Meet the residents: Jessica Bateman
In each edition of our newsletter, we introduce a person or organisation that works in the Publix building. This time: freelance investigative journalist Jessica Bateman, recipient of the European Press Prize 2025.
What is the core of your work?
I work on longform journalism projects for titles including the BBC, the Guardian, The Washington Post and Politico, with a particular focus on gender, faith and extremism. I also take on editing, research and teaching projects.
What is the goal of your endeavours?
I love longform storytelling because you can explore both ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ narratives. I like stories that are deeply personal but also hold wider global significance. The core of my writing always centres around compelling characters and I try to take readers deep inside their worlds, experiencing what they are thinking and feeling, and I borrow a lot of techniques from screenwriting. I then combine this with deep research on the wider historical and societal contexts of whatever issue I am writing about.
What was your biggest success of the past few months ?
I won the European Press Prize Distinguished Reporting Award last May, which has been such an incredible boost. I also published a 6000-word piece about German rearmament for Politico magazine.
What gives you a headache
Making money and doing prestigious work as a freelance journalist are sometimes two different things. You need to have two strands to your freelance journalism business if you want to do meaningful work while not driving yourself into poverty. Balancing the two is a constant effort.
Which publishing project has impressed you the most recently?
I loved Elizabeth Flock’s recent New Yorker piece on the immigrants trapped at the Poland-Belarus border. She humanised the topic so beautifully.
Who or what definitely deserves more attention?
I don’t even know where to start – there are so many people all over the world with stories that need to be told. Shrinking budgets and publications that are all fighting for an ever-shrinking audience means that a lot of media coverage can feel very same-y, and this worries me.
What is the best reading material on the current situation
Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein, Moneyland by Oliver Bullough, and Entshittification by Cory Doctorow.
What should you listen to or watch now? I rewatched all of Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me this winter. It’s a masterpiece that gets better with each watch – the storylines, the characters, the aesthetics, and the questions it raises about human nature and good versus evil.
photo credit: private
