Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Price
Hi Jessica, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I loved magazines since I was a kid who used to run to the mailbox each month excited to read Sassy, Teen and YM magazines. Before I graduated high school I fell in love with following the news and current events. But, I didn’t know if i had the talent to be a journalist, so I went to college planning to be a lawyer.
My sophomore year, while I was a cocktail waitress in a music bar, a local newspaper was trying to write a story about a local gone national band who regularly played at the bar but couldn’t get the interview. The band agreed to give me the interview and I wrote the story for the local newspaper, that landed on the cover of the entertainment section. The newspaper, The Daily Tribune in Phoenix, subsequently gave me a job doing a column writing about music and nightlife. When I graduated The Arizona Republic gave me a job as a columnist and feature writer as they were attempting to bring a younger audience to the newspaper. Although grateful for the opportunity, I spend portions of my day pitching glossy magazines in NYC – until an editor at Maxim, the top-selling magazine at the time, told me if I was serious about freelancing to move to NYC. So, I did.
After years of freelancing (and bartending) in NYC, I went staff at Star Magazine to work for Bonnie Fuller, the second ever editor of Cosmo and longtime Us Weekly EIC who took the reigns at Star to turn it from a tabloid to a mainstream magazine – with middling success. After a year I left and was a launch editor of OK! Magazine’s US edition, where I’d remain for 5+ years, also penning a daily blog for the magazine called Simplyjen.
Shortly afer OK! launched I met Sir Richard Branson, who was just launching Virgin America. Pitching him an idea led to a consulting gig with Virgin America, then Virgin Australia and Virgin Produced. Tiring of keeping up with the Kardashians in an ever-gossipy media landscape, and enjoying the creative marketing I was doing with the Virgin brands, I quit my job to figure out what was next and went to breakfasts, lunches and cocktails fielding pitches and taking projects that I found interesting, saw the vision and thought I could help see it realized. It’s been more than a dozen years and I’m still taking projects I find interesting that I think can help succeed, looking primarily to work with good people on products, services or experiences that do good, whether that’s making people happy or for the bigger picture.
I’m also Editor-in-Chief of Austin Lifestyle Magazine, achieving a longtime dream of being an editor at a local glossy magazines where I can highlight people, places and events in the place I live and love. I’m grateful the success of my consulting company Birn Communications allows me to still afford to be a local journalist.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I consider myself luckier than many, but I also have a work ethic stronger than most. More than one person in a position of power has called me among the most tenacious they’ve ever met.
Some struggles have included…
-Bartending to supplement writing for the first few years of my career
-Taking a risk and leaving a stable job as an editor of a big magazine, and turning down a big job with a competitor to figure out what I was being called to do next – and then working across marketing, PR, social media and influencer marketing, in addition to continuing freelance writing. I’m very grateful I made the transition to other things when it was my choice as it’s been heartbreaking to watch that choice made for many of my peers as magazines began to fold like dominos.
-Deciding whether to scale my consulting company or not…I ultimately decided it wasn’t the right decision for me.
-Currently, putting out a magazine I’m proud of each month on a shoestring budget with no staff.
-Working each day to maintain a work/life balance running a marketing/PR consulting company & putting out a magazine each month on my own.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a journalist who began my career writing for newspapers and was a columnist at 21-years-old. I freelanced for glossy magazines from Maxim to Glamour, wrote across all the celebrity weeklies and was a launch editor at OK! Magazine, where I wrote a daily blog called “Simplyjen: An ordinary girl with an extraordinary life.” I’m currently the Editor-in-Chief of Austin Lifestyle.
I’ve had my marketing/PR consulting company Birn Communications since 2012. I’ve been fortunate to work with some amazing companies and brands including Virgin America, Virgin Australia, JSX, GOODLES, Harmless Harvest, Plum Organics, Dagne Dover, HOP WTR, Hello Products and so many more…
I think being both a journalist and a publicist helps inform me how to do each job better. I also think out of the box and am scrappy, always finding ways to do more with less without compromising on quality or integrity.
My first book, a fiction novel called ‘Chasing Sunsets Down I-80’ will be out early 2025
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
I’ve had many interns, both at OK! and Birn Communications and I tell them…
-If you want to be a journalist, great! But, diversify and gain experience doing other things, be that PR, content writing, social media marketing…The future of journalism is uncertain and well-paying jobs are hard to come by, but you’ll have stability if you’re open to exploring other paths that benefit from a similar skill set.
-Always strive for work/life balance
-Journalism and PR careers are a lifestyle, not a 9 to 5 job. If you want to clock out every day at 5pm and have weekends off, these probably aren’t the careers for you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://jenbirn.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simplyjen22/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenbirn
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbirn/
- Twitter: https://x.com/Simplyjen
