Deez Interviews: Meet the award-winning litigation reporter helping lawyers get some damn maternity leave

Happy Friday, Deezers! As mentioned in the Deez Links season 2 kickoff, each Friday we’re bringing you a lil Q&A with one media professional. Since Deez Links is all about highlighting cool shit going on in the industry, we’ve found that there’s often no better source of insight & observations about this line of work than the people in it.

This week’s interview is with Celia Ampel, a Miami-based reporter who’s spent time covering all kinds of very specific beats — tech, business, education and most recently, the Floridian justice system — around the country, and is offering some wise thoughts on journalism & impact. Enjoy!

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The interviewee: Celia Ampel (follow her @CeliaAmpel)

The current job: Litigation reporter at American Lawyer Media

The hustle: I cover civil cases in state and federal courts across South Florida. So on any given day, I might be reporting on a multimillion-dollar verdict, looking into a trend like tobacco litigation funding or interviewing lawyers with fascinating cases (like the attorneys defending BuzzFeed in the "golden showers" dossier case!).

You’ve covered a wide range of industries and beats, in places as different as Miami, mid-Missouri and Minneapolis. How do you handle the learning curve for each job?

It's been a mix of reading, learning from colleagues and having sources explain things to me, which they're usually more than happy to do. When I was covering tech and startups, I actually asked for book recommendations from sources because there were so many unfamiliar but basic concepts that I needed to understand, like developing a "minimum viable product."

Covering courts has been easier, partially because our managing editor is such a treasure trove of information, but also because there are reams of documents in the public record to help you follow what's going on in each case. After two and a half years, I've learned enough to drop pretentious Latin terms into my everyday speech. ("Assuming, ARGUENDO, that Taylor Swift is a Republican, that still doesn't mean she voted for Trump....")

What’s it like reporting from all these different parts of the U.S.?

That's an interesting question! You would think working in South Florida would be drastically different from, say, Jeff City, Missouri, but when your beat focuses on a certain industry it's almost like you're covering a small town. (Our audience ostensibly comes to us for "market intelligence," but the clicks show what they really want is gossip about other lawyers they know.)

But obviously, Florida is its own animal, and all weird news either starts here or leads back here. Miami is so international that I always feel like I'm at the center of everything, and occasionally I even get to use my French minor in my reporting. And we don't seem to get the same types of comments that I remember from my internship in Oklahoma City. I loved it there, but no matter what you wrote about, there would always be a thread of responses that were just "Bob Stoops forever!!!!," "I blame Obama!!!!" or sometimes both.

You graduated with a journalism degree from the Missouri School of journalism. Would you recommend that route to youths wanting to go into media today?

My high school journalism adviser just asked me to speak to his class while I was home in Tucson hiding from Hurricane Irma, and I actually turned him down!

I wouldn't change my path if I could, because I'm thankful for the skills I learned and the fact that I still feel, to some degree, like I'm providing a valuable service. But preserving that feeling means I have to print out nice emails I get and pin them to my cubicle wall, and I have to avoid reading employee reviews of my company that call it a "bouncy house full of incontinent raccoons." You really have to learn to see an ounce of good as being worth however many metric tons of bad, and that's not something I'm willing to tell a bunch of 17-year-olds.

Tell us about a story that you're really proud of.

I got to write a story about a couple of attorneys who were trying to change the Florida rules of judicial administration to instruct judges to postpone a trial if a lawyer was taking parental leave.

That probably sounds dry, but what it came down to was this: Women were working hard on cases for years, and then they would take maternity leave. Even though postponing the trial until they came back wouldn't have significantly harmed the litigants in most cases, usually the mom-to-be would be kicked off the case and it would be handed to a man at her firm.

It was stunting careers, and in some cases, judges had actually screamed at female litigators in this situation. The proposed rule hadn't gotten much traction (I think it had failed in one Florida Bar committee, and it was about to go before another one). I talked to lawyers all over the country about this issue and their experiences going back to the '70s and '80s for my story. The rule ended up getting the backing of the full Florida Bar Board of Governors, and one of the lawyers who proposed it thanked me for that. That was a big moment of pride.

When it comes to journalism awards, most of us are only familiar with the Pulitzers. But you’ve won two awards at the regional/state level: a Green Eyeshade Award, and a Sunshine State Award. What does that mean to you, and do you think awards are important for this industry?

One of the kids from my Miami Herald intern class has already won a Pulitzer at age 28, so I can't even pretend I'm doing well within my own peer group. As Kanye once said, "Hold up. Born in '88? How old is that? Old enough [to win a Pulitzer for the Panama Papers investigation]."

But I think that's one of the reasons regional journalism awards ARE so important. Even SPJ probably thinks it's just stroking egos or inflating résumés when it sends out those awards, but it really can be the difference between giving up on journalism or sticking with it.

It has meant so much to me to be able to think, "All right, I'm doing something worthy. Someone in some faraway state read my work and thought it was good. Not good for a young person or good for a trade pub, but GOOD." And then I go back to being an "enemy of the people." ;)

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You can keep up with Ampel’s late work here! Otherwise, that’s it for us — have a great weekend! Also, sorry about the extra The Rock gifs yesterday...or am I?

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