Emma Hinchliffe | Senior writer for Fortune, Author of The Broadsheet, Co-Chair of Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit
Emma talks about how she stumbled into business journalism, what she has learned from interviewing the most powerful women in America, and how her writing has evolved
Think about the most influential woman you know in today’s society. Emma Hinchliffe has probably interviewed her. In addition to being a senior writer at Fortune, Emma serves as the co-chair of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, its Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit, and the Fortune/U.S. Department of State Global Women’s Mentorship Partnership. In addition, Emma authors The Broadsheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter “for and about the world’s most powerful women.” The Broadsheet publishes five newsletters per week, sharing profiles of important female leaders and providing explanations for how current events (like the end of the Child Care Stabilization Program) affect women.
The Broadsheet is a staple in my daily media diet. Its royal purple heading and chipper intro: “Good morning, Broadsheet readers!” is as familiar to my mornings as black coffee. Getting the chance to interview Emma was incredibly cool. I had high expectations for what Emma would be like, and she surpassed them all. Emma is so poised, smart, and interesting. She is an incredible example of someone who picked their job interest early (journalism) and then stuck to it with full force, building an incredible career so quickly. I can’t wait to see what Emma does next.
What was your path to becoming a Senior Writer at Fortune and authoring The Broadsheet?
I did the USA Today college summer internship program where you write about college-related issues. And when that finished, I emailed USA Today asking if I could intern there again. They said, “Yes”, but the only spot left was on the Money / Business desk. I had never really thought about business journalism before. I wouldn’t have said that I had an interest in it at that time, but I really wanted to intern there so I eagerly accepted the opportunity. That was my first time being exposed to business journalism.
After college, I joined the Hearst Journalism Fellowship where Hearst places you at one of their newspapers. I was placed at the Houston Chronicle where I was a general assignment reporter. I did a lot of crime reporting but because I’d had this experience at USA Today, I ended up working on the business desk as well.
Eventually, I wanted to return home to New York and so I ended up at Mashable as a business reporter. At Mashable, I began learning about the tech industry and started covering women in tech. I found an opportunity to join Fortune and support their Most Powerful Women franchise, which has been around for 25 years. The job was to be a reporter under that mantle and also to work on The Broadsheet newsletter which I had subscribed to while working at Mashable. I have now been at Fortune for five and a half years.
It’s quite rare to speak to someone who stuck to the career that she decided, at an early age, she wanted to do. How did you know you wanted to be a journalist and what has inspired you to continue on this path?
I was always interested in journalism. My dad was a journalist in radio. He was the News Director at WNYC, and also worked at Bloomberg Radio for a long time. Watching him work exposed me to what a career in journalism could look like. I was always naturally inclined towards writing-oriented roles. At the same time, I did have a lot of voices around me telling me a journalism career was unstable and that I would never make any money so I waited to see if I became more interested in anything else, but I never did.
Who is someone who has become an inspiration to you after you met and interviewed them for The Broadsheet?
In addition to The Broadsheet, I do a lot of onstage interviews for Fortune’s conferences and events. Sometimes that content gets shared in the newsletter as well. Someone who I found very inspiring recently was the new California Senator Laphonza Butler. I interviewed Sen. Butler for Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in October, six days after she was appointed to the job. It was inspirational to hear from her about how she decided to accept the role. At that time of the interview, she was still deciding whether she would run for a seat in the 2024 election. [She has since decided not to.]
We had initially connected for The Broadsheet when she was the President of EMILYs List. It was inspirational to see how she was still the same person from when I first met her, despite taking a new job and having her life change so dramatically. She was still a thoughtful, kind, and grounded person, even as she became a very notable US senator.
How has interviewing women and covering issues so topical to them influenced how you view your own career and life?
We speak to a lot of women CEOs for The Broadsheet. [Being CEO of a business] is a very specific lifestyle. My career path, as of now, is more as a writer and an independent contributor in media versus pursuing that kind of executive leadership role. [Interviewing these women] can show you what you want and what you don’t want, and you can learn a lot from people who are very different from you.
How has what you cover and how you cover it evolved over your career?
My interests have definitely evolved. When I started at Fortune, I mostly covered tech so it was a process to understand how to cover non-tech companies. I had to learn a lot about other types of businesses, like legacy businesses that have been around forever and are now rapidly evolving to keep up with younger, technology companies. Learning where to find the interesting stories within these companies took a bit of time.
On the side of covering women specifically, statistics are great and a lot of pre-existing coverage of these issues is about numbers, like the percentage of venture capital investments going to women each year or the percentage of women who have board seats in the Fortune 500. Finding more human stories that bring to life those stats is something I have tried to do more of over time.
What has writing The Broadsheet meant for your career?
The Broadsheet has been a fantastic product to work on at Fortune and to now author. It is such a great platform and so it has definitely been impactful for my career personally. Since it comes out five days a week, I have the opportunity to do shorter pieces that may not necessarily be worth a full story outside of the newsletter, but [doing those] is a great way to talk to people in different industries. It’s a great way to stay connected with readers and sources.
How do you go about building an authentic, personal brand?
This is something that has evolved over the past few years. When I first started in journalism, it was all about Twitter. That’s where everyone was urged to build a following and develop a voice. There wasn’t so much attention on LinkedIn as a place where conversations were happening. That’s all really changed in the past couple of years.
It took me a bit to get comfortable with [sharing content so publicly]. Especially if you have a personal account and you’re using that same account for work, it can feel daunting to pivot and start engaging in more self-promotion. Getting over that hump and getting used to it, as well as doing work that you are passionate about and proud to share makes the process of building a personal brand more authentic and comfortable.
Can you tell me about a phrase or idea — maybe from a book, a song, a life motto — that you repeat to yourself often?
Some advice I got as I was starting out in journalism was that “everyone’s an editor.” So no matter where feedback is coming from, it’s worth considering —even if at first you disagree with it.
Where do you go from here?
There are definitely a lot of things I would love to do in my career. Working on unique stories is important to me. I lucked out that this is the work I ended up doing at Fortune.
Thanks for reading! Subscribe to The Broadsheet here. Read more of Emma’s writing for Fortune here. Follow her on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Read her Substack:
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