Claire Lehmann: belief

Transcript context

…If I think of the Claire Lehmann production function, so to speak—you were not obviously trained to do what you do—but which of your own talents did you invest in to get in a position to be able to run, start, finance, do everything with Quillette, do the editing? Building up social capital is a big part of it. I have developed friendships with people, sort of loose affiliations with people over the years, being able to draw on those affiliations when a certain news story come up. For example, when the James Damore controversy broke, I was able to draw on some friendships that I had built up over the years, and so we were able to publish a piece straightaway on that topic. Things that I’ve had to invest in is . . . I now outsource a lot of the editing work to professional editors. You have to be aware of the limits of your own competence. My competence stops at proofreading. I’m a hopeless proofreader. [laughs] Leadership and managing is somewhat common sense. You either have it or you don’t, I think, but you can fine-tune certain techniques, and articulate your vision more clearly, and that kind of thing. What is the most significant constraint for making Quillette bigger and better? Of course, you might wish for more money, but if you had, in some way, more resources, how would you invest them? Is it that you want bigger staffs, more editors? What’s your wish list? What’s number one?…

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