Quartz founding editor Kevin Delaney writes Tuesday about Xana Antunes, executive editor of the website who died Monday from cancer at the age of 55.
Delaney writes, “Gwynn Guilford, a senior reporter at Quartz, says Xana encouraged her ‘to take risks that force me to grow.’ Gwynn tells a story of how she was researching declines in life expectancy and stumbled upon troubling data for central Appalachia. She pulled Xana into a conference room, and before Gwynn finished explaining, Xana cracked open her laptop. ‘How about you head there on Sunday, the 7th?’ she asked, scrolling through flights to West Virginia. It was late on Thursday, the 4th. Gwynn says what seemed to be impulsiveness paid off: the reporting she did in West Virginia led to one of the most important pieces of her career.
“Xana’s directness and high standards are noteworthy. She had an amazing way of getting people to agree with her critique of their work. She might say, ‘This is pretty much crap, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, yes you’re right, it is pretty much crap,’ we had to respond—because she was usually right. Another classic Xana response, to a not-fully-cooked idea, was ‘I won’t tell you no right away.'”
Read more here.
