Her Story
About Brittany
Brittany Kriegstein is a reporter for WMIC in Gothamist in New York City, specializing in crime reporting. She has worked in her current role for three and a half years, having started in April 2023. Prior to that, she was a reporter at the New York Daily News, where she covered breaking news around New York City and all five boroughs, often at multiple crime scenes per day, including throughout the pandemic. Brittany has been working in journalism since 2019, when she graduated from Columbia Journalism School and began her first job at the New York Daily News. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She serves as vice president of the New York Press Club, an organization that advocates for journalists' rights across New York. Brittany attributes her success to her genuine way of connecting with people from different backgrounds, her ability to stay professional while showing care, her skill at finding sources on social media, and her outgoing and open-minded nature. She values integrity, empathy, and ethics highly in her work. Among her notable achievements, she spearheaded a project creating a map of gun violence in New York City over five years, highlighting hotspots and helping inform interventions while showing that most of the city remains safe.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Brittany
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think I have a genuine way of connecting with people that makes them feel comfortable talking to me, even if we come from vastly different backgrounds. And I think as I've gone further in my career, I have found a way to stay professional while still making people understand that I do care about what they're telling me. I'm also just very good at finding people on social media, and finding people who maybe don't want to be found. I think I'm just an outgoing, open-minded person, and I do care really deeply about the people that I report on, and I think they feel that.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The importance of being a good, approachable colleague. When I'm out in the field doing reporting at big crime scenes, there are a lot of other journalists from other outlets. Journalism is a pretty small profession, and it really pays to be friendly and helpful, even if we're from competing organizations, because you never know when in the future you may be working with those people. I've tried to be as helpful as I can be to folks, and receptive, and even giving other people advice, because that's how I've gotten my next jobs. People have always recommended me, even my current role. Somebody told the editors that I would be a good fit.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would tell her to meet with anybody who she thinks is doing a good job in this career, meet for coffee, go to all of the events where you can meet people in person as possible, because it is still such a face-to-face industry, and people that you meet can really quickly become your colleagues. It's really important to have grit. The best reporters have a lot of grit. You do face a lot of challenges, and if you persevere and keep trying to get the story, talk to one more person, call 3 more people, you might really go further than those who just say, okay, I'll just kind of give this story a once-over and call it a day. Always go a little bit further than you think you need to, and always try to connect with people in person who you admire.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Two big things. One is a lot of mistrust in journalists, which makes it harder for us to do our work when people say they don't want to talk to us, or it's just fake news. The other big challenge has always been in journalism: as hard as you work as an individual, your job and your success is reliant on people participating and cooperating with you. The rise of platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Substack is a huge opportunity if you are a real journalist with real stories and good at communicating them, you can leverage those platforms to get so much more engagement. I created a reporter TikTok and already have 17,000 followers, and it's a great way to inform people about what's happening locally.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity is huge in this job, we spend a lot of time reporting on our own. No one's looking over my shoulder to check what I'm doing, so I really hold myself to very high ethical standards and a lot of honesty. The other one is definitely empathy. The best reporters have found a way to connect with their subjects without breaking down and cry with people, but if you are able to make them feel like you understand them, then they'll trust you, and they'll want you to tell their story. Definitely having an open mind. Ethics and integrity, to me, are really the most important.
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