Brandon Gates
thebgates.bsky.social
Brandon Gates
@thebgates.bsky.social
journo. director. writer. indie filmmaker. 🌏 traveler. powerlifter. southern gent turned brooklynite. estudiando es

🎧 TODAY WE ALMOST DIED: https://linktr.ee/todaywealmostdied
Journalism: https://bit.ly/m/gates
Creative: https://linktr.ee/irongatesmedia
I don’t see these pursuits as distractions. They’re part of the same project: finding truth, making meaning, connecting with audiences. That’s what storytellers do. A simple Venn diagram says it all: Journalist + Screenwriter = Storyteller. Do you see similar walls in your own field?
September 5, 2025 at 9:35 PM
The question I keep returning to: has journalism become too rigid to recognize multidimensional storytellers? If so, what are we losing? Perhaps the issue isn’t credibility but control; an insistence that the field remain narrowly defined, even as the world demands broader narratives.
September 5, 2025 at 9:35 PM
That’s why “storyteller” resonates with me more than “journalist” or “screenwriter.” Good reporting requires imagination; good fiction requires truth. The skills overlap. The forms inform each other. And yet, our industry still clings to rigid categories that leave little room for hybridity.
September 5, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Over the years, I stopped seeing my work as competing lanes. I write, I produce, I direct, I teach. Journalism matters deeply to me, but so does creative writing. Both sharpen the other. At their core, they’re not opposites, they’re extensions of the same impulse: to tell stories.
September 5, 2025 at 9:35 PM
When I began screenwriting in 2016, I was warned it could “damage my credibility.” Some editors said fiction would undermine my journalism. This fear reveals something: not about storytelling, but about journalism’s insecurity. Why does the profession resist multidimensional identities?
September 5, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Freelancers live this tension acutely. Hiring managers too often view them as “less serious” than staff reporters. Yet freelancing demands more: self-discipline, business acumen, creativity, and resilience. It’s not a gap in credibility, it’s a test of versatility that rarely gets acknowledged.
September 5, 2025 at 9:35 PM
I wish I’d read those words back in college. Still, I’m grateful for the reminder to keep writing, producing, directing—and putting my work out into the world. I cringe thinking about how much weight I gave to opinions that never really mattered throughout my 20s and early 30s.
July 28, 2025 at 6:17 PM
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TODAY WE ALMOST DIED | Podcast on RSS.com
Four Brooklyn roommates. One global pandemic. Zero chance of coming out the same.TODAY WE ALMOST DIED is a raw, fictional audio comedy drama about surviving isolation, secrets, and each other. Set dur...
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June 27, 2025 at 6:31 PM