Fast, Snappy and Compelling: Applying News Writing Principles to Your Writing

Deepa Lakshmin is a writer and editor based in New York City who's covered everything from travel to entertainment to politics. She's currently the director of social media at Lonely Planet, leading the audience development strategy and programming content for an audience of 13 million travelers who follow @lonelyplanet across channels. She was previously the managing editor of Meta (formerly Facebook) and Instagram's B2B content marketing blogs. As a journalist, she’s written for National Geographic, MTV News, Vox, Inverse, and NYLON—plus managed both organic and paid social for The Daily Beast, Atlas Obscura, and Tribeca Film Festival, among others. Through a variety of freelance and in-house roles over the past decade, she’s brought her love of words to many industries—ad agencies! marketing campaigns! tech giants!—but newsrooms always feel like home. Follow her work (and see photos of her cat) on Instagram and Twitter (or, uh, X) at @deepa.