Cherubs, that was lesson one on interviews: rejection is part of the job. Other lessons came from a lecture on advanced interviewing with instructors Bret Begun and Cynthia Wang.
“Beware of sexy people!” Wang said of preparing to interact with strong personalities. “Don’t get distracted. Sweat the details.”
That, she said, means showing up with spare pens, pre-written questions and knowing what you must walk away with. Sometimes, it means texting a source five times.
While some Cherubs used these skills to land interviews through DMs or LinkedIn, others happened in person.
“I felt like I was ambushing people,” said Matilda Haney Foulds, of Mountain View, California, who recalled her nerves before her first street interview. “But once you do it, it’s like jumping into a cold pool.”
That cold plunge led to a feature story from a Fourth of July conversation.
“I only asked four questions,” Foulds said. “The rest was just them telling me their story.”
Irene Park, of Fullerton, California, said she learned to be brave when it came to asking people for an interview.
“The worst thing they can say is no, or not even that,” Park said. “But in the long run, you don’t know until you try.”
