How to talk to the media with Dr. Jessi Gold
My interview guest this week is Dr. Jessi Gold, MD. Dr. Gold is a psychiatrist, Assistant Professor, and Director of Wellness, Engagement, and Outreach at Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine, specializing in college mental health, medical education, and physician wellness.
She is also a regular contributor to the national media. Her writing has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, SELF, and InStyle.
I spoke to Dr. Gold about how she gets interviews, what she talks about, and what advice she has for therapists who are interested in contributing to the media. Enjoy!
How did you get started as a media contributor?
I’ve always cared about advocacy on a bigger scale. When I was in medical school, I started blogging about my experience from my perspective as a med student. People gave me really good feedback and I kept writing ever since in bigger venues.
Through writing as a jumping off point, I was able to get more connected with other forms of media. There are a lot of journalists and reporters on Twitter, which is how most people find me now.
What’s one thing you’ve learned?
Putting yourself out there saying “I can do this” requires some degree of being okay with people saying no. Journalists in particular are bad about making you feel appreciated. Don’t take it personally. You get used to how they communicate.
How do you balance the media with your clinical work?
I really like getting to do both because it uses different skills and keeps me interested. Plus, I believe strongly that clinical work is critical to informing media work and my patients and their stories make me a better advocate.
The news happens when the news happens, so you’re on their time frame. Sometimes I get emails asking me to do something for the news that day and I will decide if it is possible to shift my schedule at all to accommodate it.
Sometimes I can’t, and that is okay, but I often remind my editors and other journalists that I have another job and can’t drop everything to give a quote.
What do you talk about?
Mental health is a very big field. It’s important to have a thing within it. I can answer general questions about stress, sure, but the main things people come to me about are college student mental health, burnout, and healthcare worker mental health.
I’m always looking for mental health professionals with specific expertise to send reporters and journalists to, especially people whose voices aren’t heard as much.
Do you get paid for it?
People think we make more money and get paid more often than we do. Most places don’t pay for op-eds. The pay for articles is anywhere from $250 to $500 per piece, which is much lower than my hourly rate. I don’t get paid at all for media interviews or appearances.
With that said, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get my book deal without doing all the free stuff. So it’s a trade-off. You have to find the value for you, outside of money, if it is not there or worth the time, say no!
Any final thoughts?
We need more therapists in the media. Our clients come to us with what they read and see online. I would rather someone come to me with an article I wrote than a TikTok that makes no sense.
We need to be in these spaces because there’s so much misinformation. We need to advocate for our own field and make asking for help less scary. Talking and writing is literally our job, so contributing to the media is not that big of a leap. Plus, there is mental health all over the news and popular culture, so we have a lot to talk about!
But, it is really important to know it’s not going to happen overnight. I’ve been doing this for years and I still get rejected all the time.
Thank you Dr. Gold for sharing with us. Follow her on Twitter and on Instagram. Learn more about her work on her website.