Good journalism is all about playing your strengths, New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee told a group of 22 students and faculty in Fisk Hall Monday.

“The idea is to know how to work who you are,” she said at the event, which was sponsored by the Center for the Writing Arts.

Lee attended Harvard University as an applied mathematics major and was hired at age 24 to write for the New York Times, where she covers consumer technology issues.

She divided the speech into 10 main points, ranging from studying a foreign language to learning how to bake brownies. She also offered advice on reporting on unfamiliar topics.

“Almost all of journalism is asking the right questions and then answering them,” she said. “You only start getting interesting answers when you ask interesting questions.”

Lee emphasized the far-reaching effects one story can have. She told the audience of another New York Times reporter who wrote a story about African nurses leaving Africa for better jobs in England and other parts of Europe. After the story was picked up by more reporters, including those in Europe, it shamed England into giving millions of dollars worth of grants to African nations, she said.

Although reporters might be limited to one subject, she advised them to have a passion for other topics and report on those, even if it is out of the realm of their job description. For example, although Lee is a consumer technology reporter, she said she spent more than a year researching and writing a story about child pornography to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves.

“You never regret following your passions; you only regret that you did not follow them,” she said.

It’s also important to draw on outside interests when writing, she said.

“She was saying that as a journalist it is important to get out of that world and read a book or poetry or something and draw on their styles, and I think that’s something we don’t hear enough,” said Suevon Lee, a Medill graduate student.

“I felt that a lot of things that she said I could relate to because she is such a young reporter,” Suevon Lee said. “She knew how to convey her views as a journalist in intuitive and insightful ways.”

Reach Sameera Kumar at [email protected].