Alissa WilkinsonInterview
Staff reporter, film critic (Vox)
Adapted from Alissa Wilkinson's interview on Uses This, published 26 November 2019. The kit is drawn from their answers and each reason is an excerpt, lightly edited. Shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full interview ↗
Is this you? Claim this kit →Hardware
What that entails: A MacBook Pro from Vox (which is due for an upgrade!) and a charger wrapped around a Fuse Reel.
Often, an iPad mini with a Bluetooth keyboard, which I use mostly to watch screeners and sometimes to answer email or even draft a review if I'm in a tight space (I work a lot in bars, which can get crowded) or am not carrying my laptop for some reason.
My iPhone -- I'm still using the 8 -- and the Silk wallet case, which holds two work IDs, my driver's license, a debit card, a credit card, and my Metrocard.
I have a very powerful external Anker battery pack that can recharge my phone and other devices all week on one charge, and also comes in handy if I'm staying in a hotel or AirBnb that doesn't have a plug near the bed but I need to have my phone nearby for some reason.
I carry a Kindle Paperwhite most of the time, partly because I hate being stuck without a book and partly because I always buy both a paper and digital copy of the books I'm teaching from.
I carry an iPhone charger, and a pair of Jabra 65t Elites (which I love), and a cheaper pair of regular wired earbuds with a dongle that converts from headphone jack to iPhone jack, in case I am doing an interview via phone, which I do fairly often.
I have a big TV (that keeps breaking at home) with an Apple TV hooked up to it, and my desk at the college has a ThinkPad on it and an external monitor, which I use when I'm there.
Communication
I also use Gmail in the browser.
Sometimes I'm not at my computer, though, and for that I can use my phone to record calls with Google Voice; you just hit a button and it announces the call is being recorded, and then an MP3 gets dropped in your Google Voice account after the call ends.
I am an avid Tweeter, so I used Tweetdeck to keep things under control and keep me abreast in particular of news events.
And I stay on Facebook for the traffic, mostly.
Productivity
Security
Media
Other
Vox's CMS, Chorus, is excellent, and I (and all my colleagues) actually write straight into it, which makes people at other media outlets twitchy when I tell them but it works for us.
I use the Apple News app mostly for sending me headlines from the big outlets and the trades, so I know if someone died or something else happened that requires me to drop everything and write a news hit.
I also play Two Dots on the subway while I listen to podcasts, because it seems to be the best way for my brain to absorb what I'm hearing.