Her Story
About Marlene
Marlene Star has spent her entire career in journalism, beginning as an intern at a trade publication covering institutional investors and advancing to editorial assistant upon graduation. With over 30 years of experience, she now serves as an editor and reporter who also manages a freelance team. Her daily responsibilities include writing and reporting her own stories, contacting sources, editing the work of others, guiding freelancers, and assigning stories and event coverage. She specializes in institutional investing, personal finance, and mergers and acquisitions, often from the investor's perspective, and has built her expertise progressively across these connected areas. Marlene holds a bachelor's degree and counts among her notable accomplishments serving as the first managing editor of Investment News and launching the Money & Markets section for newspapers across the US for the Associated Press. She covers U.S. news with some international collaboration in a global newsroom and advises aspiring journalists to develop specialties, build connections, and persist diligently amid industry challenges like the rise of AI.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Marlene
01What do you attribute your success to?
I think I attribute my success to becoming an expert in the fields that I was in. I started out covering institutional investing, and then I went on to cover personal finance... After that, I went on to write about mergers and acquisitions, often from the investor's perspective. So, everything was very connected, and I just got a deeper and deeper knowledge of the field I was in as I moved from place to place.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
If you are persistent and very diligent, you can still find your way in the field, but you really have to have a lot of connections. It's become more and more important in journalism to have a specialty, to develop an expertise in certain industries. You really have to be a go-getter and form your own personal connections.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The environment's not that attractive right now. So much of what's done in journalism today is taking shortcuts and relying on using AI. It used to be you could start out as an intern and learn through osmosis in an office environment surrounded by other experienced reporters, but that's not the case in most places these days. We're encouraged to use AI for research and even writing headlines, but you have to be careful because there is a lot of garbage information.
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