Steve Featherstone found out about “Spike,” the local Syracuse term for synthetic marijuana, at the dinner table.

Featherstone’s wife, a physician at Upstate University Hospital, told the journalist that a lot of people in the Level 1 Trauma Center were overdosing on Spike.

“‘The weird thing about it is that they’re all poor and they’re all black,’” she told Featherstone.

Featherstone, author of The New York Times Magazine July 8, 2015 article “Spike Nation,” discussed Spike and his freelance journalism career with an audience of about 45 people at Syracuse University’s Society of Professional Journalists’ event on Wednesday night.

Featherstone discussed his work as a freelance journalist for magazines that include Popular Science, Harper’s Magazine, Slate and Bloomberg Business. Jim Shahin, associate professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, moderated the discussion.

After Featherstone had finished his bachelor’s degree in 1990 and his master’s of fine arts degree in 1996 — both at Syracuse University — he began working for a public relations company, he said. Featherstone then began looking for stories and writing proposals to pitch to the editors he met through his connections. One of those stories came from the discussion with his wife at the dinner table.

Featherstone said the conversation piqued his interest, and the story idea for “Spike Nation” began to form from there.

It was local connections like his wife working at Upstate University Hospital, he said, and him knowing the CEO of the hospital that allowed him to get the research and many of the interviews he was able to collect.

Featherstone said that he would eventually find through his research and interviews that chronic users who were poor and African-American were using the synthetic marijuana partly because the mixture does not show up on drug tests, which he said this demographic of users in Syracuse are more likely to take.

Tory Russo, a senior magazine journalism and international relations dual major, said she was drawn to Featherstone in part because Featherstone is from Syracuse.

“You don’t really see a lot of writers that are based here,” Russo said. “And he’s a freelancer, which is something that I want to get into.”

Russo said she wants to start a freelance career in Syracuse after she graduates in May. She added that she liked the part of Featherstone’s talk when he mentioned reaching out to people who are newer on publication mastheads because those people are also looking to build their networks.

The other part of Featherstone’s talk that Russo said she liked was when he discussed using his creative writing style to write narratively, something she said the magazine department at Newhouse “really emphasizes.”

Half of Wednesday’s event was dedicated to a question and answer session, during which audience members asked Featherstone questions that ranged from the details of writing “Spike Nation” to his work with different editors. Ellen Meyers, a junior newspaper and online journalism major and president of SPJ, was among those in the audience who asked questions.

After reading “Spike Nation” over the summer, Meyers, who is also a staff writer for The Daily Orange, brought up what she said was a compelling story to Roy Gutterman, director of Newhouse’s Tully Center for Free Speech. Gutterman happened to know Featherstone and put Meyers and Featherstone in contact.

“Especially as a student journalist here, (the article) opened my eyes more to what is going on around the city of Syracuse,” Meyers said. “I think both his article and his discussion was a great way for everyone to learn more about Syracuse.”

Published on February 3, 2016 at 11:52 pm

Contact Katelyn: kmfaubel@syr.edu