An Interview: Chris Taylor, Cutting Room Floor

This week, I sat down with Chris Taylor, an award-winning personal finance columnist published in Reuters, WSJ, Kiplinger’s and Fortune, and author of the Cutting Room Floor newsletter.

• Did you always want to be a journalist?

  • I think I always wanted to be a writer of some sort, because that’s where my talent lies. Writers only have so many career paths, and it’s almost impossible to make a career as a fiction writer or a poet or something, so practicality pushed me towards journalism. Plus, most Americans wouldn’t know this, but my mom is a prominent journalist back in Canada, so that career was modeled for me from a pretty young age. I came down to the States to see if I could live or die on my own merits, instead of being known as somebody’s son.

• What was the turning point or experience that made you take the path of journalism?

  • I got my Master’s in Journalism at a university in Canada called Carleton, and they had a pretty good program for setting students up with internships. So, during the school year I did a couple of weeks as a reporter for a newspaper called the Ottawa Citizen, and then after graduation, I did a whole summer at the Montreal Gazette. The young journalist’s experience these days is a little different, but back in the day, seeing your name in print on the front page of a newspaper was the pinnacle of life. That’s when I started to think, hey, maybe this could actually work.

• You've been a journalist for nearly three decades, writing for some of the most prestigious publications, including Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, Kiplinger, Fortune, and Dow Jones. With thousands of articles published, what are some of the stories you're most proud of and why?

  • It's impossible to choose a favorite child of course. But this year I’ve had some fun ones: I did an oral history of Nortel, which many people wouldn’t remember, but at one point was one of the biggest, hottest companies in the world. That had an Ozymandias vibe, of how quickly things can change. I also did one for Kiplinger’s for people who are retiring at this insane moment in world history, and how they can navigate it – that’s the kind of story that can change people’s financial lives for the better. I’ve also been having fun doing personal essays for PBS’ Next Avenue – writing about dropping my kid at college for the first time, or running the Boston Marathon at 50. Being raw like that feels vulnerable and different.

• You’ve operated your own writing business for over two decades, getting published in the Financial Times, Fortune, CNBC.com, Money, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Globe & Mail, and more. What are some of the publications you’re currently working with and the types of stories you’re writing?

  • Recently I’ve been working with outlets like Kiplinger’s, AARP, and the Wall Street Journal’s Buy Side, and have a couple of ongoing columns as well: A new one for CardRates.com, on the credit world, and one on personal finance for the fintech Current, which has started producing its own editorial. Unfortunately, Reuters, where I was a personal finance guy for 15 years, dropped the hammer on using freelancers – so instead of one main client, now I’m dealing with six or seven at any given time. I think of it as a beautiful chaos – every week is totally different.

• As a freelancer, can brands hire you for writing? If so, what types of writing do you offer?

  • Yes, I think almost all freelancers these days handle a combination of some consumer-facing stuff, and some corporate work. So, on the brand side that often amounts to internal reports, white papers, articles, and so on. A lot of brands have their own newsrooms these days, often helmed by ex-journalists, run either by themselves or in partnership with third-party content shops.

• You’re an award-winning personal finance columnist, having won prizes from the National Press Club, the Deadline Club, and the National Association of Real Estate Editors. What’s driving your coverage, and how has that changed over your decades-long experience?

  • I think over time you naturally gravitate to what you’re really good at. So, personally I think I’m good at making complex financial stuff understandable and accessible to a broader audience. I’m good at getting people to talk to me and open up, even if they’re big and famous. I’m also good at getting to the emotional heart of money stories, figuring out why people do what they do. Money is such an emotional subject, maybe the most emotional of all. So that drives a lot of my coverage, not just talking about numbers but the underlying psychological forces that are actually running the show.

• How, in your opinion, has the role of journalism changed over the past few years?

  • The role has always been to report the truth of the world that’s in front of us, but the whole ecosystem has become unrecognizable. When I was coming up you got an internship at a newspaper or magazine, then hopefully a job at that publication, and then work there for decades. Now that career model barely even exists. On the plus side there are all sorts of interesting possibilities, if you’re creative and entrepreneurial. Rather than everything going through a few traditional funnels, there are thousands of them, which has made everything so wild and new and unpredictable.

• What are some trends in journalism you're seeing, and which are here to stay?

  • I think the advent of journalists as personalities, with their own audiences that go with them, is pretty interesting. So, you’re not just a faceless byline in a newspaper anymore – you’re someone with a newsletter, and a podcast, and various social media platforms, and who goes to conferences or appears on panels. Readers know and trust you specifically, beyond just the particular publication. AI can do a lot of interesting things, but it can’t do that, so we I think have to lean into that and see where it takes us.

• As a journalist, do you consider yourself a content creator?

  • Absolutely. I should do even more of that, but I’m learning. My main area of focus is LinkedIn, so I put the work in daily to develop that audience of over 30,000 people. That involves a weekly newsletter, video clips, sharing all my published work, connecting with people on a personal level. As they say, your network is your net worth, so if I’m putting out content that’s helpful to them on a daily basis, then I’ll never go hungry.

• What do the best PR pitches you get include?

  • I don’t think people understand the ratio of comms people to journalists these days. It’s bonkers. So it’s just the nature of the beast that almost all of them are not going to pan out. That said, the ones that are personalized are going to get more attention, instead of ones that are obviously just from a mass mailing list. Ones that put some thought into what I cover or the outlets I work for, or are from people I know personally, who are offering something exclusive to make it sing. Remember that as a freelancer, I have to pitch on my end, too.

• What's the best way to pitch you a story?

  • E-mail is best, and since I spend so much time on LinkedIn, I do answer my DMs there. Don’t call unless we’ve agreed on that, because that’s a little too old-school, and these days comes across as a little aggressive. Even though the odds are against any given pitch, you never know what a reporter’s situation is – maybe an editor just put out a call for pitches and they’re in desperate need of ideas. So if it’s a good pitch, then shoot your shot. If it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, then maybe it planted seeds of an idea or relationship that might lead to something in future.

• Where can people sign up to receive your newsletter, Cutting Room floor’

  • People can sign up on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/7098032514715246592/. With newsletters you get to show more personality, have more fun, speak more directly to readers. People need community these days, and it feels like a community.