Ask a Specialist: Christina Amoroso, Editorial Director of Bustle & Elite Daily

Best practices, advice, and some writing dos and don'ts from a pro. This week, a lifestyle editor who says "why now" still rules — as do two OG masters of style. Plus, the best soft serve around!

May 28, 2025

Word Doc’s Ask a Specialist series inquires with the professional, ‘out-of-network’ minds of top-notch editors working in legacy and new media today. Some of these will include pros I’ve worked with on staff as a colleague, and others as a freelance writer, meaning they assigned, polished, and published my work. They’ll each answer the same five questions.

My connection to Christina stems back to my days as a Postie. (That’d be the New York Post for the uninitiated.) During my nearly seven-year tenure in the mid-aughts as Deputy Sunday Features Editor, she and I worked together in a few capacities before she stepped into my position once I left to go freelance abroad.

Christina started at The Post as a features reporter but also worked on the paper’s digital strategy, along with the lifestyle or Sunday “Pulse” pages that I edited.

Mostly, I remember her always wearing heels! She just presented herself in a mature manner that seemed far beyond her years (and the very casual class of the then-9th-floor features team).

She’s an organized, ambitious, and no-B.S. editor whom I could always rely on to get the job done efficiently and honorably. (To wit: She asked to give this intro a “light dusting” herself, to which I replied, “Sure, but I’m quoting you on that,” to which she replied that it’s a “Graydon-ism” she can’t take credit for. Aren’t editors the cutest?!)

Christina is also a real go-getter, which explains why she quickly rose the ranks not just at The Post, but then as an executive editor at Cosmopolitan, followed by Bustle, where she’s served as one of the site’s editorial and strategic leads since 2019.

Finally, Christina and I also have a fun personal connection: Marvel. What’s Marvel, you ask? Only the best soft serve ice cream around that also happens to be located between the two Long Island towns where we grew up. Each year, we say we’re going to meet there for a cone…and don’t. Will 2025 be the year, Christina?!

What’s your best piece of writing advice?

Read everything and tailor your pitches! It's going to help shape your writing and your voice, and you'll find sources of inspiration in places you probably didn't expect.

What’s a common mistake writers make over and over, and a solution to fix or avoid it?

As a journalist with a newspaper background, I'm always thinking about the timeliness of a story. If someone were to come to Bustle today and see an article on our homepage, why are they reading that story today? I receive a lot of personal essay pitches that, in theory, have the potential to be interesting, but they often lack that pivotal "why now"? I also think about a story's value to the particular audience you’re speaking to. How can you make your experience, as specific as it may be, more broadly relatable to a wider audience so that they walk away with a useful and timely takeaway? Without that kernel, essays run the risk of reading like diary entries, feeling relevant to an audience of one.

What (or who) is your favorite writing resource?

Strunk and White [The Elements of Style]. It's the basic mechanics of reporting and writing!

Finish this sentence: “A good writer___”

Knows their audience. You need to know who you're writing for. Who are you targeting? Are you writing for a group of theater nerds? Knowing who [your demographics] are, and putting yourself in their shoes to meet them where they're at, will help your story connect and truly stay with readers long after they walk away from your piece.

Pick your poison: Is it “lede” or “lead,” “nutgraf” or “nutgraph,” “head” or “hed,” “dek” or “subhead,” and please share a favorite one you’ve edited or has run in your publication recently.

Lede, nutgraf, hed, and dek.

I thought this reported essay about how drinking can wreak havoc on women of, ahem, a certain age, had a compelling first-person anecdotal lede:

On one of the coldest nights in the endless month of February, my husband and I decided to take our two young sons — both freshly shorn at the barbershop and looking unusually presentable — out to our favorite local burger joint. Upon arrival, our collective mood was jolly enough that ordering myself a midweek Manhattan seemed like a fun, celebratory gesture; a drink to draw out the glow of a nice afternoon, not to anaesthetize after a rough one. I savored the amber liquid, with its single golf ball of ice and extra toothpick of Luxardos — just the way I like it. But soon after its welcome warmth began to kick in, I started to feel something else, too — a rising tide of equal-opportunity, free-range irritability. Out of nowhere, I was bothered: by the bleak and frigid landscape outside the windows, the monotony of our small-town life, the limpness of the fries. And, sweet Jesus, the children: How hard is it, really, to get through an entire meal without toppling a water glass? I knew I was spiraling but felt powerless to stop it. What was I even doing here, anyway? How had my life come to this?
Afterward, stalking up the icy sidewalk to our car a good 20 feet ahead of the rest of my family — lest anyone miss the fact that I was not happy — I went back over the evening, piece by piece. There had been no marital infractions at dinner. The kids were mostly cute, the service just fine. The internal wrecking ball that had just careened through my evening felt hormonal in its nonsensical suddenness, but also alcohol-fueled in its heat. Was drinking at my age — for the record, 48 — making me a little bit… nuts?

It drew me into the piece because you can recognize yourself or people you know in it. It was a great springboard for an article that not only touched on the writer's own experience but also included lots of information and reporting and provided a useful and timely takeaway.