In this candid, in-depth interview, journalist Pete Croatto discusses his career, and the journalism industry in general. Croatto currently resides in Ithica, New York, where he consistently works on multiple stories every day.

Croatto has written in a wide variety of fields and for wide variety of publications. His first experience in the world of freelance was writing for Filmcritic.com, starting in 2000. From 2002 to 2007, he was one of the website’s senior editors.  His writing, about everything from music to sports, has appeared in publications including Grantland, The New York Times, Rollingstone.com, The A.V. Club, Creative Screenwriting, ICON, The Weekender, Sports Ilustrated, The Christian Science Monitor, Deadspin, Publishers Weekly, and New Jersey Monthly.

He also ran his own blog from 2008 to 2014.

In this nearly hour-long phone interview, Croatto emphasized that one of the most important skills for modern journalists is the flexibility and willingness to accept and adapt to a constantly changing media environment. As a freelancer, he sometimes finds this challenging, but savors the freedom it gives him: he can write about the people and things that truly interest him, which lets him immerse himself in his stories and write about things he enjoys, in hopes that his audience will enjoy them, too.

Due to an unavoidable technical issue, the recording was briefly interrupted early in the interview. For this reason, the recording is presented here in two segments. There are a few words missing between the two segment. During the missing part, Croatto was listing the publications in which he has had work published. These were previously listed in this written synopsis, so the interview is basically presented in its entirety.