By Faith Neo
Credit: Charisma Madarang
Tell me a bit about your background and what you do now!
My name is Charisma Madarang. I'm a news editor for Rolling Stone and run the night shift.
It's been a wild ride — I love it.
Why did you choose Literary Journalism at UCI and how was it?
I came in as an English major. Then in my third year, I had a conversation with my roommate. She told me about the Literary Journalism major. I had never really thought about the literary side of [journalism] — This was what I'd been wanting to do my whole life. I just didn't realize it. I switched majors the next day.
As soon as I changed majors, I met my best friend, Moh. The school newspaper at the time wouldn't take our pitches. So, we started our own newspaper called Jet-Lagged Magazine. And we wanted it to be huge so that when people were reading it, you could tell. So they were these big tabloid-like magazines. It got to a point where we'd be at a festival, or a school show, or we’d be on the bus, and people would be reading it. They'd be in classrooms reading it, and it was just really fun. It was our first taste of what you can do by taking it upon yourself to tell the stories that you want to tell.
How do you choose what to write about at Rolling Stone?
We always want to be challenging the norm, the standard, and that's a core part of Rolling Stone — being on the front of culture, music, politics, etc.
I think if you're trying to understand the Rolling Stone brand, it's about asking, “What is going to move the needle? What's going to push the story forward? And what's going to dig deeper and make audiences think beyond what they just see in front of them?” That's the hallmark of any good story.
Favorite projects?
I did one with Erick The Architect. We had one of those conversations where it makes you rethink past answers, and so it was a very in-depth conversation that I enjoyed.
Credit: Charisma Madarang
How did you get to Rolling Stone?
One of my first jobs was at Foodbeast, a startup that covers viral food news. And it was very exciting at the time. We were all young on the team, and they hired me because of the work they saw that I did with Jet-Lagged Magazine. I led their editorial for two years, and I made a lot of good friends.
After that, I got into marketing, and got to a point where you just feel stuck. I wanted to make the switch back to journalism because I missed storytelling. It was a hard switch to make mentally. I started working more with the OC Weekly, doing more pieces for them and having a column at one point, and then they closed and the pandemic happened.
USC had a master's program I’d been looking at. So, I went to USC to get my masters in Specialized Journalism, and it’s one of the best decisions I've ever made.
There's this professor, Dr. Richardson, and she teaches a class on journalism, race, and culture. It completely changed the way I looked at journalism, the responsibility and accountability, and the approach that we take when we're telling these stories. Classes like that meant so much to me.
While I was there, one of the biggest things I needed when I graduated was recent clips. So I started writing and pitching to the LA Times and PBS SoCal while I was in school and getting published. By the time I was out, I had a portfolio to show people that was recent. When I graduated from USC [in 2022] I was adamant that I was going to get a job at a place that I wanted. I remember someone telling me that it was going to be really hard and competitive, and that I should lower my standards. But I know my value, and wasn't going to settle. So, that's the mindset I had when I went into the job market.
Current interests in writing?
I'm interested in a lot of the activism that's going on around climate change, and it's not talked about enough for so many various reasons. It's one of the most urgent issues.
Advice for future journalists?
Journalism needs good storytellers. It's not so much an industry, as it is a practice, right? The practice of storytelling is always going to exist, it just is going to exist in different forms. It might not exist in the traditional sense. It's probably going to start breaking into different mediums that we haven't thought of before, but storytelling is always going to exist.
Pitch now. As soon as you feel ready, push yourself. Start getting clips while you're still in undergrad, and if you choose to go to grad school for journalism, definitely start pitching while you're there. Don't wait. I'm not a fan of networking, but I do love talking to people whose work I genuinely care about and respect. So, my advice is to reach out to the people that you trust, that you look up to, that are in the positions that you want to be in. If you have a genuine connection with them, talk to them, and maybe even become friends. Because those are the lasting relationships that are going to make a difference.
It's not just about building connections, it's about building a support system around you with people that you trust and who you can go to for advice when you need it. Because you probably will feel out of your element — but that's the point. If it was easy that'd be pretty boring. You probably wouldn’t want it anyway, right? For Rolling Stone, there was a lot to learn. It was challenging. But in the end, you just stick with it and it becomes something that's almost like second nature. So, don't let other people's expectations or fears hold you back. That's the biggest thing, for journalism.
Charisma’s Rolling Stone features:
Charisma’s LA Times piece:
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