Some personal news … (Yes, this is one of those journalism job posts)

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I considered being a tease about this, but I’m just going to get to the point: I’m leaving my position as a senior editor at Xtra Magazine. My last day will be Sept. 30. 

Let’s talk about it!

I’ve never quit a job before. I mean, obviously I’ve changed jobs over the past 17 years that I’ve been exchanging my labour for money. If I had never left a job, I’d still be the hardest working hostess at East Side Mario’s Red Deer for almost two decades’ running. 

Until now, every time I’ve left a job it’s been due to a contract naturally ending, a move to another city for school, or forces beyond my control. I left my high school job at East Side Mario’s to move to the big city (Calgary) for university. There, I started working at a student newspaper, where positional contracts started and ended with the turning of the school calendar. During one summer in undergrad I worked as a patio server at the lounge at the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Calgary, a position that expired in September when the weather turned cold and the patio closed. After graduating I spent the summer of 2017 working for Calgary’s community radio station, CJSW, on a short-term summer contract, and then moved to Vancouver for grad school that September. I held several jobs throughout grad school. My first year I worked on a contract with the University of British Columbia’s campus radio station, again a role with an “end of school year” expiration. I also worked as a teaching assistant for a grad-level journalism course, a position that ended with the semester. 

To support myself (grad school and living in Vancouver is expensive!) during this time I started working a few nights a week at a local comedy club (literally called Yuk Yuk’s) as a bartender and server. I continued there even after I graduated with my Master of Journalism degree and struck out into the world of professional journalism.

I was fortunate to get hired right out of school as an associate editor for HuffPost Canada, initially on a medical leave contract, but was extended several times. For a while, I optimistically wondered if that would be where I lived out the duration of my journalism career. It was 2019, the digital journalism of the Vice and Buzzfeed era was still relatively booming, and I remember getting to visit the HuffPost Canada offices in Toronto full of exposed bricks and fridges with bottomless Diet Coke. For a while, I thrived in a life of writing about Justin Trudeau and Meghan Markle during the day, and serving double rum and cokes to comedy fans at night. 

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. And suddenly, I no longer worked at Yuk Yuk’s anymore, because Yuk Yuk’s didn’t exist anymore. The policies around social gathering proved to be too much for the already tenuous business model of a live comedy club, and my coworkers and I were all laid off. The building where Yuk Yuk’s was on Cambie St. in Vancouver is now a School of Rock. I never even got the chance to go back and clean out my cubby—RIP to my practical black sneakers. 

So, I spent those early pandemic months with just one job. About nine months later, news broke that BuzzFeed was purchasing HuffPost, and it was met with cautious excitement amongst our team—our new Buzzfeed colleagues even welcomed us in with a Fiona The Hippo Cameo video. But a few months later, in a company-wide Zoom meeting that boasted a dreadfully tone-deaf password of “spring is here,” Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced the closure of multiple HuffPost outlets around the world, including HuffPost Canada.

Myself and everyone I worked with were suddenly, and dramatically, laid off—as is too common these days in digital media. We were, of course, met with a groundswell of sympathy from the industry. Beer fund money was distributed, and accusations of union-busting were slung at Peretti and his C-suite colleagues, seeing as we had just voted to unionize mere weeks before the layoffs. 

After a month of uncertainty, I was fortunate to land on my feet relatively quickly, when Rachel Geise and Gordon Bowness reached out from Xtra about bringing me on as a staff writer—initially as a contract, with the hope for a permanent role down the line. I was to write quick reactive news and culture stories about LGBTQ2S+ topics—and it felt like a dream job. I got to be professionally queer, and come into my transness in a supportive workplace where I was surrounded by community. 

That was five and a half years ago. Since then I did become a permanent staff member at Xtra—first an associate culture editor, then senior editor with three different titles over the years. I interviewed some of my heroes, including Elliot Page and Mae Martin (the latter at least three times over the years). I made a podcast about queer reality TV. I hosted red carpet coverage of a fundraising gala. I covered multiple federal elections. I wrote hundreds of stories. I learned how to produce shortform videos and grew a TikTok account from the ground up to nearly 15,000 followers. I produced a series about queer tattoos, and another debunking misinformation around trans youth. I was nominated for a Digital Publishing Award and a GLAAD Media Award. I responded to horrific tragedies. And I’m so proud of everything I’ve been able to do, and how much I’ve grown and changed over the years alongside such a wonderful team of people. 

So … why am I leaving all of that? Full-time journalism jobs are an increasingly rare breed these days, particularly in newsrooms where you get to be openly queer and trans and work alongside like-minded people. I had hit the jackpot, seemingly. People would kill to be where I am and get to do what I do. But I’ve done a lot of thinking about my career and my life and where I want to go next. And while I love Xtra and always will, for a confluence of reasons, it’s the right time for me to move on. 

I have two more major projects with Xtra that are currently wrapping up and will release in the coming months. First, "Comics Against Censorship", a series of five original comics from five different artists about LGBTQ2S+ censorship I put together alongside guest editor Maia Kobabe is set to publish during Banned Books Week in early October. And I have a large collaborative feature about the systems and structures that make trans joy possible in Canada, coming in print and digital in both The Walrus and Xtra later this year. It’s one of the longest things I’ve ever written, and one that I’m most proud of. 

A few new opportunities have come my way that I am so excited about. And I’m excited to have a bit more freedom to freelance for a variety of other publications in and around the next full-time work I take on (some wheels are in motion and I’ll have more to say about that in the coming weeks!) Along with that, I am looking forward to reevaluating my relationship to my work and my identity. I’ve obviously thought a lot over the years about the state of queer and trans journalism in Canada. I’m at a place in my career where I feel like I’ve got a lot to give to different audiences.

To be clear, I don’t think I’ve had my last byline at Xtra. I have so much respect for Tara-Michelle and the team there after working with so many of them for years. You’ll still find me yelling about Danielle Smith or the failures of the mainstream media to adequately cover trans stories in the digital pages of Xtra at some point or another. But I am looking forward to doing it as a freelancer. It makes sense for me to strike out and find some new challenges elsewhere, while clearing the space for someone new to come in—like I did almost six years ago—and get to experience the years of evolution and growth that I had. I’m genuinely so excited to see what comes next for Xtra, and who gets to come in and benefit from this vital and affirming space for LGBTQ2S+ journalism.

I’m also excited to have the freedom to use this newsletter more, and build up a bit more autonomy in some of the content I create. So, subscribe if you aren’t already and get more Ranch Baby in your inbox! I’ve got so many ideas for stuff I want to roll out in the coming weeks, and I’m genuinely so excited to have the freedom and flexibility to build this out. Expect culture essays, news, personal reflections and recommendations galore.

That's also to say, if you want to work together on something cool—I am now very much available for writing, radio, TV, graphic design, and consulting work. I've gotten more involved in advisory and consulting stuff over the past few years, and would love to do more of it. This move also might finally push me to get the book project I’ve been talking about for years off the ground. 

Quitting your job is very scary, particularly in an industry like this where there’s no promise of a net to catch you. Any big move like this is a bit of a leap of faith. But I’m betting on myself, and betting on the next step being the right thing for me in where I want to go. All the love to Xtra and everything and everyone that it’s brought into my life. More to come soon!

PS: If you are a professional contact and currently communicate with me via my Xtra email, please reach out about getting my new contact! I'm going to do my best to port everything over, but I don't want anyone to fall through the cracks! My DMs are always open if anyone wants to yap about all of this!